Ask HN: Application to store and tag articles as PDF?
Okay, so here is the thing: I read a lot of articles on the Internet and I'm doing so for many years now. I have a few sites I visit on a regular basis but I also discover interesting pieces by browsing blogs and sites like (who knew) Hacker News ;)
Over time I accumulated a big list of links to articles which I finished reading and I also have articles on Instapaper which I consider to be my "reading queue".
I don't know how you and others read, but for me it's important to "get something out of it". That means that I nearly always take down notes in a plain text file while I'm reading to be able to remember what it was all about. Otherwise most of it will be forgotten more or less immediately...
Even though my method works somehow, I'm not 100% happy with it. What I'd like to have is an application that provides features like these: - Store only the content (without ads, navigation, ...) of an article as an offline PDF (they don't disappear anymore, can be found without an Internet connection and used on all devices via Dropbox) - Flag them as "to read" or "read" - Be able to tag these PDFs within the app to categorize them - Add notes (Not directy to the PDF but in the app)
I don't know if anything like this exits but even if it doesn't it would be great to hear in which way you consume text and store the information you found interesting or eye opening.
Please don't mind any grammatical errors, I'm not a native English speaker ;) There is Zotero for Firefox (open source, a bit clunky) for annotations and Mendeley not open source but has good tagging, search and note-making utilities. My advice is not to use any proprietary software (not future proof) and not to use Zotero (to complex and becomes tiresome).
The easy way: open your pdf in Firefox, bookmark it, tag it the way you like, put notes in the title bar. For more extensive note taking: TiddlyWiki files, bookmark and tag. Then use search utility of your choice for that. One simple tool for note-taking that I like is nvPy, put your notes tags, and file locations as links (local or remote), link your notes together. If you need remote storage, rsync it and tag it, also rsync the bookmark library. What's your daily driver Linux, Windows or Mac? Hey, thanks for the tips! I'm currently using a Mac.