TreeLine: Another Note Taking Tool as Portable Offline Open Source and Free Tool

#1

From main web page

TreeLine - News (bellz.org)

What is TreeLine?

Do you have lots of sticky notes lying around with various useful information jotted down? Or many lists of books, movies, website logins, personal contacts, or things to do? Can you find them when you need them? Well, I often couldn’t. So here’s my answer.

Some would call TreeLine an Outliner, others would call it a PIM. Basically, it just stores almost any kind of information. A tree structure makes it easy to keep things organized. And each node in the tree can contain several fields, forming a mini-database. The output format for each node can be defined, and the output can be shown on the screen, printed, or exported to html.

A source code repository is available at GitHub.

There is a low-volume email list for users to discuss TreeLine. To subscribe, go to this page.

It is interesting to know, it is offline, portable, extensible, and can be installed on Linux, Windows and Mac OS. It is open source and free!

NOTE: I shared TeeLine here for note takers and to see what we can learn from it for our Tiddlywiki!

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#2

It’s in the same type and mode as a host of Treepad-like two-panel applications.

Like treepad, it has one unforgivable flaw: No real support!

Treepad lasted for two decades and then disappeared because it was a single-owner project, and though he was “done” with the project (or maybe he died), he didn’t release the full code into the community.

This project has only two contributors, and they haven’t done anything since 2020. So unless I felt confident that I could write my own code I would be reluctant to use it as full-time database. Other projects like orgmode and zim have a more active user database. I’ve made the mistake in the past of extensively using single-owner products in the past, only to find myself stuck when the owner lost interest (“Take-note” comes to mind).

The secret feature of TiddlyWiki is it’s large, active and informed user-base.

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#3

@Mark_S
I thought the same thing - the similarity with Treepad is striking. (The owner closed abruptly - with a couple of days explaining on the website - he closed due to bankruptcy)
I am still using it from a usb stick using wine on Linux.

@Mohammad
Interesting. For many years people told us, that treepad was too old fashioned, but there has sure been several look alike s. Are you sure about a TreeLine version for Mac OS? I only saw for Windows and Linux.

I like that you ask, what we can learn from it for our Tiddlywiki - you see, I was using Treepad, when i was persuaded into using tiddlywiki - (classic at that time).
I do not know about Treeline - but comparing to Treepad Business - I would say the ease of use.

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#4

@Birthe - for Mac OS see: TreeLine - Installation

Look at the bottom of page! It seems the owner he has not released a Mac version but there is a port from third party!

#5

@Mohammad,
I had seen the link, but I am not familiar with mac ports. At the linked page, I see no maintainer and a lot of failed compilations - only two downloads a month…that is why I got doubtful. I am not a Mac user and understand very little about it.

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#6

I was a tree-pad user, paid even before I moved to TiddlyWiki.

The tree model is very powerful and particularly to those who learned structured programming. With tiddlywiki you can freely represent any tree or other structure so it became treepad + for me.

Treepad business could handle GB sized databases out of the box which is still a selling point but the portability and serve-ability of tiddlywiki’s is superior.

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#7

I installed and tried TreeLine today. It is constantly compared to Treepad, can import treepad hjt. But I found it complicated contrary to Treepad.
We are several former users of treepad here, that went from Treepad to Tiddlywiki. With TreeLines complexity, the move to tiddlywiki should be even more tempting.

The many templates and extras that we could download for Treepad helped use it for many purposes and inspired creating new templates or just change some of the downloaded ones.

Very tiddlywiki like - just not the ease of finding the material.

Dave Giffords example: Stroll, the great explanations, the goodies, what they can do, what you need, and how to use is a good example of how it can be done.

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