Alternative for OneNote?

[arthelion]

Hi, I'm considering moving to OpenOffice suite, but there is one thing I'm wondering about.
Is there anything similar in OO to MS Office 2007's OneNote? I really love its system of workbooks, sections etc, having lots of separate pages in one document, etc...
Any hint would be appreciated
Thanks

[foxcole]

Have a look at Zotero and see if it does the same kind of thing. (I'm not sure how many people here would be familiar enough with OneNote to understand your question.) It's a Firefox add-on that is a remarkably flexible research tool, and not only can it collect and organize clips and files and notes and links, with tags and dates and such, it integrates with OOo and can even be used to create a nicely formatted bibliography.

I use the ScrapBook extension in Firefox to collect, trim, and annotate clippings from web pages... Zotero can work with these clips too, so you can reorganize them and add further information as needed.

[anangelintn]

I just fell in love with OneNote on my friends computer. I have asked around and people told me keynote. I have not tried it yet thought.

[djwyldeone]

Check out evernote. I believe that is kinda what your looking for.

[foxcole]

When suggesting a software or add-on or resource for information, it would be most kind of the suggester to post a link or URL. Here are the links I found for the last two suggestions:
Tranglos software: KeyNote -- I think this is what anangelintn's friends are suggesting, as opposed to Apple's iWork presentation software. However, if you choose to try it, keep in mind the project is no longer supported.

Evernote was the other suggestion. It requires an Internet access and Evernote account, because data is sent to and stored online in your account. It looks like a cool tool, but the both the free version and the premium version are limited in storage and amount of data supported. The free version is limited to 40Mb upload per month; the premium is limited to 500Mb... and it's easy to reach those limits quickly if you're working with images. In addition to upload limits, storage limits on the different data types also may curtail how much you can use the service. It's a great idea, and I tested it out---works very nicely---so perhaps customer pressure or future server expansions will allow them to increase or eventually remove the limits. Also, you have to download separate applications for the desktop and for Web captures... and for iPhone and mobile phone use (but it's nice that Evernote supports these mobile devices). It doesn't work with documents like OneNote or Zotero will, though it does collect Web clips.

I still prefer Scrapbook and Zotero, but that's just me.

[pavleb]

Hi,

The closest to Onenote is Basket Note pads http://basket.kde.org/. Zotero is not really what you are looking for.

B.

[lgusaas]

Evernote was the other suggestion. It requires an Internet access and Evernote account, because data is sent to and stored online in your account.

There are versions to download for Macs, Windows, iPhone / iTouch, Windows Mobile, SanDisk U3. They store the data on your computer, and you do not have to sync to the online site. Works well for me. I have never used OneNote so I do not know how it compares.

[jars_u]

I've been using OpenOffice exclusively for a long while now but, recently discovered OneNote and the trial version has me seriously debating purchasing of a MS Office license. In my search for an equivalent open source replacement I'll share the following links I found useful:

Comparison of notetaking software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_notetaking_software

Document Management Software
http://code.google.com/p/kognite/wiki/DocumentManagementSoftware

"Getting Things Done" software
http://www.priacta.com/Articles/Comparison_of_GTD_Software.php

I tried a number of them and I think the best 3 have already been mentioned

1. http://basket.kde.org/index.php (closest match in my opinion but, looks like a Windows version won't be available until the 2.x release - never mind that it is a Qt application and not a Gtk+ application...)
2. http://evernote.com/ (too much of a cloud computing application for me and if I'm going to pay I'll buy OneNote but, might be good option for some)
3. http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html (good but lacks the flexibility of OneNote and and development looks to have stopped in 2005)

I didn't think any of them were an ideal substitute. I wish OpenOffice had a native equivalent...

http://contributing.openoffice.org/programming.html

[pellinor]

I use http://notebook.zoho.com as addition to OO.o

Functionality is pretty similar to OneNote. A pre for Zoho is that your notes are always available in the Zoho cloud.

[R_ace]

www.pinoteo.com

I use Pinoteo to create fast notes. This program is like digital board.

[se224141]

I use http://notebook.zoho.com as addition to OO.o

Functionality is pretty similar to OneNote. A pre for Zoho is that your notes are always available in the Zoho cloud.

Onenote works as a printer too. Can Zoho note (http://notebook.zoho.com) be installed or made to work as printer?

[Daeld]

I think we kinda lost the point of the original question...The gist was, "Can OO.o do what OneNote can do"

The answer is: "No".

However, with what I've seen of OneNote, there is no reason why the answer can't be:
"Not yet, but we're working on it and it shouldn't be too long."

Let me explain:

I had to buy MS Office Enterprise 2007 (Home Use Program) for work. I just had a look at it on my Windows 7 partition (which I rarely use... ).

First Impressions:
1) At its core, OneNote is basically an MS Word-like program with a unique organisational capability.
2) The key power in the program lies in the organisation of the pages.

I have limited programming experience, and I would certainly not be able to implement this, but here is my 2 cents...

Suggestion:
It would be a relatively "simple" exercise to fork OO.org Writer and "simply " add the organisational functionality of OneNote.

Basically, you'd just be adding tabbed browsing capabilities to a Writer document.
Note that Calc already has this capability in 1D (ie multiple "sheets" in the one document).
OneNote has tabs in 3 dimensions. (ie a 3D matrix)

Once you have that, you can then add extra functions to match (and potentially exceed OneNote).

If there are any takers, can I get the ball rolling for the new name to be "OpenOffice.org MeetingNote" (ok so maybe that's not catchy enough)

I would challenge anyone in dev to tell me this would be tremendously hard.

[Villeroy]

It would be a relatively "simple" exercise to fork OO.org Writer and "simply " add the organisational functionality of OneNote.

We hold our breath seeing how you do this simple exercise. If you are part of the Microsoft crew, don't forget to add some level of compatibility with OneNotes for all OOo-supported platforms. Otherwise the whole thing would be close to useless since there is plenty of open source software.

[se224141]

Suggestion:
It would be a relatively "simple" exercise to fork OO.org Writer and "simply " add the organisational functionality of OneNote.

Any guess when it will happen. If in near future, I would not have to buy "MS Office home and student". My daughter is so badly used to Onenote and she is pressing me to buy MS Office as there is no substitute of Onenote that does exactly what Onenote does.

[Villeroy]

Suggestion:
It would be a relatively "simple" exercise to fork OO.org Writer and "simply " add the organisational functionality of OneNote.

Any guess when it will happen. If in near future, I would not have to buy "MS Office home and student". My daughter is so badly used to Onenote and she is pressing me to buy MS Office as there is no substitute of Onenote that does exactly what Onenote does.

I'm 100% sure that there will NEVER be any software good enough for your daughter. Even a far superior software would not suffice due to wrong branding or "look&feel".

[Cambirder]

My daughter is so badly used to Onenote and she is pressing me to buy MS Office

Well knowing daughters you will probable end up getting Office 2007 in the end anyway, so try to pay as little for it as possible. If your daughter is a student in possession of a college or university email address you may be able to get a copy of Ultimate for less than the price of the cut down student edition. Just punch "the ultimate steal" into your favourite search engine.

[se224141]

I am in another continent and "the ultimate steal" is applicable here. I have the choice of getting it through "home use program". However I am a fan of freeware and would love something similar to Onenote in OO.

[Villeroy]

OpenOffice.org is not "freeware" in the common sense of the word. It is OSS (open source software).
Why do you ask for your daughter? She has to decide for herself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeware
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_o ... e_software

Accordingly, freeware may or may not be free and open source software and, in order to distinguish, the Free Software Foundation asks users to avoid calling "freeware" free software.[5] The principal difference being that free software can be used, studied, and modified without restriction; free software embodies the concept of freedom to use, while freeware that of free-of-charge.

The purpose of OpenOffice.org is to set you free of proprietary file formats that bind your documents to one particular software (the number one reason why people need MSOffice).
E-mail, web-design, notes, organizers have nothing to do with document formats.

[TheGurkha]

However, with what I've seen of OneNote, there is no reason why the answer can't be: "Not yet, but we're working on it and it shouldn't be too long."

One reason is that the OOo developers are already severely over-stretched just trying to get the core of OOo up to scratch and keep the whole thing moving forwards. The developers don't hang out here by the way. We're not the developers, just users trying to help other users.

[Daeld]

It would be a relatively "simple" exercise to fork OO.org Writer and "simply " add the organisational functionality of OneNote.

We hold our breath seeing how you do this simple exercise. If you are part of the Microsoft crew, don't forget to add some level of compatibility with OneNotes for all OOo-supported platforms. Otherwise the whole thing would be close to useless since there is plenty of open source software.

Dude! Is that the only part of the post that you read? I had hoped that people would realise that I was referring to the relative level of expertise required for this fucntionality. Availability of developers is a separate issue. The question was regarding the potential for OO.o to provide a similar function as OneNote. What I was getting at is I think that it is possible and it wouldn't be that hard.

As TheGurkha pointed out, the problem is the lack of developers.

Compatibility is only an issue if you want to be able to let ppl who can't be bothered to download OO.o to use it. (personally, I don't think this is an issue).
As I alluded to in my post, I am not a fan of M$. I am surprised at the inflammatory tone of your remarks given that you are, apparently, a "Moderator".

Anyway, I believe the comment still stands that if we had enough developers to go around, development of something to match/exceed OneNote would be relatively easy, given what OO.o can already do.

Also, the comment that it would be close to useless "since there is plenty of open source software" seems odd. It seems a bit like saying: Why have writer if there is abiword? or Why bother with OO.o when there's KOffice!

I think people have come to respect OO.o as the best alternative to M$ Office.
As M$ keeps adding more software to the suite, people are going to start to ask questions about how OO.o is going to match that. Why leave it to others to develop? I am aware that there are few developers. Why not collaborate with other projects that are already working on this and other problems? I'm sure they would be falling over backwards if OO.o told them they could be part of the suite if they met certain criteria. Isn't that what FOSS is all about? Innovation, integration, collaboration and flexibility!

[Villeroy]

There is plenty of sowtware for virtual sticky notes, but ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_OneNote
OneNote is full of interfaces for one partiuclar operating system and one particular office suite. It supports all kinds of digital content linked to any other MS product. The whole type of application has nothing to do with the ODF standard being the core of this software. Yes, this software has one particular focus. It is not about features. It's all about documents in free file formats.
Install a modern desktop envoironment for Linux (KDE) with some gimmicks and gadgets. It keeps your notes, key rings, media collections, links, addresses, skype, web 2.0 stuff in one environment analog to the combination of MS Office and MS Windows.

[Eric Baird]

A couple of points:

Re: Evernote:
AFAIK, Evernote doesn't need web access or a web account. You can access it through a web interface, but one of the reasons why they have that bunch of OS-specific software versions is so that you can install the "local" software and use that offline, as a stand-alone application with the data held locally. If you only want to use Evernote on one device, that's probably all that you'll need.
If you want to use Evernote on multiple machines and have them all synched, then yes, you probably need to sign up for the free server account, and if you're churning lots of graphics, yes, that might take you past the "free" threshold. But if that gets to be a problem, you could always shunt your image library to a dedicated image-hosting service like Picasa and keep Evernote as a text-and-clippings-centric notetaker.

Evernote don't tend to stress the standalone aspect of their product(s), because they regard the "cloud" aspect as being the "sexy" bit. If you want to synch multiple Evernote-equipped machines without going through the internet, that might be a bit more difficult.

Re: OpenOffice and "PIM" functions like note-taking and ToDos:
If there's really no open-standard format for things like taggable note objects or advanced to-do list entries, then surely the open-source community needs to invent and implement them? I've just wasted a few days trying to decide how to reorganise my files, and have waded through stacks of totally incompatible Notes and ToDo applications.
As far as "note-taking" standards are concerned, Apple regard the MS product's format as being the Windows standard, so if you want to synch iPhone notes with a Windows PC, you need a piec eof software that can set up and access an MS Notes-compatible database. It would be nice if that software was Ooo rather than MSO, so that people weren't being pushed to go out and buy MSO just to get their iPhones fully working with their PCs. You can't win a standards war if you don't play, and you can't complain about people using proprietary standards if you don't give them an alternative.
If Ooo came with a Notes program that could read and write a few of the major formats (Apple, MS, Palm), it'd be really welcome to a lot of smartphone and MID owners who use their devices for notetaking and personal organiser functions while they're out and about ... and once you have all those people using OooNotes, you have a userbase that you can migrate to an open format that most of the smartphone and MID manufacturers can then gratefully start to support.

If there really isn't yet a single default easily-accessible standard for these things, that isn't a "problem" that makes an "Ooo" implementation less sensible ... it's an opportunity.
It means that there's not yet an entrenched proprietary standard, and the field is open for a single unifying open format to take over. It means that if you publish an open standard and implement it on the next version of Ooo, so that millions of Ooo users can now use that standard by default, you have the opportunity to make an open format the default choice for all future systems, and Ooo the default choice for smartphone users. You know how much it rankles that Word is still regarded by most users as the default wordprocessing format, even now that .ODT is here? Well, here you have the opportunity to walk straight into the #1 position and stop that happening again.

Look at what's already happening with smartphones and iPod Touch's, and Android, and what's about to happen with cheap tablet computing and the PIM-enabled devices that are going to take over from the current generation of Sony Reader and Kindle gadgets. A year or so from now, nobody's going to want to buy a dedicated eBook reader that can't manage annotations or clippings, or can't let them scribble down a grocery list or check a calendar date. We're watching a boom in mobile personal organiser applications. This category of software is getting everywhere.
People want cross-manufacturer compatibility, Apple and MS don't want to give it to them, so that leaves Google and Ooo as the main players who might have the clout to sort the mess out.

If Ooo don't want to get involved, then I guess Google or Mozilla or some other third party will have to sort it out (and get the credit).

[Villeroy]

If there's really no open-standard format for things like taggable note objects or advanced to-do list entries,

There is a standard for open documents. And this standard is the one and only right to exist for this office suite. OOo is the reference implementation for ODF. This platform independent implementation hardly accesses the Windows registry, not to talk about all the Windows specific interfaces that would be required for such tools. The developers would have to implement everything within OOo in order to make it work on all platforms (foreign application with its own look&feel). Otherwise they would have to write separate implementations for Windows, for Mac, for KDE, Gnome, whatelse in order to interface with the related tools on that system (never the same functionality).

Not to talk about ...

It would be a relatively "simple" exercise to fork OO.org Writer and "simply " add the organisational functionality of OneNote.

This is ridiculous.

[TheGurkha]

I use Evernote. You don't need to have an on-line account (free or paid-for) if you don't want. you can use the free OS-specific desktop client freely as a local clipping, note taking, indexed storage.

But the really useful thing for me about Evernote is the text recognition within images. And for that you do need an on-line account (either the free or the paid-for) because until you synch your local database to the on-line storage it doesn't go through the clever text recognition software.

[Daeld]

Aha! I see where the sticking point is!

You think I want OpenOffice "Notes" to have OS integration!

I agree, this would be crazy with the current level of dev supply.

However, I'm talking about the organisational aspect of the way the interface is set up. Sure, OneNotes also has a powerful OS-specific integration. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm simply talking about the 3D tab matrix that allows a single document to contain multiple "Notebooks", each with multiple Tabs and each tab with multiple sections.

Something like this would be wonderful for project management and for meetings, etc.

Now, I hope you understand what I meant by forking the writer code, because you could implement an interface solution in which the file (lets call it open notes format or onf) would be made up of a hidden (within the code of the onf file) multiple odf files, each one coding for each part of the 3D matrix. That's what I'm talking about. NOT OS integration!

[motdakasha]

My biggest concern is that I want something that I can both write freehand with a tablet and type text with. Everything else is not as important.

[JohnMM]

Currently I'm using AllMyNotes Organizer, it has lite free version, and deluxe, which is much cheaper then OneNote

In the past I was also using InfoSelect, pretty powerful app, but pretty expensive... sigh...

Though I'm not that familiar with freehand writing... Doesn't Tablet PC includes handwriting recognition for all apps? If not, the only ting I'm familiar with is Evernote, but it has flat list of notes, and therefore I never used it.

[hawkbat05]

I've been looking for a long time for a OneNote, FOSS replacement. I've finally found one that I think will fit. It doesn't have quite the same capabilities of OneNote but it organizes notes in a similar manner and can handle images, links and basic text formatting. Looks promising. http://zim-wiki.org/

[nomnex]

I've been looking for a long time for a OneNote, FOSS replacement. I've finally found one that I think will fit. It doesn't have quite the same capabilities of OneNote but it organizes notes in a similar manner and can handle images, links and basic text formatting. Looks promising. http://zim-wiki.org/

Oh my! Zim is a Wiki-desktop offering an excellent usability. It is in active development. Give the project the credit it deserves. FOSS means free as Freedom, not as free beer... How can you even compare a fine project with a bloated piece of M$ trash?

As for evernote, up to the desktop version 2.2, maybe. Past that point, it lines up with M$ in terms of marketing b*** for end users, bloat, and rip-off prices.

Not much change of mentality since the OP, back in 2008

[lgusaas]

As for evernote, up to the desktop version 2.2, maybe. Past that point, it lines up with M$ in terms of marketing b*** for end users, bloat, and rip-off prices.

I'm using Evernote Version 3.0.6. Works fine. No bloat. Haven't seen any marketing b***. And it has a rip-off price of $0.00. Wish I could find something that paid me to use it.