KeyNote NF

Works well for the most part, and I've been using if daily for some months. If I may be permitted to mention a minor fault, I can't use search to find instances of partial words, like 'stair' for 'stairs' or 'staircases' across all folders. Although not a fault, I'd prefer if 'Print' were the default, rather than 'Preview.

I admit, I don't just love KeyNote NF, I can't live without this editor. And now I'll explain why. I work with text every day for many hours. To solve language problems faster, twenty years ago I started creating a software language environment, or, simply put, a personal dictionary. Each word in this dictionary has a separate article that contains synonyms, antonyms, associations, etymology, usage examples, links to articles in other dictionaries, and the like. As a dictionary entry navigator, I used the program "Treepad Business Edition", and to automate dictionary operations, I used "Macro Scheduler". Over the course of twenty years, my dictionary file has grown to about 680 MB, and one day Treepad refused to open it, saying it didn't have enough memory (although there was more than 7GB of free memory at that moment). I had to upload the dictionary to Notepad++ and optimize it using regular expressions. This way I reduced the file size and Treepad opened it. But at the same time, I realized that if my dictionary continues to grow, sooner or later there will come a moment when no optimization will help me and the dictionary will not open. And then I decided to change the article navigator. (Treepad, by the way, does not work with UTF8 encoding — and this was another reason to change the navigator). Over the past six months, I have tried several dozen tree-structured editors, here is their list in alphabetical order: AllMyNotes, Aml Pages, Cherrytree, EssentialPIM Pro, Evernote, Flashnote, GoldenSection Organizer, Indigrid, InfoAngel, Joplin, Keepnote, Mars Notebook, MemoMaster, MemPad, MyInfo, My Notes Keeper, Mybase, Mytetra, NoteCase Pro, Obsidian, OutWiker, Personal Knowbase, RightNote, SeoNote, Smereka TreeProjects, TakeNote, The Guide, TiddlyDesktop, TreeDBNotes Pro, Treedbnotes, TreeLine, TreePad X Enterprise, Trilium Notes, Typora, Ultra Recall, WikidPad, WinOrganizer, Zim, Zotero. None of these programs were suitable as an article navigator, but the KeyNote NF did an excellent job with all my needs. Now I will describe these needs, and then it will be clear why I consider KeyNote to be the best tree editor. Since I have more than 650,000 articles in my dictionary, I have special requirements for tree editors. I'll list them in order of importance.

1. Some editors have a remarkable property: if you place the text cursor on any node in the tree panel, and then enter a sequence of characters on the keyboard, the cursor will instantly switch to the node whose name begins with this sequence. The dictionary navigator must have this property, because without this property, the heart of my language environment does not work: the Search script. (This script was initially written in the Macro Scheduler language, and later in the AutoHotkey language.) Thanks to the script, I can point the mouse cursor at any phrase (in any browser or editor) and instantly go to a dictionary entry, the title of which begins with this phrase. By the way, I started creating my own personal dictionary only after I worked with scripting languages — without these languages, my dictionary would never have appeared.
2. The editor must completely load my dictionary file into RAM. As it turned out, some of the listed editors save tree branches as separate files. In other words, these editors don't load my database into RAM, instead they work with HDD or SSD. For small databases, this method is good, but when there are hundreds of thousands of articles in the database, the editor has to work with hundreds of thousands of files, and this slows down the work very much.
3. The database file must have a text format. I mean not only "plain text", but also any other formats (rtf, html, xml...), that is, formats that use markup languages. The binary file format does not suit me, and now I will explain why. I am constantly improving the structure of the dictionary (adding thematic markers to articles, changing the format of articles, etc.). It is convenient to do this kind of work in a regular text editor that supports regex. Recently, for example, I improved the structure of dictionary headings, namely: I replaced all spaces (code 32) with non-breaking spaces (code 160). Using Notepad++ and regular expressions, I completed the replacement in a matter of seconds, but if I had done this work through the window interface of the tree editor (using macro scripts), then this operation would have taken several months.

The KeyNote NF, as I said, handled all my requirements perfectly. My Search script works much faster and more accurately in KeyNote than in the Treepad editor. The KeyNote also pleased me with its download and recording speed. My huge dictionary loads in a matter of seconds, and even faster it is saved to the hard disk (compare: the Treepad program spent tens of minutes on these operations). This is how KeyNote NF saved my dictionary and my working methods. The conclusion is this: KeyNote is ideal for working with large databases. A more extensive list of editor features is available in the KeyNote NF repository, on GitHub: https://github.com/dpradov/keynote-nf There is a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the editor. These versions are updated frequently. Over the past three months, 7 updates have been released. This means that there is a living soul in the KeyNote NF project, and I am very grateful to her.

I use "AllMyNotes" for this purpose now. Also testing other programs to know if there is something better for me. This program looks stable. Must be free. It has all the neccessary controls. Like default fonts. Also has a powerful search. Which is the most important thing. It is more powerful than in "AllMyNotes". I will test it some more and maybe change the main program. Mostly because of its search.

old school design, many features but still very lightweight

This seems outdated It IS nice that it will do date/time... I understand it can link to other files easily. I'd love a .rtf notemaker that did easy links to the Web/articles and brings inline thumbnails.. CherryTree does that, but it doesn't export to .rtf like Keynote does.

Even in 2020 I am still using KeyNote NF. It is the fastest way to set up tree notes. Very intuitive way of adding child & sibling notes. I like the quick link to open a website & image links.. Search the entire set of multiple pages like a data base, means I can throw all sorts of notes & links in any page & find it again months later, effortlessly. A bit dated .. but was way ahead of its time & still very useful.