A fairly recent news item at Ars Technica about Microsoft's OneNote student pricing caught my attention. OneNote is a new Office application that's supposed to act as a central place for storing any kind of notes. Ars Technica's posting posited that a tablet PC, combined with OneNote, could be an effective system for taking notes in class. With the Tablet PC, you could have your computer sitting like a regular notepad to jot down notes. And with OneNote, you can also record voice memos. It's not a bad idea - I know that having a regular laptop in my math class would be awkward (especially in Math, where you're writing equations that don't map to typical keyboard input). Would a Tablet PC make sense? I can't say for certain - I've never used one. For me, paper seems to be a fine in-class solution. But it died get me to thinking about how I might transcribe and order my notes as I start expanding my class list in the future, using Mac OS X.
I've long been a fan of OmniOutliner. OmniOutliner is a simple, fast, and fairly flexible outliner program. I've found it useful for thinking out algorithms and tasks in the past. It's speed, interface, and price make it a great entry system. But would it work for more complex note management? I doubt it. There's little support for rich media or more advanced categorization and management. What are some alternatives?
There are a couple that have caught my eye recently that I'm evaluating (lightly). The first is VoodooPad. VoodooPad labels itself as a "Personal Wiki" and from what I've seen so far, it lives up to that label. Traditionally, I have not been fond of Wikis. But a personal one that's free from Web based input is not as bad as I would have thought. It's a lot faster to work with, for one thing. One can type "We need to expand the ShoppingCart interface to allow for...", and immediately 'ShoppingCart' is revealed as a potential link. A click on it creates a new page in the VoodooPad document - there's no 'save / click / create' process that one has to deal with in web based situations. Since it's using Mac OS X's Cocoa text system, one gets automatic spell checking and complete rich text support, as well as the ability to paste or link to rich media.
VoodooPad also supports Inkwell, Mac OS X's handwriting recognition system that descended from the Newton. Since there is no "Tablet PC" in the Apple world right now, this is limited to usage of a Wacom tablet. But it may help in jotting down fomulas in a Math class situation.
One of the most interesting aspects of VoodooPad is its support for the new Notes system in the third generation iPod's, which keeps links intact. It gives you a pocket wiki, for better or worse. In a school or even business situation, it could be a handy way of keeping short interconnected notes in your pocket for quick reference. Exporting to iPod Notes is done in one click - there's no "save as..." dialog box that pops up. Other export features include RTFD, HTML, and XML, as well as iPod 'Contacts' for older iPod systems.
VoodooPad could best be viewed as an alternative to OmniOutliner for those who prefer wiki style editing over outlines. It's still a simple system which, like OmniOutliner, lacks complex organization and management facilities. It does give one more space to think things out in a more prosaic fashion than an outline typically does, but lacks the quick reorganization capabilities of outlines.
Another option is AquaMind's NoteTaker application. NoteTaker is a full featured note taking and management system. Its user interface is modeled on note pads. NoteTaker places tabs (on the side or bottom, according to user preferences) on the notepad for quick access to categories, and maintains a full table of contents. Each page can be individually styled to appear as ruled paper, graph, legal, etc. Entry numbering can be quickly set to different common styles, such as Harvard or Legal. A Notebook Drawer element can be set to slide out for rapid access to the entire notebook, a library of notebooks, and history (recently visited pages). NoteTaker also has the ability to generate an index section, which provides links back to pages that mention the item. The index itself is divided into different pages, such as 'Text', 'Proper Names', 'Websites'.
NoteTaker has comprehensive rich media support, and includes the option of recording voice memos right into the notebook. Outline elements also can have a 'type' associated with them, with the ability to create custom ones. Built in elements include 'link', 'clipping', 'document', etc.
On the import/export front, NoteTaker features Plain and Rich Text (RTF), delimited text, mail merge, vCard, and OPML. OPML import from OmniOutliner worked quite well when I tested it. NoteTaker also features the ability to generate "Web Notebooks" which seem rather comprehensive, if this example site gives any idea.
The only thing I would like to see is the integration of something like babyTex for math equations - hell, any kind of equation editor would be fine. This is usually where I start ranting and raving and whining about the need for OpenDoc, but I'll leave that alone today.
But as a serious note management application, NoteTaker is very impressive, and is a serious alternative or replacement for what OneNote is trying to be. As an outliner, OmniOutliner is easier and more responsive. But NoteTaker's comprehensive features really allows someone to maintain an exhaustive notebook for all their college courses, or for a business project, or anything else for that matter. It's navigation, indexing, and page customization features allow for a single notebook to fulfill many different uses. As stated above, however, it might not be the best math solution. For that, I'm starting to think that Mathematica's notebook system may be better suited.