Stylus Labs Write

I was looking for something that would help me take good notes in class. I've tried OneNote and Xournal. OneNote, while boasting various features and a nice interface, ran too slow for me to use it effectively. I also don't want Microsoft breathing down my neck, telling me to sync my notebooks to OneDrive. Xournal is a good contender to Write, but I think both have their merits such that I keep both programs on my tablet.

Stylus Labs Write's native format is HTML + SVG, so this means that the notes you take can be easily opened in any browser. Thanks to SVG being a vector format, your notes will look nice no matter what resolution or zoom you view them.

What I find most attractive about Write is its interface. Write uses a toolbar that you can move to a side of the screen that you choose. The toolbar contains the tools that you want to show. There are not a wealth of options, but there are just enough. The thing that caught my eye most was the undo/redo dial. If you want to undo or redo a lot of things at once, just use your stylus to tap and hold the button to make a dial pop up. From there, you can turn clockwise or counterclockwise to redo or undo many things, respectively. It makes undoing a lot of things very quick. Aside from that, by default there is a pen menu, an eraser menu, a select menu, and a bookmarks menu, among a few others. There is also a "Clippings menu" where you can store selections you've made, like equations or images, into a pop-up menu on the side. I don't use it very much but it seems like a good feature. Overall, the interface is simple by default and very easy to use, an attractive asset for those who want to focus heavily on their note-taking.

Write can export to PDF, but once it does there is no more ability to edit that set of notes using Write. Keep that in mind, especially if you like using PDFs.

There's this little quirk where if you set the pen size really large (around 25 or so) , you can start to clearly see how Write renders the strokes at the start, and it can look funny, almost as though a tiny part of the stroke was erased. As long as you set the pressure sensitivity high enough, this shouldn't be an issue.

EDIT: There's no shape support in Write, unfortunately. What I mean is that you can't select something so that it will draw a square or circle, nor can you make it so that the program will draw a perfect square if you attempt to draw a square like in Xournal. EDIT2: Well, you can draw a straight line, but only if you have ruled setting on; you can't use unruled paper.

**Summary: **

Pros

• Clean and simple interface
• Easy to use
• Can export to PDF
• Notes can be viewed in any browser; no PDF reader plugin is required
• Interesting formatting options when in ruled paper mode.

Cons

• Can't edit PDF
• Quirky stroke rendering, most visible at high pen sizes
• Not open source (if it matters to you. Just wanted to point it out)
• EDIT: no shape support, although clippings menu is a possible workaround.

I think that, compared to Write, Xournal is more configurable, but it requires some effort to figure out how to do it, such that you will have to read its manual. If you don't want to worry about the little things and just have a working, out-of-the-box application for note-taking, give Stylus Labs Write a shot.

[Edited by TerrifiedTyphlosion, January 12]

[Edited by TerrifiedTyphlosion, April 09]