XYplorer Beta Club

Does anyone have any experience with / can recommend a software that:

- Builds a knowledgebase
- Runs on Windows 7+
- Is portable
- Freeware would be nice, I'd pay for it if necessary (but without a subscription fee)

It should be able to:
- Import (searchable) pdf's
- Has a good editor to let your create new / edit existing entries
- Powerful query syntax (regex would be nice)

I don't need:
- Additional users (nor any function like sharing entries or anything like that)
- Ticket system
- "Community" support, Facebook nonsense, etc.

It's for my personal use, I'm the only one who queries it. I have a few hundred pdfs (1-3 pages) that must be importable and
a few hundreds of (let's call them) articles (plain text).

Last option: Evernote

RightNote Pro perhaps.

http://bauerapps.com/rightnote-version-comparisons/

I've been using the free version for years, so I can't test the PDF seach, but they offer a 30 day trial.

I use Rightnotes Pro version for exactly this reason (imported PDFs are fully indexed and searchable). But not only because of that. I already used the free version for years before i decided to upgrade to Pro. It's pretty versatile and customizable. It's one of the programs that have a fixed position on my taskbar.

It's portable and the editor is good enough in my opinion (Pro version lets you create "Rich view" notes with style formatting (inline and paragraphs), embedded pictures and tables, ...

Unfortunately it doesn't offer regex in its search engine.

The Brain (formerly known as PersonalBrain) and ConnectedText.
Especially if your focus is on "building" a knowledge base rather than accessing existing stuff.

A programmer like you will benefit from Python scripting, code/syntax highlighting, a bunch of plugins.

My main reasons to stick with ConnectedText
- Lilypond plugin
- uncluttered view. I like clean looks - much easier to spot important info. Comes at the expense of NOT having RTF. It uses markdown, you switch/ modify looks via custom CSS. EDIT mode vs View mode. I actually like it, it prevents accidental changes when I fly through my stuff. On the upside, this makes for seamless export to HTML and CHM.
- Lightning fast, I have >10,000 topics, no noticeably slowdown at all, very intuitive search functions (checkmark the categories and use AND OR buttons

It was very easy to migrate my stuff, but only because it was html and plain text. You can link to PDF, or gather them in structured container topics, but it won't search-index their content! Not that I know of.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys!

Maybe I'm doing something wrong but I'm not really happy the way RightNote works with pdf files. It's only able to use them as a attachment / a link and yes, it indexes them but if you want to see the content it'll open them in a pdf viewer, not inside the program itself.

The Brain -> Free version allows no attachments at all, pro = too expensive

I'll tinker a bit with ConnectedText (price seems reasonable and beeing able to script things could be a major pro)

highend wrote: I'll tinker a bit with ConnectedText (price seems reasonable and beeing able to script things could be a major pro)

Make sure you sign up on their forum. Very helpful crowd, just like here in XY. I run of bunch of their scripts. They also provide AHK-entry-dialogs that integrate nicely.

Important hint: Before entering EDIT mode, drag-select 4-7 words, THEN enter EDIT mode to land right there.

Easy enough to figure out the usual stuff (headings, bold, italics, footnotes ...)
Here some lesser known markdown:
!! increased font size !!
,,reduced font size,,
<! literal, no markdown formatting !>
---- horizontal ruler
\\ on separate line = add vertical white space
$$ on separate line = clear float above (when you paste images with the THUMB option that floats them to either side of your text)

Remember you can tweak all elements (code, headings, floats ...) in all properties (colors, fonts, sizes, margins) via CSS style sheets.

I want to recommend The Journal.
I use The Journal more than three years, my base of notes makes more than 1,5 Gb.
In the latest version there were interesting opportunities:
Powerful system of cross references. There is an opportunity to connect links not only topics in general, but also any fragment of the text, the separate word to a fragment or the word in other topic or other database.
Creation of a label in Windows Explorer with a hyperlink to a note.
The color, adjusted tabs!!!
The Journal not really known program but which is well made is also pleasant in use. The author fine (I so think) the person and it is possible to communicate to it at his small forum here: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/the ... s/messages
Program site here: http://www.davidrm.com
Enjoy using.

This is a little outside the box for a solution, but PowerGREP allows regex searches on a pile of different proprietary formats - and allows you to change text in many of them. PDFs are certainly supported - including write. My personal knowledge base software at the moment is a combination of "Everything", "PowerGREP", AceText, and several different ways I structure my folders. For images, things like screen clips, I tend to make .CBZ files out of them and use a comic book reader (they're just zip files with another extension). For text files and random clips, I enjoy Jan Goyvaert's software, so I'm using his EditPad Pro (It's an extremely powerful text editor that supports the JGSoft regex engine - even has an old XY scripts color scheme that someone threw together that I find useful. I may even update it if I get time.) And after a trial, I found his program AceText makes a great little knowledge base program for scraps of this and that - it's clipboard oriented, and a lightweight knowledge base is just part of its functionality (its clipboard abilities I use daily). It's the first thing in quite awhile, other than plain text documents, that I've actually used consistently for keeping notes, and this includes Evernote, OneNote, etc. It's the easiest thing I've ever found for simply collecting text clips, filenames, urls, etc. As close to effortless as it gets. If I need it online, I generally just use a Google Sheets document - which I can export and also search (and edit) with PowerGREP if I wish.

Between Everything and PowerGREP, one can really find just about any unorganized information one has around (normalized is nice, but not necessary). I even do things like proximity word searches through pdfs and chm files for manuals, plus supporting books, and even things I've PDF-printed from the web to support documentation. It can organize your search results in an exceedingly readable way (you can specify a context around your matches in various ways, among other things, the easiest being X number of lines above and Y after your matches, though it links back to the full document on a click). It makes me feel like I've got the power of an SQL query over random textual data in a huge variety of formats - which includes metadata for most formats.

I didn't check how old this thread is, and I'm going to look at some of the suggestions myself as well - but I've found these useful enough that I thought I'd mention them. I've been @#(*&% over by some proprietary solutions in the past and tend to avoid them, so as close as I can stick to filenames, organization, and universal formats the better. Dropping a semi-structured text document (very structured filename, semi-structured content - a bit like my own little sidecar file) into a folder works very well with Everything, and is fast for improving accessibility and making notes for random data.

***

Just wanted to say thank you for the suggestions above. Don't know what I'll end up with, finally, but each of your suggestions is intriguing. I do miss some features of such software.

Giving Connected Text a try. I'll update on my experience after evaluating.

I used to use ActionOutline 15 years ago when I was involved with various projects to manage various information. It's old school and I'm pretty certain it doesn't have regex but it was quite capable of outlining trees of information. Documents had to be handled as links and I don't remember it having a PDF reader built in, but I used to keep track of documents and project notes extensively with it. GreenParrots still sells it -- https://www.actionoutline.com/. Might not be modern enough for you needs, but I used to love how it kept track of things for me in IT and Human Resources for years.

All

Give obsidian a try.

https://obsidian.md/

If you like xyplorer, you'll love obsidian.

Cheers

My personal journey into this area started with EverNote and soon after that I discovered TheBrain (formerly named "PersonalBrain"). Great software with a rather unique concept and appeals mostly to Visual Thinkers. When I become too frustrated about its development I switched to Notion and wholeheartedly recommend it.

My key points for it:

• very flexible data-model, allows to implement lots of technics/strategies to admin & organise your stuff
• client for Windows, Linux, MacOS,iOS, runs in Browser (while it is great to access your data so easily from anywhere, it also has the downside of not being able to do much work in airplane mode)
• reasonable pace of development
• good support