Linux App: KJots

It’s always a pleasure to use a simple app. I love Applications that give you the power to make things, that give you total control over what is happenning but sometimes, even I want to concentrate on my task without thousands of controls in the way. When i asked about a good note-taking application for Linux, most people told me about Tomboy Notes. Now, Tomboy is a great application. Some say that it is lightyears ahead of Kjots and that there is nothing that Kjots can do that Tomboy cannot. Trust me, they are missing something.

Kjots is not the most powerful of applications. To tell you the truth, there isn’t much that you can do on Kjots apart for simple note-taking. In contrast, Tomboy notes lets you link between notes, synchronize them via SSH or WebDAV, and even use plugins. Kjots, on the contrary lacks some very basic features like spell-check, but this lack is actually a feature. Kjots is simply the best application if you want to take notes or write texts that you’re not intending to print.

Taking notes on a computer is so much better than taking them on paper. First of all, they’re all in one place, and they stay the way they are. I don’t know about you, but my notebooks tend to wander around my room and find shelter in improbable places. If you place paper in the econs folder in your “Lectures” drawer, chances are that it will not be there when you want to read your econs notes before a test.

The best way to counter the annoying ability of notebooks to move around is to take them on a computer. Computers tend to stay where you put them last – hopefully – and they don’t move your documents around (well, vista does). However, for a disorganized person this system still has its limits. Should I organize my econs in two folders –one for lectures and one for seminars– or just in one? Where should I save a new econs course?

KJots’ system resolves all these problems at once. In KJots, notes are organized in “books” and “Pages.” You start by creating a new book which will itself have one page to start with. To keep the same example, I would Entitle this first book “Economics” and the first Page “Introductory Course.” As the lecturer progresses into a second course, I would create a second page entitled “Investment on Education” and so on and so forth. But KJots is not only an efficient way of keeping notes, but it is also very usefull for writing blog posts and articles that you’d publish later. I use it to write all my TechHaze articles, each new one in a new page in the TechHaze book. Whether you write poetry, a novel or a dissertation, KJots will probably be the best tool to quickly access, edit and organize your notes.

All your writings are autosaved. This may seem like a relatively unimportant point, but the way it’s implemented makes it a gamechanger. Autosave is so integral to the KJots experience that there isn’t even a save button in the default interface. Basically, you just write what you have to write and quit the program when you’re done. This not only saves you the little time the application uses to save your documents (the autosaving feature works seamlessly) but also spares you the “Are you sure” dialog box. After using KJots for several months, it was the save button on regular word processors that seemed out-of-place.

When you write a blog post or dissertation, your main goal is not to read it yourself but rather to publish it for others to read. For ths task, any word processor is adapted. When you’ve finished writing, you do a final spell-check and then copy the text and paste it into the blog dashboard. There is no need for an alternate method of reading your work. However, If you’re writing a book, or taking notes in class, re-reading your work in an optimized interface can save you more time than you would think. What you need is a complete linear view of all your courses that you can read just by sliding down the page with a table of contents that links you to each particular course. Simply selecting a book in KJots provides you with just that. Not only does it provide you with a complete worry free way of accessing and reading your notes but you’re still one click away from editing them. If you’re using KJots to write a book, you might appreciate the easy way of revising your text and skipping to the chapters that you want while having access to the editor when you see a badly phrased sentence.

KJots is not a text editor. Though it supports rich formatting, its area of strength is in note taking. It feature a clean, simple, distraction-free interface with minimal chrome. Whether you want to take notes during a speech, write a book or simply jot down your thoughts, KJots is for you.

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