Hi all, I need your expertise please :)

tldr: I’m looking for something to create and share lists with my wife, but that also allows her to edit them, preferably with a WYSIWYG editor, on both our Android devices and Windows and Linux computers. To complicate things, I help to run a small music festival, and some sort of collaboration tool would be helpful there too. Joplin looks great, but I can’t figure out the collaboration without using their server.

The longer version is, I’m taking my family to visit the in-laws, and was making a list of things we need to take. I have complicated medical needs, and my kid is autistic, so there are things that we cannot forget. I realised that a list that we can both work on would be better, and would be something that we could use in the future for things like medical appointments.

While I was looking for some software, I realised that it would also be helpful for the music festival committee.

I’m looking for something that we can edit on any device, and have the changes show up immediately on any other logged in device. I want anyone with permission to be able to edit the document too. Ideally it needs a WYSIWYG editor, and needs to be simple to use once it’s set up.

Joplin looks great, but it’s not clear whether collaboration is only available through Joplin Cloud, or whether it’s available with a self hosted server.

Etherpad and Padland look good, but Etherpad doesn’t currently have mobile support, and I can’t tell whether Padland is standalone or needs Etherpad to work.

I’m happy to self host something, but the simpler it is to run and use, the better :)

Thanks for reading through all of that :D

  • TipponOPEnglish
    1•7 months ago

    Thanks for the suggestions :)

    I had a look at the livesync, but they mention the server now charging, and they’re looking at other options, but I’m too tired to make sense of it now, I’ll have to look again in the morning.

    I’ve temporarily set up Google Keep, just to keep the holiday on track while I figure the rest out. Frustratingly, it was stupidly easy to set up. I just entered the note, selected the collaborator option, and entered my wife’s email address.

    I understand why the open source solutions aren’t that straightforward, but it’s annoying to see how easy it could be if money wasn’t an issue.

    • Uninvited Guest
      3•7 months ago

      The self hosted solution is free if you are setting it up on your own device. I never looked in to hosting on fly.io myself.

      It won’t be as easy to set up as Keep (no email invites, you’ll need to copy long and obscure URI codes between devices) but once set up, it’s smooth.

      • TipponOPEnglish
        1•7 months ago

        Sorry for the slow reply, I’ve been away :)

        It’s good to know that it is free for self hosting, thanks :)

        I don’t mind a complicated setup for at home, as I’ll be setting the devices up anyway, it’s when I want to use something for the group that I run into problems.

        At least three of the guys on the committee are bad with technology. They’re in their 60s and 70s, and have never had to do more than the basics on computers. The rest are standard users. It should be interesting trying to get them all on the same page 🙈