KleverNotes, KDE’s Markdown note-taking and management application using Kirigami, is ready for its first release!

KleverNotes lets you create and preview Markdown notes while giving you the freedom to customize the preview from settings or using a CSS theme.

You can organize your notes however you want with a combination of categories and groups, which will be directly reflected on your system in the hierarchy of your KleverNotes storage folders.

Simply choose your storage location and you’re ready to write!

You can print your notes, add small sketches and even create specific tasks for each of them, all from the application!

Notes are saved as Markdown files in your KleverNotes storage for easy access. They support the entire CommonMark specification with extensive syntax. KleverNotes also introduces a small collection of opt-in “plugins” to extend basic markdown functionality, such as: code highlighting, note linking, quick emoji, PUML.

Special thanks

I would like to thank Carl Schwan who helped me through the incubator process, has set up the repository and the various KDE related things, fixed my code, and answered my many questions. The project would not be where it is without him.

History

I started KleverNotes as a small personnal project to learn QML and C++ and motivate myself to take notes in class. After posting a few screenshots of my progress on Reddit, people seemed pretty interested, which inspired me to continue and redouble my efforts. Once it was added to KDE, my motivation grew even more, my final goal is now to be able to offer a simple alternative to QOwnNotes using Kirigami. (I actively use KleverNotes in each of my classes now btw 😬)

Final note

This release doesn’t add anything special compared to my last update, just UI tweaks from Carl, which makes the app better looking. I just wanted to get things moving in order to officially push more updates in the future. A big one is in the works and should arrive soon once my exams are finished.

As always, I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions, discuss potential features, or hear your point of view 😉

Link to the repo: https://invent.kde.org/office/klevernotes

Mirrorlist: https://download.kde.org/stable/klevernotes/1.0.0/klevernotes-1.0.0.tar.xz.mirrorlist

  • @Linus_Torvalds
    6•6 months ago

    To add on to that: Obsidian is the only program that currently has this (to my knowledge) and it is a huge gamechanger. It just feels so much more usable than anything with a source and preview view. [I’m not demanding or anything, this is the stuff you do in your freetime, but you might want to go down that road.]

    • @[email protected]OP
      9•6 months ago

      A “WYSIWYG like” editor is currently in progress (next big update)

      I don’t want to go full richtext mode a la LibreOffice writter, it will be something similar as Marktext instead

      You will still see the Markdown tag (e.g: the “#” in your heading) but with the possibility to style them in a way that make them pretty much dissapear when your note editing that part, and some nice color and font size for the important part, that would pretty much mimic the preview style ;-)

      • @hinterlufer
        4•6 months ago

        Have you looked at how Obsidian handles it? I think their solution is pretty much perfect. You have the markdown, you write wysiwym, but you only ever see the source when your cursor is in that specific line/part. Also for equations.

        • @[email protected]OP
          2•6 months ago

          Yes that’s pretty much the plan ;-)

          And math support is wanted, I just need to check what would be best to do it

      • @Linus_Torvalds
        2•6 months ago

        Sounds cool, where do I best keep up with the project? Is there some RSS feed?

        • @[email protected]OP
          2•6 months ago

          RSS feed looks good but to be honest I’m completly clueless about it, never used one

          I’m posting detailled update on KDE Discuss (see the “last update” link in this post) when I’ve made enough progress in my opinion I think you can search them using the “klevernotes” tag

          And I make Lemmy and Reddit post linking to those each time

          Edit: and if you want to ask question, my dm on those platform are always open, or there’s a Matrix channel (not super active, but I check it every day), the link is in the Readme of the project

      • macniel
        1•6 months ago

        Sounds pretty great, is there a way to support this project and or you?

          • macniel
            1•6 months ago

            Code Contributions, donations, testing, moral support. I dunno.

            • @[email protected]OP
              3•6 months ago

              If you have a KDE dev account and want to contribute, feel free to do so But, obviously, if you want to work on a new feature, it would be better to first talk to me to see if this align with the general idea of the project

              Donation, no need for money, unless you really love the project and absolutely want to give something to me. I’m just a student who want to share it’s work to make it better :-D

              Yes please, test the app, I’m always looking for constructive criticism !

              And moral, I’m good, but thanks for asking !

              • macniel
                2•6 months ago

                Well, I hadn’t had a KDE dev account until now :)

    • @[email protected]
      1•6 months ago

      If I understood it well, zettlr and trilium haves this too: you start a line with pound signs and it changes its appearance to that of a header.