Alternatives to ... treepad and others

[Mark S.]

Apparently back in October 2019, Treepad, a much-loved note-taking software disappeared. The owner/operator had already eliminated all community support years ago, so when the site disappeared, the whole project disappeared. It shows the perils of proprietary, single-owner software.

When you do a search for "alternative to Treepad" and other products, you are very likely to end up at

  https://alternativeto.net/software/treepad/

I've just added TiddlyWiki as an alternative. TiddlyWiki currently has 219 "likes", which on my screen positions it 5th on the list. Not sure how that works, since there are other products with higher ratings lower on the list. Still, #5 is respectable. If you don't mind making yet another account, consider visiting the site and giving TW an upvote.

It is likely there are other products for which TW would be a good alternative, so if you happen to think of them, you might add TW to them as well. Or, possibly you could suggest them here and I could add them (assuming I don't disagree ;-) ). Obviously, the more real "upvotes" the better.

Thanks!

[Birthe C]

Mark S,

Good idea. But this is treepad, the simple free and old one. That did not change much over the years and can still be downloaded from everywhere. That could explain the competition. Small and do not do much.

(Compared to Tiddlywiki of course)

Birthe

[Birthe C]

Mark S,

I found a review of Treepad from 1999. That was around the time I started using it, but it is even older. Do you know when the first version were released?

Birthe

[Mark S.]

I used the wayback machine to find this quote:

"one of the most imitated programs on the Web since 1995"

So, it had a long run, I suppose. It does illustrate the dangers of single-owner proprietary software.

[TiddlyTweeter]

My feeling is that most everyone of a certain age and orientation (likely millions) used Treepad.

Mark S. wrote:

"one of the most imitated programs on the Web since 1995"

So, it had a long run, I suppose. It does illustrate the dangers of single-owner proprietary software.

 Not sure. "Evolution" in software in untypically rapid. The fundamental "metaphor" in TreePad  was widely cribbed and expanded upon. So loss is maybe not so huge?

However, I use a lot of software by Jan Goyvaerts that all use regular expressions extremely well ... RegexBuddy, PowerGrep, EditPadPro.

If Jan snuffs it before me I could be in a pickle. The stuff is not cribbed and I can't see any software (other than, maybe, TextPipe) that handles regular expressions anywhere near as well.

BTW, communal projects die too.

TBH, I think the issue is good one, but the answer is not that easy. There is a kind of "vast loss" going on on net constantly IMO. It really is not cumulative.

Best wishes

TT

[Birthe C]

Mark S and TT,

But the explanation for stopping treepad was finances.

Years of deficit will end closing projects.

Hm, dangers of single-owner propriety software - I do understand what you mean,  But other projects with lots of cooperation end up not getting on, quarrels and end of project.

How much of the software you have used during the same 25 years, are you still able to use.

We are the lucky ones, we have Tiddlywiki, let's keep it that way.

Birthe

[TiddlyTweeter]

Birthe C wrote:

But the explanation for stopping treepad was finances.

I did not know that. I had thought it was death. 

But now you mention it, its most likely its "design metaphor" was so simple elegant that it got copied so many times its very success destroyed the author's ability to leverage an income?

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

Ciao Mark S.

It is likely there are other products for which TW would be a good alternative, so if you happen to think of them, you might add TW to them as well.

We discussed InfoSelect before. TW seems close to it. I'll follow up on that. But Should I Weaken Their market?

My one issue thinking about all this is IF I'm indulging in "blast from the past" thinking? Rather than a thrustful future of cloudy memes?

TT

[TiddlyTweeter]

Birthe C wrote:

We are the lucky ones, we have Tiddlywiki, let's keep it that way.

As important is also to never forget: We use/are HTML/JS. 

I think that is vital. Whilst TW is "software", it is also software WITHIN an international standard document format with backwards compatibility.

TT

[Mark S.]

How do you know it was finances? Usually if a company is deliberately shutting down, they'll make some posting on their site. TP didn't make any announcement. The last update appears to have been in Feb 2018. Then in December 2019 the site is missing. Then in 2020 it's taken over by a MJ company, which sadly gets more hits (pun!) than the original TP.

The basic code had been written in 1995. The improvements were few and far between. I doubt there were many expenses other than the web-site.

If you were deliberately shutting down, you could sell the business to someone else. Or open source it. This is what happened with Blender (graphics software). It started off as for-pay, but then opened up the source code to the community where it has flourished.

I imagine a good deal of software would still work if I needed it or still had it. Windows has been pretty backward compatible since Win 95.

Thanks!

[Birthe C]

Mark S,

Right after I downloaded from the treepad page in the autumn, I returned a couple of days later for some information. The page opened with a message explaining that he would need to close right away after consultancy from his accountant...steadily going on for many years now, but now it really could not wait any longer.

Think about it, it is autumn, the accountant says, we have discussed this before - but it MUST be now, really can't wait no longer.....

When the renewed Linux version were created, he explained, that would be the only one that could run natively on Linux, the others would need wine, but be compatible.

Difference, the light linux version were distributed for free, and that was allowed, but selling software the licence would be something else.

The explanation was the cost of the necessary software. As far as I remember that was around 2010.

The  day after the page was away - and short after available for a short while - some explained that was when a backup was created.

I cannot tell the exact date, but it was in september/october 2019 I saw the above message.

i believed what was told, but who knows.

The author had several pages - I know of 6 of them.

Birthe                                            

[JWHoneycutt]

I found Tiddlywiki as an alternative to Circus Ponies Notebook, in which I had all my notes at the time.

[Birthe C]

Circus ponies - and then some complain about the name Tiddlywiki. Claim being that it is a childish name ;-)

I didn't know about this one, surely because it was for Mac only.

Birthe

[Mark S.]

There can be more than one product with a badly chosen name.

It's not like everyone and his brother is using CPN, either.