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

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.

rami.sedhom · 2020-01-28T11:56:55.599Z

If you want a whole platform to collect and manage user feedback, I can see 2 open source self-hosted alternatives to canny.io:
https://getfider.com
https://github.com/riggraz/astuto

JudgeDeadd · 2020-01-29T12:03:01.678Z

The percentage for “Backup” in the spreadsheet is wrong–it’s actually the percentage for “Security” instead.

There are a few features I don’t really understand. What does “Keep files” mean, for instance? Keep them where? I’m also unsure on what “sorting selecting” is.

bedwardly-down · 2020-01-29T17:27:07.554Z

@JudgeDeadd this is definitely a core issue that I and others have brought up about this spreadsheet. It is a bit vague in what certain teams are meaning and implying and @laurent has already requested other means of obtaining this information since its current format isn’t exactly valuable to the devs at this time. Do you have any suggestions?

nr458h · 2020-01-29T18:31:21.606Z

I’m not sure, but didn’t we use the poll plugin for the design decision?
Probably would also could introduce voting topics.

In my personal understanding it is already difficult to guide the users for issues to the GitHub Repo, for feature requests and discussion to the forum for details about the features to the website …
so I would try to stick with discourse as long as possible. Just my two cents.

(In addition I didn’t join the voting because I don’t want to use any google services)

fanch · 2020-02-04T10:49:11.474Z

Please add feature “Navigation button”.
Just like in a web Browser, buttons back & foreward, and maybe a drop down list of historics note viewed.

PackElend · 2020-02-04T12:31:04.485Z

and how about the allow to add Custom stylesheets easily, allowing to create stylesheets library / plug-in model

Yann1ck · 2020-06-02T10:31:21.215Z

Did you have asked them about special pricing? Seems like they over special pricing (perhaps even free?) to open source projects:
https://feedback.canny.io/feature-requests/p/early-stage-startup-discount-cheap-plan-or-free-tier

If you think canny could help you to get an better overview compared to discourse that could be a good idea. Perhaps a public “roadmap” like this would also stop duplicate feature requests.

o5t6iaqo7 · 2021-08-02T12:40:39.731Z

My biggest features are higher level rather than feature specific: (1) open source; (2) E2E encryption; (3) export-friendly = you have these. And (4) a high probability you will be around with this model 12 years from now - that's the time I have been using Evernote but its model changed increasingly locked in. (5) An option for easy cloud syncing supported by some kind of paid subscription model generating sustained revenue for you so quality goes up and a mechanism to support paid user questions. (6) You don't change the user interface too often (and when you do, you give users option to keep legacy features / configuration). You just got #5 with the cloud subscription and so now I will pay and switch from Evernote. Thank you! I hope you are planning a business roadmap for being around for a decade or more as your user base grows, and without the "corporate" closed-system changes that happened at Evernote and that are baked into most commercial note taking platforms! Perhaps a "user owned" cooperative or public benefit corporation governance structure so you can't be taken over or bought out?

laurent · 2021-08-02T12:56:48.591Z

I think the bus factor for this project is relatively low because all key components are either open source or source available. Several of us also have access to key parts of the infrastructure such as the GitHub repository, npmjs account and Dockerhub account.

I prefer to stay away from creating a cooperative or official nonprofit organisation simply because I don't have time to deal with the red tape (not to mention that I hate doing so).