Joplin Features Evaluation toward a Roadmap for an Outstanding Note-taking App

bedwardly-down · 2020-01-19T17:07:06.850Z

The abbreviations for starters should be spelled out in full at least in parenthesis (example: RTL(Right-to-Left)) and until today, i had no clue what a backlink was. Things like that.

On a side note, what is the reasoning behind asking people to rate having an iOS app and why rate it 0? My main phone is an iPhone and, despite the app’s obvious short comings (as per all the bug reports made here and on github), having Joplin available for all of my platforms is a major selling point for my using it

johano · 2020-01-19T19:57:22.268Z

@rami.sedhom Great, thanks, I can now edit.

As @bedwardly-down remarks, it would be helpful to have a note attached to the "Feature" cells with an additionsl short description to avoid ambiguity or puzzlement.

Have a look at your formulae under Keep other resources - there seems to be an error there.

Thanks again, and good luck from Scotland

rami.sedhom · 2020-01-19T20:53:31.860Z

bedwardly-down:

The abbreviations for starters

I added description in comment in every cell containing abbreviations full text.

bedwardly-down:

i had no clue what a backlink was

A backlink is a backtrace link from one note to other note when 2nd note is linking to the first note.
I think it's non-sense, I can't explain that in simple words , let me try in an example:
If "Note1" has link to "Note2", "Note2" should have automatic link (called backlink) to "Note1".
Check this request for Backlinks feature.

BTW, since I mention "Backlink" thread in this post, you'll notice that this thread will be backlinked there under first post automatically. This is a nice feature in this discourse forums.

Anyway, I guess if you have no clue on something, it's not important to you at all and you can evaluate it as 0.

bedwardly-down:

what is the reasoning behind asking people to rate having an iOS app and why rate it 0?

0 is just my personal rating since I don't or plan to have it. But for you, you can put as 3 since you have it and planning to use it for Joplin. Bottom line, it's personal evaluation about your personal needs. Calculations will sum up the importance of every feature according to community needs.

johano:

Have a look at your formulae under Keep other resources - there seems to be an error there.

Thanks for noticing this. I corrected it.

bedwardly-down · 2020-01-19T21:23:26.768Z

Thanks for clarifying. I do disagree with one statement here:

Anyway, I guess if you have no clue on something, it’s not important to you at all and you can evaluate it as 0.

I consider the way you worded this a bit rude and non-conducive to a positive discussion. Not knowing what something was until I did research on it doesn't warrant stating that it's not important to me in any form.

Other than that, I do like the idea of getting community feedback on priorities for this project. On the 0 rating comment, I misread 0 as "Should not be a priority" vs "Something I won't use, so not a priority for me," if that makes sense. It's because of how the other options are worded. Maybe reword that as something like "0 - Have no opinion / Will Not Be Using In The Future." That way it's not possibly misunderstood in the future.

Peppeo · 2020-01-20T08:46:43.568Z

Thanks @rami.sedhom I have filled in the survey, can indeed be useful to get user feedback on current needs and future improvements. Two small remarks: 1. a OneNote importer could be useful as well; 2. now I have filled in a 2 for the enex import (prior to that even a 0) but that is because I have imported all my notes from Evernote already

rami.sedhom · 2020-01-20T20:43:47.605Z

Peppeo:

OneNote importer could be useful as well

I added import "from OneNote" at row 52

Peppeo · 2020-01-21T02:03:47.672Z

Great, thanks for the update, I have added my score for that one also.

Bruised · 2020-01-21T08:35:04.174Z

I'm almost done adding my values, so not very useful for me anymore,
but it would be easier to fill out when you turn on alternating row colors.
And maybe you already turned it on, but freezing the first column would help future editors, since it's they'd be editing further from the feature list on the left.
If you understand what I mean.

And thanks for creating this list. Hope @laurent will find it helpful too

Also not sure what you mean by "password" under "security", but for instance, to password protect the whole program/app would not be very useful to me, however being able to password protect a specific notebook or note would be very very useful.

And maybe you would want to split "Free and open source"?
For instance, for me, "Free" is less important than "open source"

And, adding the definition of certain acronyms/abbreviations is useful, but what would be even more helpful would be to give some examples.
Or maybe everyone here will, like me, understand the implicated possibilities when a feature like, API, CLI or Plugins is part of a program like this. Then this would not be needed.
(Just trying to help and get the best possible outcome from this. A good accurate dataset)

oliviermarti · 2020-01-21T14:40:50.328Z

rami.sedhom:

Weights based on MoSCo

Made my pensum !

Like Bruised, I just regret that free and open source are together. Open source is 3 for me, but free is only 1. (but then a reasonable price would be a 3).

Olivier

bedwardly-down · 2020-01-21T15:32:31.652Z

@Bruised and @oliviermarti, i didn’t even think about that. In all honesty, there are a plethora of open source projects that are not free that are well worth supporting. Check out Bitwarden (offers a free tier but its best features are tied behind a $10 subscription) or Protonmail ($50 a year for full access and them to host your mail server with source code available for those that want to run the service from their own servers). Open source doesn’t mean devs don’t have expenses and I’m ok with proprietary software from devs that are highly transparent, especially with their privacy policies.

rami.sedhom · 2020-01-21T22:44:21.265Z

Good points @Bruised

Alternating row colors,
Freezing the first 2 columns and first row.

I agree for splitting Free and Open Source. I wish I had thought of that before. Since we have 10 evaluations now, how do you suggest to introduce this to the sheet for already existing evaluations?

For the password, I actually meant to protect the mobile app with a Pin like Simplenote

Bruised · 2020-01-22T09:38:01.791Z

Thanks (from the future responders ) for the changes to colors and freezing.

About the Free and Open Source:
1 way you could introduce it is by copying the values that are currently there in the "Free and Open Source" row.
So in other words:
Changing "Free and Open Source" to just "Free".
Adding a row underneath with "Open Source".
And If the field currently has a value for "Free and Open Source" of say 2. Both fields ("Free" and "Open Source") will read 2.
Then the respondent could go back and change the value (of they want). And future respondents can fill it out straight away.

It's not ideal, but especially with the knowledge that if the first 10 respondents have both fields the same, they probably didn't change it after the change to the sheet. This would still be very valuable information for Laurent I think.

bedwardly-down · 2020-01-22T14:04:48.597Z

To further add to that, I would definitely make sure you define what “free” is in this context. There are multiple camps, especially in the Linux world, that will have varying degrees of what it means. The most common ones are: 1) Free as in beer 2) Free as in no monetization whatsoever (including donations, tips, etc) 3) Free with incentives to support (like patreon or developer being able to work on it full time).

On the first two, I would gladly rate 0 because (as soon as I’m able to) an app like this definitely deserves my money. For the third one, if a free app solves my main problem while also has the ability to cut down some of my extra apps, I’ll gladly pay the extra subscription to the dev instead (Joplin is definitely replacing GoodBudget for me now that I have my budgeting system tweaked to my liking for the most part). The third free definition, I would whole heartedly rate 3 for this reason.

laurent · 2020-01-22T21:47:24.183Z

Thanks for creating the list Rami. This kind of data can be useful however I feel it’s not in a format that makes it easy to use or contribute to. Are there no existing services we could use, where your list and votes could be exported to?

bedwardly-down · 2020-01-24T19:45:06.170Z

You could possibly create something like it through your patreon page. Last time i used the service for my own endeavors, i believe there was a free teir or public option for making polls about these sort of things.

Patreon Blog

Polling Your Patrons | Patreon Blog

When you go to create a new post on your Patreon page, you’ll see an option to create a poll. You can choose to make your poll public or for patrons only.

subie · 2020-01-25T09:54:46.841Z

how about using trello? dynalist use it for their roadmap

memophen · 2020-01-26T15:24:17.806Z

@rami.sedhom, I left some fields blank in the evaluation sheet, because I didn’t quite understand what you meant:

Different views — Do you mean the editor vs the viewer, or other viewers beside the current one? The only thing I would like to be added is a zoom facility for the viewer, but that’s not something I desperately need.
Importing from text/CSV/JSON — What should I imagine I would get when I import such structures?
Exporting to text/CSV/JSON — Same type of question.

In addition some other wishes from my side:

Easy reference to classes, IDs, and styles — My rating would be 2.
(Un)fold nested lists, not only (un)fold subtasks as in the sheet — My rating would be 1.
Lockable notes, as a kind of safety hook to prevent inadvertent changes by me or the cat — Also rated 1.

rami.sedhom · 2020-01-27T12:40:09.820Z

Just a snapshot today of most voted/important areas as per 17 voters until now:

Category	Percentage
Searching	89.5%
General	78.4%
Backup	73.5%
Security	73.5%
Exporting	72.4%
Organizing	67.6%
Apps, APIs & Sync	66.3%
Importing	61.7%
Editing	53.7%
Plugins	52.9%
Keep other resources	52.5%
Viewing	51.1%
Task Management	42%
Collaboration	39.6%
Commenting & Annotation	35.3%

That mean the top 5 important features those voters are looking for in note-taking app are:

Searching,
General (Free & Open source),
Backup,
Security and
Exporting.

rami.sedhom · 2020-01-28T10:03:50.548Z

laurent:

I feel it’s not in a format that makes it easy to use or contribute to. Are there no existing services we could use, where your list and votes could be exported to?

What format do you think is easy to use? This sheet can be downloaded into different tabular formats: (xlsx, ods, html, csv, tsv). I believe it's relatively easy to handle data from any of those formats.

laurent · 2020-01-28T10:17:09.450Z

rami.sedhom:

What format do you think is easy to use? This sheet can be downloaded into different tabular formats: (xlsx, ods, html, csv, tsv). I believe it’s relatively easy to handle data from any of those formats.

Maybe not in terms of file format, but rather how it's presented. For example React Native use canny.io to track votes on feature requests. It allows having one page per feature, with description, comments and votes. It's not free though, but it gives an idea of how it could be.