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Has anyone ever used wikidpad for law school notes? http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/

I use it all the time and wonder if it'd be good for law school notes, or if there's something particular about organizing law school notes that make onenote/word/whatever better.

In case anyone doesn't know, its featurelist:

On the fly WikiWord linking, as you type
WikiWord auto-completion
Easy WikiWord navigation
Wiki text styling
WikiWord History
Wiki document attributes
Dynamic views (i.e. you can tag notes and have them come up on a smartsearch for that tag)
Tree/Outline view with over 100 icons
Todo lists (individual lines can be tagged as todo, coming up in a smart search and linking to the line of the note it's in)

Drawbacks of wikidpad - no colors/highlighting, only plain text, italics, and bold are possible. There is a header ability, which can then auto-generate a table of contents.

Anything lacking that'd kill it as a law school note-taker?

Use handwritten notes.

I have a wrist problem that precludes me from intense handwriting, but your presumptuous response is otherwise duly noted.

MrSparkle wrote:Has anyone ever used wikidpad for law school notes? http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/

I use it all the time and wonder if it'd be good for law school notes, or if there's something particular about organizing law school notes that make onenote/word/whatever better.

Sounds like a less user friendly OneNote.

I used OneNote 2003 back in the day, which I liked but it'd crash a lot, and I was afraid its database file (existing as a single file) could be easily corrupted. Wikidpad is pretty awesome, stores everything plaintext, has auto-complete for internal links, and feels more programmer-oriented than anything I guess, but I guess its lack of formatting options might make it worse for law school.

OneNote 2010 looks like it has a lot of pretty features, I might have to just give it a shot for myself, though I'll hate plunking down money to M$, even if it's discounted. I haven't given them money in over 10 years.

Just wondering if anyone had ever even tried Wikidpad. I bet nobody has really heard of it here anyway...

Cupidity wrote:Use handwritten notes.

So happy I took this advice.

MrPapagiorgio wrote:

Cupidity wrote:Use handwritten notes.

So happy I took this advice.

Did you then transfer them to a laptop or you just use handwritten notes all the time?

JoeMo wrote:

MrPapagiorgio wrote:

Cupidity wrote:Use handwritten notes.

So happy I took this advice.

Did you then transfer them to a laptop or you just use handwritten notes all the time?

Typed them up after each class. It was a good way to review what we had just done and allowed me to organize them after digesting the information.

MrPapagiorgio wrote: Typed them up after each class. It was a good way to review what we had just done and allowed me to organize them after digesting the information.

This is what I intend to do as well.

I never looked at them again. The point was to stay engaged in the class. I would spend two days for each exam creating an outline from scratch, and then another two days taking practice tests. No one actually pays attention in class, if you do, that alone is probably good enough for a B+.

Not to de-rail but the above has me interested...My primary motivation for bringing a laptop to class to take notes would be to capture almost everything the prof. has to say. Is this necessary? And if so, can it be done by hand?

I'm worried that handwritten notes can't be put on paper fast enough to follow along with the professor. Nevertheless, my experience in undergrad has shown me that my ability to stay focused in lecture with a laptop is not particularly strong.

FloridaCoastalorbust wrote:Not to de-rail but the above has me interested...My primary motivation for bringing a laptop to class to take notes would be to capture almost everything the prof. has to say. Is this necessary? And if so, can it be done by hand?

I'm worried that handwritten notes can't be put on paper fast enough to follow along with the professor. Nevertheless, my experience in undergrad has shown me that my ability to stay focused in lecture with a laptop is not particularly strong.

Yeah, I have the same reason for not wanting to bring a laptop. Also, I don't know what it's like at your school but at mine some professors don't allow laptops so might as well get used to not using one.