Simplenote is really nice. Before I owned my iPhone, it was the first app that I wanted to install and I really did. It has a neat web interface, and on Mac I Use Notational Velocity¹ as a desktop client. The notes keep sync between these platforms fluently. It also supports tags, even better, with a simple publish way. It's like a dream to a plain text lover.

But I kind of hate ads in my apps. The apps I use daily don't have ads - I paid to remove the ads. Therefore, I also wanted to remove ads in Simplenote. However, you have to pay $20 a year to do that. It's overkill to me, although I can gain some nice features after upgrade.

So I decided to drop it.

The other reason was I found Trunk Notes. It is a really nice wiki implementation on iOS. If I had built a wiki on iOS, it would be like Trunk Notes. And Trunk Notes offers more than my imagination with some dynamic features. It beats Simplenote with direct Markdown support, and inner links between notes.(I keep all my plain text notes with Markdown format.)

So I just made a decision to move all my plain text into Trunk Notes and spent two days to do that.

But the whole system did not work like what I imagined.

First thing was that Trunk Notes lacks a desktop solution. You can open a text file on desktop, but it's hard to search the content. I can use Alfred for help, but I still miss Notational Velocity. You can use Notational Velocity as the desktop client of Trunk Notes, but Trunk Notes is a wiki, so it does not support file name with space. This is quite a restriction when using Notational Velocity.

Another thing was Trunk Notes saves metadata in the text file. So the text file is different from the original one. This makes the Markdown editor get confused and you have to deal with the metadata when you want to export to other formats on the desktop.

Moreover, Trunk Notes does not sync automatically. You have to click three times and wait for the sync process. This is really inconvenient.

I also tried to use Evernote since I got an one year premium. Although it has a "note" in its name, Evernote sucks when taking notes. The interface and the way it treats notes have problems in both desktop(Mac) and mobile(iPhone) client. I tried several times but just got away from it as soon as possible.

So I decided to switch back to the plain text solution.

There are lots of great plain text editors that support Dropbox syncing, for example, Elements, Notesy, WriteRoom, etc. And Michael Tsai has built up a great comparison between these editors. I switched back and forth between Elements and Notesy and could not decide which to buy. But I found Michael say that WriteUp was his choice. So I decided to take a look at it.

WriteUp is really Markdown friendly and has many features related to Markdown. The sweat spot to me is that WriteUp offers the reader mode, means you can choose to open a document with the result of Markdown. After purchasing, I really love it! Not only the interface is really elegant, the total flow is really convinced.

Now I think using Notational Velocity with WriteUp is my best solution to note taking. I will still use Trunk Notes as the repository of my old but seldom modified notes, and use Evernote to save web clips and PDF. But everyday flow is totally with Notational Velocity and WriteUp. They are both really good apps and I use them with pleasure. If there is some thing that I miss Simplenote, it would be tagging. WriteUp does not support tagging, but I think this could be solved by searching.

Here are some things I use daily for this content management system.

ClipMenu

ClipMenu is a clipboard manager for Mac. I use it everyday for multiple clipboard. It is also very useful because of the action. It has a build-in action that translate Markdown to HTML, so I can copy a Markdown text and paste it into HTML code just like other things in the clipboard.

Also, you can create custom actions with JavaScript. I write a simple custom action to help myself for pasting images in Markdown way.

To create custom actions, first you need to create a folder at:

/Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support/ClipMenu/script/action

The custom actions should have .js extension, since it is merely a JavaScript.

My mdImg.js is just one line:

return '![](' + clipText + ')';

HumaneText.service

(Thanks vranx for sharing this service! )

HumaneText.service is a Mac OS X service which add two new services: XTHML to text and text to XHTML. You can assign hot key to each service as normal services. A nice alternative if you don't use ClipMenu and it also add XTHML to text function, which ClipMenu way does not offer. You can download it from here.

VoodooPad

VoodooPad is like a personal wiki for Mac. You can write down notes and thoughts and lots of data. I like the slogan "you put your brain in it".

VoodooPad does not support Markdown directly, but there is an option to convert your text from Markdown to HTML when exporting. Thus, it's quiet convenient that you can just write Markdown in VoodooPad and convert it into static web pages for publishing.

I found there is a HTML Tools plugin for VoodooPad (you can find it on the 3rd Party Plugins page) which let you convert Markdown to HTML and also offer a preview of current page. This makes VoodooPad a really good place to write in Markdown. Highly recommended!

Also worth to mention: if you are going to write plain text in VoodooPad, remember to check the option "Create plain text pages" in "Document Info". This will disable the rich text feature in Mac editing areas and make a true "plain text wiki".

Notational Velocity (with Markdown preview)

Notational Velocity is the main part of this system. Actually, the decision starts when I finally got the concept of Notational Velocity. The author of NV recommends you to create one detail per note, and make quick search whenever you need it. And thanks Steven Frank build up a fork of the original NV with Markdown preview. So I can write my notes with Markdown and also preview the format simultaneously.

There are also lots of NV forks out there. I found the fork from Christian Tietze is quite useful. It is not only supported Markdown, but also MultiMarkdown and Textile. Currently I switch to use this fork.

S9

S9 is a Ruby gem that generates S5 slideshow with Markdown (also Textile). Therefore, I can write my slideshow in NV and quickly generate the slideshow when I need it.

Others

There are other software that I don't use daily but may suit you needs.

• Droplr is a simple Mac menubar app for you to share things quickly. You can write notes with Markdown format.
• Fraise is a powerful text editor for Mac that support Markdown live preview.
• Scrivener not only supports Markdown but MultiMarkdown. I would buy one if one day I need to write something large and structured.
• html2text is not a Mac app but a web site. It can convert HTML to Markdown. Also you can download the Python file for offline usage. Make.text has similar approach, but it is written in JavaScript. Using Aardvark before these bookmarklets to get rid of useless contents.
• For publishing, Tumblr and Posterous are both very simple and easy to use platform. Currently my choice is Tumblr just because it support Markdown earlier and has lots of elegant themes.
• Jottit is a wiki with Markdown support. I like the wysiwym editor. If you want a more powerful wiki, a self-hosting DokuWiki is my first choice. It does not support Markdown originally, but can be enhanced easily by the plugin.
• peg.gd is a simple one page sharing service supports Markdown. I like the "Last updated" in the end of the page and the possibility to change the page later if you want. So it will be more useful than the Droplr page support and make it more like a wiki page.