Scratch paper / postit note analog?

I'm wondering what people are using for ad hoc note sharing among the group? Something that would be handled on a post it note or a scratch paper during a f2f session. Like, an ad hoc tracker of distance or quantity where you just note down the status at the end each turn ("the fleeing enemy is now 345 feet away" or "there is now 200 gallons of water in the cistern"). Or maybe players want to write down a note about a particular room in a dungeon. Could be nice to have the note visible to all on top of the map. This is different from a handout in that it's not prepared in advance and most likely not necessary to preserve for later use. By default it should be visible to and editable by the whole group - again, like a post it note analog. I tried to search a bit for one, but the potential search terms are pretty common words, so ended up only with a lot of unrelated results. One could always use an outside tool, but it would be nice to have something visible in context. Similar to how the Turn Order tool is positioned.

Players can always use the text tool on the map and type out notes that way. I had players do that on maps for leaving notes about traps found but not disarmed or tripped.

They can and we've used this before. It's a bit cumbersome and the readability is often not great. And like you said, it's a natural use case for commenting on maps, but not for other stuff, as players lose access to the notes if you change from the map to another. Also, can players edit each others text tool items? I might be wrong, but I think they can't. A shared scratch paper should be editable by all. 

+1 to this. I'd like to run a game of Perseverant, which is essentially driven by a bunch of index cards being arranged on the tabletop. If anyone has a good idea for that, I'd be grateful.

It shouldn't be very difficult to implement technically: we're basically talking about a coloured text box that can be dragged around the table top.

Google docs is a good method until something built in (or API) is created. I just checked through the API github and didnt see anything meeting your criteria but you could always post in the API section and see if someone is willing to attempt to write one for you? 

I'm almost certain I've seen an API script for this in the past.  I think Stephen S. might have created it.  It's a little difficult to do well in the API as text objects have no size associated with them so you have to guess at how big to make a rectangle to contain them.  There are some tricks you can use to get pretty close.  The other problem is that they get sliced by dynamic lighting lines or players can't see them if their token can't see them. I'd probably either place text down and deal with the annoyances (that's what I do in one of the games I play in), or use a Handout.  An API script could facilitate the rapid creation of handouts, but they don't end up tied to a particular map or location, which might be less than ideal. Another option is to add custom turns to the Turn Order that hold the note.  The AddCustomTurn API script can put little notes in there pretty easily.

Thanks for the pointers. For now, I've set up my first table with texts colour-coded by category. Let's see how that works, maybe it'll be enough.