Hey HN, creator here!

My goal is to build an app to capture personal knowledge over a lifetime. Hence data longevity is key.

I’m looking forward to your thoughts, especially for my choice of using HTML instead of Markdown as file format. I debated this for a while.

HTML has the advantage that can be previewed in any browser with formatting and images intact. Markdown would require a compatible app (text editor aside, which won’t show images). Also, HTML documents can easily be shared as single file, even if they contain embedded images.

What do you think?

So basically exactly what Zim-Wiki does, except that Zim uses its own markup (can be copied as Markdown/text/pandoc, though). Otherwise every page is just a txt file, directory structure is respected, other files (images, etc.) accessible/linkable from notes, etc.

Has the advantage of being not Mac-only.

From the current feature set, both are similar. Future features aside, the main difference is the file format:

Why I went for HTML is the ability to embed images (via data URI). This allows for a note to be a single, standalone file that can easily be shared or moved around without losing track of its images.

Even if you want to open a note in 20 years from now you can do so with a browser (assuming HTML will still be around then). You'll get a fully formatted document. For Markdown you can always use a text editor, but to get formatting and images to show, you'll need a Markdown compatible app.

UPDATE: I gave Zim a try and noticed another difference, file format aside: the app I'm working on will show all files in your folder structure, including PDFs, etc. It renders a preview with QuickLook and allows to open the document with its default app.

This comes in very handy when you want to mix & match notes and other documents. For example, let's say you have a hotel reservation as PDF, you could attach a note with driving directions all in the app.