GDNote

The abundance of text editors means that users aren't exactly starved of choice when on the lookout for a new solution. With so many options to choose from, it's understandable that people would be reticent to utilize less-than-mainstream software, so they fall back on the more popular, widely-used apps: MS Word, LibreOffice, and so on.

It seems as though note-taking apps are coming out by the hour these days, and a lot of them happen to be free-to-use, with each having its own little quirks. GDNote is a Godot-based text editor that is especially straightforward to use, yet still manages to provide its own spin on note-taking software.

There's no installation to talk about, because there is none: you just unpack the archive, then launch the executable, and on you go. You can start typing your stuff right away, but before that, it's best you glance at the Help menu for a bit. It will provide you with a few words on how the program operates, namely through syntax highlighting.

The program is ultimately simple, both in form and function: line numbers are used when inputting text, and the syntax function makes annotating a certain passage more convenient.

A neat quirk of the tool is the minimap functionality: in the top-right corner, you can see your text mapped out. This can be especially of use with longer, more complex documents, as it helps get to certain paragraphs faster.

The tool supports drag-and-drop, so whenever you drop your .txt file in, the program will recognize the text and paste it into its interface accordingly. That did not seem to work with Word and PDF files: in the case of the former, a bunch of random strings would appear, whilst importing a file of the latter extension would only show its metadata.

A function that may be of use to some is text highlighting: selecting a certain passage or text will automatically trigger this feature, which highlights repeated entries. For instance, if I type 'This is a test' thrice, selecting one of those sentences would highlight the other two instances.

GDNote is fundamentally simple software, and whether that entices you is entirely subjective. The lack of Markdown functions may be a deal-breaker for some, especially as the program seems rather limited, feature-wise.