I use a a combination of Zotero and Zettlr, and testing out Obsidian, and also FOAM, that is a markdown addon to VS Code/Codium, with graph functionality.
The most important thing regarding an editor if you want to use it for this type of work is that it stores your files on your file system.
Obsidian is the easiest to start with, Zettlr can “read” the “vault”, so you can use them both or change if you need more “writers style” editor.
VS Code or VS Codium with addons are the most flexible, you can find addons for nearly anything you need, it’s not only a developers tool… just like Atom, lots of addons.
But with most of this you will need to learn to use some keyboard shortcuts to get to some of the functionality, specially if you use addons.
I think Zettlr is the writer tool that are the most complete for writing, but if you want to use your notes for a little analyzing in addition, I think Obsidian or Foam will come best out of it.
PS. I do not use Notion and have never tested it, so I do not know what kind of functionality that software have.
I started to use Zettlr because of the Zotero function, but the software do not have any network graph feature like Obsidian or FOAM.
There is a markdown add-in for Zotero, so you can extract annotations and write notes in Zotero, and then set up a template and export all your notes and items to a markdown library if you like. By creating you own template for the markdown export, you can get a Note file that is formatted like you need it to be, it takes a little time to learn, some test and error, but you can get really useful Notes out to markdown. in one of the markdown editors, you can then combine your Notes, write even more, add images etc. and in addition to add the files as media in Gramps, you can also export to i.e. PDF, ODF, Docx or html.
There are one thing You need to be careful with, and that is sync to google, dropbox, onenote etc. because this Editors do auto save, so you can end up with some sync errors, I always recommend manual sync on active file storage if you want to use that type of sync (and extra safety for your files).
Operating Mode
Create a sub folder for your notes in your media folder or document folder, create a folder structure that mirror your usage in i.e. Grramps.
So i.e. make a folder for People, one for Events, one for Places, one for Sources etc.
then create a Note for each object/subject (if you want many notes for each object, create sub folders for them.
In a markdown file for i.e. a person, use YAML header keys for some of the key information…
i.e.
---
Type: Person
Name: Smith, John
BirthDate: 1878-01-01
BaptDate: 1878-02-02
DeathDate: 1920-12-12
Alisas: ["John Smith", "Smith, John", "J. Smith", "Smith, J."]
Keywords: []
Tags: []
---
This is just an example, so you need to do it the way you like, and some software do not support uppercase in YAML key names…
Dona Cox Baker have a lot of great views on using Zotero, but you do not need her book to manage to set up a system in Zotero, it’s an easy software to learn as soon as you understand its limits.
I set up my folder structure and Zotero the same way, that way I always have some points.
Remember one thing if you use Windows, and that is that by default, Windows do not support 32-bit file path, but it can be enabled so that you can use longer file paths and filenames.
It’s a simple registry setting, and if you want to use it, just seach for “32-bit file path in Windows 10 64-bit” or something similar.
I recommend enableling this feature for anyone using 64-bit Windows 10. 32-bit Windows and earlier versions of Windows do not support tthis.
