Notes & Pages

Notes & Pages is a personal notes app for creating pages in a lightweight Markdown-style syntax, organizing them in nested folders, tagging them, and sharing individual pages read-only by username. Pages are rendered from stored markup with a custom server-side renderer.

What it solves

It helps organize notes into folders and subfolders instead of leaving them as a flat list. It also lets pages be shared with other users without giving them edit access.

It supports writing in a plain textarea while still displaying formatted content on the page. Pages can be searched, tagged, and linked to other pages by name.

Features

• Nested folders Organize pages inside folders and subfolders, with breadcrumbs and a search box on listings.
• Readme page A page named readme in a folder appears at the top of that folder view.
• Markdown-style pages Write page names, comma-separated tags, and content in a textarea that auto-sizes to the text.
• Rich formatting Render headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, code, blockquotes, lists, tables, images, links, centered lines, horizontal rules, and auto-linked URLs.
• Color chips Use #hex to create colored highlight chips with automatic contrast text.
• Internal links Link to other pages by name with wiki-style syntax.
• Inline icons Insert icons with [ticon:...], including household icons.
• Emoji autocomplete Type : to open an emoji and icon autocomplete popup.
• File import Drag a text file onto the editor to load its contents.
• Read-only sharing Share a page with another user by username and remove access later.

How to use it

1. Open the notes home page to see folders and loose pages.
2. Create a folder or open an existing folder to organize related pages.
3. Create a page, then add a name, tags, and content in Markdown-style syntax.
4. Use headings, lists, tables, links, icons, or color chips in the content.
5. Drag a text file onto the editor if you want to load text from a file.
6. Share a page with another user by username if read-only access is needed.

How it works

• Pages are rendered on the server from Markdown-style markup with a custom Ruby renderer.
• Input is HTML-escaped first, then processed through ordered rules, with finished blocks tokenized so later rules do not reprocess them.
• Internal links resolve against the viewer's own pages, and icon lookups are scoped so ids do not cross accounts.
• Pages use unique per-user slugs generated before save with collision suffixing.
• Sharing uses a join table with a unique page-and-user index, and page changes can be broadcast through ActionCable for incremental sync.