How to keep an Engineering Log [closed]

Question

Check out org-mode. There are a bunch of tutorials here that really help show the power/ease. Specifically, I found this video useful.

The major benefits (IMO) of org-mode are:

• simplicity, it's just a text file (or set of files)
• flexibility, you can start very simple and grow your usage as you learn more
• expandability, very popular and new capabilities coming all the time
• versatility, you can get different views of your tasks - ordered by time, priority, other...
• readability, you can publish to HTML and other forms easily

Really, it's worth watching one of the videos to get an idea of what is available.

ORG's author, Carsten Dominik, sums it up nicely with this 24 word quote:

Org-mode does outlining, note-taking, hyperlinks, spreadsheets, TODO lists, project planning, GTD, HTML and LaTeX authoring, all with plain text files in Emacs

While it doesn't have all the features you're looking for, you might consider good old Notepad. Notepad has a couple of poorly advertised features that make it convenient for keeping a log file:

1. Pressing F5 inserts a timestamp anytime (the format depends on what date/time format you have selected for your locale in Windows).
2. If you open a file that begins with the string ".LOG" (without the quotes), notepad will jump to the end and insert a timestamp.

I added an icon to the quick launch bar to open my logfile, and I keep all sorts of useful notes there. The info is just plain ASCII with minimal formatting, but this means its easy to export it to other systems when needed (and it's easy to search).

You might want to look at TiddlyWiki

I use Google documents to keep notes for all of my personal projects as well as a list of project ideas or topics to explore. Its searchable, is copy/pastable for sharing and I could share entire documents if needed, and best of all its available everywhere.

It may be an overkill for an individual, but we (approx. 10 people) needed an activity log and ended up using Trac with great results.

• automatic timestamps

Any operation gets an automatic timestamp.

• tagging (like we do on stackoverflow). Mainly for project names and technologies used

TagsPlugin

• Easy to build a weekly report from the results for status meetings

You can get an overview from Timeline. If you organize your tasks as tickets, you may also define your own reports and custom queries.

• Easy to search to find solutions to recurring issues (eg a certain error message)

Search

• Accessible. Probably online as a website, but could be a shared file.

Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management.

• Formatting. I'd like to have the ability to easily build tables and separate out <pre> content such as code snippets and error reports.

Trac allows wiki markup in descriptions.

• Security. It would be nice if I could share some content of the site with others, but not all. Low priority if I get the other stuff.

Trac uses a simple, case sensitive, permission system to control what users can and can't access. Since 0.11, there's a general mechanism in place that allows custom permission policy plugins to grant or deny any action on any kind of Trac resources, even at the level of specific versions of such resources.