Notepad

2 Dec, 2023

Trying to create a simple alternative to Obsidian for my own needs. Also an excuse to learn how to make a web server using Rust with Axum.

For the client, I used:

• Vanilla html and js
• Markdown-it for syntax coloring Markdown
• highlight.js for syntax coloring code blocks inside Markdown
• For the text editor I didn't like the alternatives I tried (too bloated, hard to tame) and made my basic editor using a regular textarea hidden behind a synchronized div for syntax coloring. You can alternate between view and edit modes.

A little "innovation" I tried with this app was to create the idea of different viewers of the same document. The only one I made is this, where you could see a calendar and all the lines with a date preceding would be detected and inserted in the calendar:

..but the idea was to make more of them. You enter the data in a file and afterwards you can see that content through different "smart" viewers that can extract the relevant information for them. Another example could be a viewer that take a list of income vs expenses and draws a plot.

I have this project in the "Finished" category because I don't actually use it :P and don't plan to keep working on it, but it was usable with a decent amount of basic features. But I still think the idea of viewers is quite powerful and interesting.. maybe for a standalone desktop app? :/