standard notes - storage server component
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I've been using a self hosted standardnotes instance for a few weeks and it gives me mixed feelings.
First of all, its a plaintext notepad. Everything is stored as raw plain text, there are some editors that give you a wysiwyg editor that stores text as markdown. https://github.com/arturolinares/sn-rme is a nice editor, but for the first week it was broken to me after modifying a note with another editor.
The webapp is not offline capable. It will continue to work when you have it open when going offline, but won't start without an active connection to the server.
Its not collaborative. There is no way to share a note in a way that another user can also edit it and you see the changes. You cannot even link/bookmark to notes yourself. Even with the same user on multiple devices its sometimes difficult, I had it happen a few times that I was working on a note on my first device left it open, made a quick edit on a second device. when just continuing in the same note on my primary some of the changes get "lost" (its still in the revision can be restored, but that can be tedious on large notes).
Their filters/labels are a bit strange and you need to know their syntax to use them (no wizards, few useful presets, you need to delete and recreate and cannot change them).
You are really only limited to text. No possibility to easily add images or other file types. In their hosted offering they have a "file safe" but that is yet another service required for it and this only relays data which would still need to be stored in webdav/dropbox/google drive. Because of this its unlikely that it would ever get pen input support. At least not in the like of e.g. evernote or onenote.
I want to like it, but at the same time need something with a few more features. A cross between this, codimd and with offline capability would be nice. (with a cherry on top if that would also support pen input)
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@fbartels I agree that StandardNotes is not the end all notes solution, but I haven't found that yet...
I'm switching over from Automattic's SimpleNote and this is a great self hosted, fully encrypted alternative for my personal notes. In fact, with some of the Extensions that are available, this will enable some great and welcomed functionality on my end, such as Task Lists, themes, and Markdown syntax among others. For shared lists I'm hoping to see Vikunja be packaged in the near future.
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A last reply about my use of Standardnotes. I have just retired my own installation of it. While its a nice editor it simply did not really cut in in terms of searching content and organising todos within notes. I've used it as a kind of journal/log for work and to keep an overview of open tasks related to these. That worked quite ok, even though I was limited to text and could not really cross link.
The standardnotes devs have been busy replacing the ruby based server with a more elaborate setup, which in the future should support binary data in notes (like pictures). However two weeks ago they broke the compatibility of their desktop and mobile applications with the old syncing server, and that without any prior notice. This does not really leave a good impression for others self hosting their software. So instead of migrating to their new stack I migrated away. Tasks are now organised in Vikunja, which also allows extensive notes and comments on tasks, and the log/journal is simply a channel in my private Rocketchat.
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@fbartels thanks for following up on this!
I've gotten off the idea of StandardNotes as well after reading some other bad experiences using this system. I'm currently using Joplin which isn't 100% what I'm looking for, but does work quite well. Also it looks like a Joplin server might make it to the light of day which might help stabilize it a bit further.
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@thetomester13 looks like @klawitterb has packaged it https://forum.cloudron.io/post/34357
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Is there any possibility of self-hosting the web app. https://github.com/standardnotes/app
I don't know if things have improved since this was first raised, but I'm having trouble finding a self-hosted encrypted note taking app.
Joplin Server is licensed for non-commercial use, and is not a web app.
Something else that looks promising is notesnook, but is not yet available to self-host and was just recently made open source.
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Looks like standard notes now only requires 4 containers in a standard docker-compose installation:
- standardnotes/server
- localstack/localstack:1.3
- mysql:8
- redis:6.0-alpine
Since cloudron supports the last two natively that bodes well. I guess the main porting task would be to merge the standardnotes/server and localstack images and run them together with a supervisor.
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More details now available on licensing for self hosted option:
https://standardnotes.com/help/48/can-i-use-extensions-with-a-self-hosted-server -
@lukas said in standard notes - storage server component:
so a subscription is definitely needed?
I am not familiar with the self-hosted version, I only use the hosted version.
On the hosted version, paying a fee unlocks extra facilities and plugins, but it is (or used to be) possible to use the basic version free.
But maybe it is different for self-hosted and licence is required for even basic usage. -
They had this loophole in the past that if you host the extensions that were otherwise paywalled yourself (since they were still oss) that you could use these. But with the introduction of this subscription that loophole got closed as far as i know.
