YJL

I have been taking notes on YJL —notes since 8/11/2010. At first, I just use it as a todo list, but, in fact, I didn’t use it as that as much. Two weeks later, I decided to turn it into a notes taking site reluctantly and I wasn’t really writing notes on it much, because I really don’t like current Google Sites. In the beginning of this month, after another task setting in my KeepNote telling me to use that site and considered other options of online CMS platforms, I finally started to take notes for real.

My history of using Google Sites can go back to 9/27/2008, I created my first one private site, then another public one on 11/11 same year. At that moment, Google Sites is freer than present status on the syntax you can use. I don’t like WYSIWYG. In deed, it really is WYSIWYG but it’s also WYWTSINH, What You Want To See Is Not Gonna Happen. I’m an old-fashion, I would prefer using <html/> rather than using WYSIWYG editor, more, I prefer Markdown over <html/>.

When I began to think I should have a public notes site, I searched for viable options. There are some MediaWiki free hosting, but I never like MediaWiki syntax. I even considered to create an Creative Commons licensed content project on Google Code, with it’s online code editing, it could be a huge benefit. I could allow non-member to edit my Markdown source. If I like, I merge them and generate new HTML source code from Markdown. Since Google Code also allows you to host file, those generated HTML source code wouldn’t have problems to be served. It seems perfect, but I didn’t take this route.

The reason is simple, just like the notes would be simple and quick stuff. I don’t intend to take notes which certainly qualified as an article. They will be just a line of code and probably a paragraph of explanation mostly, if I am up to write, that’s all those notes would get. They will not be general, they will be more of my own personal stuff. In other words, a line of code may not work for other people if they don’t have same environment as I have.

I don’t want to maintain a repository which doesn’t have much valuable content in it. I don’t want to design a HTML template just for those simple notes, though the template might end up with just less than ten lines.

Simplicity,

with twisted definition, I chose Google Sites, even I don’t like it much.