So I was curious and wanted to have a look. This is only over the course of an hour or two of playing and I deliberately didn't read the user guide as these kinds of things really should be usable without one, the guide should only be required for reference of more advanced topics. I did not read the OneNote, Evernote or Joplin user guides for first use.
First impressions
UI
To me it is a bit of a confused mess between a clean minimalist UI and massive clutter/information overload. Why do I need to see the database note ID, link maps, revisions etc. on first use. I guess it is to show off all the capabilities with that demo folder but its a bit intimidating.
So many icons and buttons, most of which I simply don't need - why is there a dedicated "weight tracker" button (oi, Trilium, you calling me fat?).
I'm glad I know that my folder has 1 Owned attr of #viewType=grid and 0 Inherited atts. I have no idea what this means or why I need to know it but sure, thanks.
Notes, folders etc.
I want to make a new folder outside of "Trilium Demo". I press the little button next to 'root' (which seems to be immutable? - it seems somewhat redundant initially, no doubt it has some kind of special sauce behind it). I click the little + icon and now I get a new note. Ok fine but I didn't want a note, I wanted a folder but no amount of right clicking moving is unlocking its secrets - but I can happily "edit branch prefix". I did hit upon the solution of making a second new note and dragging my first new note over the second new note, now I have a folder called new note and a note called new note.
However it seems the folder isn't just a folder its a note and a folder? I can type into my folder like a note but then can also click inside my note within it. Fair enough, I do like this feature but the folder icon is somewhat misleading.
Writing a note
Start typing and it defaults to a richtext type editor, not really what I want to be using, for note taking I just find Markdown to be so much faster and more fluid than trying to use more of a word processor type system, I'm in love with the ability to format using characters and not shortcuts & buttons. So I look under "Type:Text" and find you can change to "Type:Markdown" - oh god, now I've got my note in html tags, a monospace terminal type font and line numbers.
We have some markdown highlighting going on but we don't have the nice hybrid markdown approach of showing the formatting tags but not some of the other features like dynamic sizing of header lines - this also means that apparently my note is now code and not a note.
I also can't see a way to preview it, I go to that dropdown again and click "render note" - the app says I shouldn't change a note type and now it is giving me some complicated reason as to why I did something wrong and that this is for some kind of HTML scripting. I just want to see my markdown. I assume Trilium just doesn't support Markdown (which is an instant reason for me to not use this application).
Conclusions
I can see why people like this app, despite my negative comments above, there is a lot to like here. For those who like richtext editors I think the experience is simply better than the Joplin editor. However that means nothing to somebody who wants to use Markdown almost exclusively as the support for Markdown seems to be minimal at best.
The organisational aspect is also nice, if you are into that kind of thing but I can see myself spending half my time perfectly organising the tree to be perfect rather than doing more important things.
The things I do like that I think I would like to see in Joplin one day as either a plugin or as a feature:
- Being able to manually set note types - Joplin sort of has this already in that the "Markup" field can be either Markdown or HTML but it isn't something that can be set manually. I mostly would like to see it as a way to protect any HTML formatted notes from the markdown editor as well as being able to set entire "code" type notes that are excluded from formatting but can be distinguished at a glance.
- The ability to type data into the folders - Although I don't think it needs to be taken as far as Trilium, I like the idea of being able to set some description data against the Notebook itself rather than it just being a static folder.
- The "book" type - as somebody who tends to write a lot of small, self-contained notes, I really like the implementation of this where you can display all your sub-notes on a single viewer pane.
The negatives:
- Poor Markdown support - what makes Joplin, Joplin for me is the heavy (almost sole) support of Markdown. At this point I've almost entirely converted to using Markdown for everything, it makes the note writing process so much faster and easier for me when I can format on the fly by typing and not by highlighting + shortcuts/buttons.
- Overly complicated - whilst powerful, the sheer amount of stuff that is thrown at you by default is somewhat overwhelming - I decided against a bunch of other note apps such as QOwnNotes for the same reason - all these extra panes, panels and property fields makes it feel less like a note app and more of a knowledge database which really are two different (but overlapping) solutions. Even Sometimes less is more and I would just spend the rest of time organising the system.
- "Cloned" notes - I do like the idea of this one, having a single "master" note which appears as a full note but within different notebooks - you can have the same data in more than one place but without having to rely on clicking internal links (which will switch notebooks) or having to maintain two notes at once
- Tagging - I couldn't see an obvious way to have tags, I think this is accomplished using the attributes panel and adding labels but I couldn't immediately work out how to use them in the same way as Evernote or Joplin tags. Again, I can see how this system can be incredibly powerful but its just too much (although tag hierarchies is still something conspicuously absent from Joplin, I know there is work going on for this still but its probably one of the biggest issues for me at the moment).
- Syncing - most people are absolutely not going to have the equipment or ability to set up a proprietary sync server. I struggled enough migrating to a personal NextCloud instance (which at least is multi use). The ability for Joplin to support so many different and common sync targets is definitely a win for your average user.
There is a hell of a lot to like here but ultimately they seem to serve two different purposes. I love Joplin because it is simple, I don't need about 80% of the Trilium features which unfortunately causes it to be less usable when you only need the simple features. There are a lot of things that I would personally like to see in Joplin and there is a wealth of ideas for future plugins here.
The lack of proper markdown support is the killer for me though, I can't (and won't) go back.
every time I open Joplin, I thank you and everyone involved in developing and making Joplin better or a daily basis.
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