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I planned to talk about note taking software, but the scope expanded following James Tauber’s call to action on reading Mark Pilgrim’s Digital Colophon:

1. OS: Mac OS 10.3

   Unix with a usable GUI. Hell yeah.

2. Editor: BBEdit

   If I worked on Windows, my editor would be emacs. But I’m not. It magically colors my syntax, validates HTML markup, searches and replaces across file systems with familiar regular expression syntax. I can extend it using AppleScript or anything I can run from the command prompt.

   I’m writing this post in BBEdit, and will use John Gruber’s Markdown as a filter to turn it into XHTML.

   What would make me leave BBEdit? An astonishing port of emacs to OS X.

3. Note taking: Moleskine, VoodooPad, and OmniGraffle

   Doug Miller mentioned Moleskine notebooks in an entry about keeping a daybook.

   I took a look at the Moleskine site, and fell in love. I ordered two of the graph ruled pocket notebooks and started carrying one with me. My boss, a stationery connosur, recommended Sakura Ballsign pens (NB: don’t settle for the Sakura Gellyroll, go to a stationer like Mai Dõ or Kinokuniya.)

   I’d been playing with a few apps for day to day note taking: xPad and Voodoo Pad.

   I settled on Voodoo Pad for taking notes in my screenwriting class. It uses wiki syntax so I can quickly branch off to new pages for new topics. It’ll export to HTML, so each classes’ notes go on the web without a lot of work.

   It’s hard to copy from the white board to OmniGraffle in class. I’ve done it, but the results aren’t so hot.

   When Micha Dubinko worked on his XForms book for O’Reilly, he tipped in hand drawn illustrations that he had scanned or photographed for the web version.

   I will try copying diagrams by hand into my notebook, photographing the images, importing them with iPhoto, and dropping them into Voodoo Pad.

4. Web Server: Apache + PHP & LibXSLT

   LibXSLT runs anywhere four to five times as fast as the Sablotron library.

   PHP isn’t perfect, but it’s easier to install on Mac OS than Mod_Perl.

5. Web Management: WebDAV

   It’s a relief not to have to give logins to people who just need to change a file.

6. Browser: Safari

   Yes, it’s missing XML parsing and XSLT, but it’s faster than Firefox.

7. Aggregator: Net News Wire

8. Mail: Mail.app

9. Blogware: Homebrew.

   • When Wordpress supports UTF-8, I’d consider switching.
   • I’m also looking hard at Blosxom.
   • Or I may refactor my existing PHP + MySQL system yet again, using Tim Bray and Norm Walsh’s ideas as a guide.

Related posts:

1. More Digital Colophon
2. Macromedia Blog Brainstorming Request
3. Hypertext 04
4. My article for A List Apart on ModRewrite translated into Russian