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Handwriting is freeform, while digital gives constraints. With keyboard you can't arrange text and draw stuff as simple as with a pen on paper, most applications don't even support it at all.

Stylus is indeed big step in this direction, but still is a tick off. Also with a tablet you tend to suffer from "modern technology"-syndrom, meaning you wanna utilize all the good features now that you have it at your stylus tip. But they tend to make thinks complicate aagin.



The problem with digital handwritten notes is: They are more problematic than all the proprietary databases and file formats that we have. Personally I started using the iPadPro with the Apple pencil last christmas. Generated tons of notes with an app called Notability. Soon I realized that my notes are trapped in their proprietary format. Sure, I can export to PDF, but that’s not their database format.

I have seen many good and useful apps come and go. After these apps become abandonware[^1] we have tons of data created in those proprietary data formats, trapped in them.

[^1] off the top of my head: WordPerfect, MS Word pre 2000, AskSam (fulltext database), Netmanage‘s ECCOPro (a PIM), NoteMap (an outliner), MindJet‘s MindManager, MS Access pre 2000. - Tons of data that I created in those apps waiting to be migrated.


And what is the problem with PDF? Is it missing information from your input?


Mind manager is still available




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