Figured it might be a good discussion question. Originally posted to our friends over at !journaling@sh.itjust.works.

I think of what I have far more as a Personal Knowledge Management System than a journal. I spend far less time on personal feelings and thoughts and “what did I do today?” and a lot more on making it a knowledge repository for Future Me.

Hello guys,

I'm new to the community but have been a Zettelkasten user for quite some time.

The thing is that my Zettelkasten is full analog, not digital. Yep, I use some pen to write on index cards that are then stored in boxes. Like some caveman ;)

It's low-tech not because I'm averse to digital, mind you. It's just that I prefer being able to freely spread and order my index cards on a table as I see fit, and a few other reasons like that (like being away from a screen).

Is the community digital-only, or would that be OK to post about analog too?

Thx

Designed for Apple Notes but I have heard of people doing this in Obsidian. I like looking at different knowledge organization systems, so I'll be looking into this even though I'm definitely not going to use Apple Notes.

I was looking into rocketbook and it sounds really nice, but I'm not sure if there's an option to save as markdown, which is kind of a dealbreaker to me as I'd like to continue using Obsidian. Does there exist something like that?

I thought I'd ask, since I have an organized method for some forms of media (things you watch, which is ironic given I spend much less time on watching tv/movies/videos than I do on any other form of media consumption) and for others… not so much. And I probably should organize the other methods and implement a system I'll actually use, instead of just tossing them on the To-Watch/Play/Read list and never actually consuming the things on the list.

Links to Obsidian forums, but the information here is applicable for any PKMS, not just one using the Obsidian software.

Hi y’all— I’m here today to talk about library and information science (LIS), personal knowledge management (PKM), and YOU.

Since this whole PKM/B (base) thing has taken off there has been endless endless endless discussion on how to organize things. Systems seem to pop up all the time ranging from PARA to Johnny Decimal, to folksonomies, etc, etc. This is a really fascinating and interesting time to be around and also very exciting to see this developing. however one thing that gets lost in all of these back and forth and arguments is that there is an entire field dedicated to the representation organization cataloging and classification of knowledge, a field that has been around for hundreds of years & has the experience of thousands of people involved: library and information science.

As far as I’m able to discern, almost none of these novel PKM or PKB organization systems have benefited from the input of library and information science. There are a lot of things that the LIS field can provide to help all y’all PKM folks. I’m going to talk about that a bit…

Found out about this. I'm already on Obsidian but I might check it out. Very not interested in the AI, but since it's open source you can definitely try to remove it instead of having it forcibly shoved onto you with no way to try to turn it off like with Notion.

markdown-oxide: Robust, Minimalist, Unbundled PKM for your favorite text-editor through the LSP.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/16316509

TiddlyWiki is a “non-linear personal web notebook,” as well as an exemplar project in the open source community. It can be a note-taking or information-ordering system in a similar vein to Obsidian or Notion, although TiddlyWiki was launched back in 2004. It can also be thought of as producing a wiki with interactive components.

However, as I discovered to my cost, TiddlyWiki has never had a strong “start here,” because it is not tailored to one specific task. Obsidian, by comparison, has the advantage of a clear vision of what it does. TiddlyWiki bewilders you with options at first because it hasn’t been designed to be sold. The community focus is on adapting it to different use cases.

So I’m going to take the advice in this explainer and use TiddlyDesktop while mentioning that there are plenty of other arrangements. It is, after all, just HTML and JavaScript. Let’s get started…

Heard it described as somewhat like Obsidian before.

Comments are: it's to be expected

Too much apps posts heh?

Since I tried to do google keep, I was making notes for about a month and then just didn't open the app for some reason...

I reaaaaally missed the graph view of obsidian. I am actually a backend developer. So I decided to learn flutter to make my perfect note taking app. And I was postponing creating notes, because I need to make a perfect app first. It was counter productive. I needed to make notes and I didn't.

Last weekend (the only time when I have free time) I researching how to make graph view. As I was thinking about edge cases for my own implementation (because how else ofcource) I realised something. It is not worth it. I spend too much time and energy on it. It's not fun, it will not bring me money.

I wanted to make my own obsidian because I didn't want to use syncthing. Then I spend 6 months (well not really if we exclude the time spent on work). And now I am back from where I started.

I want to try this.

I do feel a little anxious that I don't really have a goal for an output. But it is better to stick to something then start the search for something perfect again

I read a lot of articles. In the past, I've used Pocket to access articles on all my devices.

I prefer to read on my e-ink tablet, where scrolling is a pain. So I need a read-it-later app that supports page-turning, the same way an e-book does.

Pocket used to have this feature, but they killed it with their most recent update.

Wallabag has this feature, but I find the Wallabag fonts ugly and unreadable.

Omnivore does not appear to have this feature.

Does anyone use a read-it-later app that supports page-turning?

Thank you!

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/8295637

Today I discovered a tool called OrgPad which has a lot of potential. Unlike all the major players in the mindmap space right now, each node isn't just a heading, but an actual piece of content, with a title. Each node can be expanded or collapsed so you can focus on what you want to while maintaining context.

It's also got an amazing interface that's incredibly polished.

I've also just discovered TheBrain, which is also a delightful mindmap tool, but the cost is prohibitive at around $20/month just to sync across devices, the interface isn't as slick as mindmeister or xmind, in fact it looks ancient. But it's very powerful and feels really good to use. It also has the benefit of making notes a first class object instead of a tiny icon on a node which the more popular mindmaps do. But the win goes to org mode for being superior in most ways, at a fraction of the cost.

Originally posted to !obsidianmd.

This is absolutely gorgeous. I take academic notes in Obsidian and am going to take several cues from this professor’s notes.

I may have also been trying to make a similar thing for math in general, including discrete mathematics. The professor’s turned out prettier than my own. Still going to make my own, taking/making the notes myself will reinforce these topics, but this is definitely a handy reference.

Are you satisfied with your choice? What is something you wish your app had?

Using the mobile app felt like an insult. I can't buy subscription, so I am stuck with free version. And I can't change anything.

I noticed that I stopped making notes. Probably because now I have a third device to make notes on.

I am switching to google keep. I like that it works everywhere. I don't like that picturs in notes are not in-between the text.

I am also modifying the PARA method. I am droping the Areas folder and store everyting in Resources. My biggest hurdle right now is themes. I am using labels for PRA. But how do i group different notes in similar category? I don't want to create a lot of labels: they will clutter the PRA "folders". Thinking of maybe making a MOC (Map Of Content) where I will just copy/paste content from different notes every week (let's be honest it will be every month).

What I really want from bote taking app is some gamification of the proccess. I want to be able to do something with created notes. Throw them arround, rearrange. Technically I can do that with just cope/pasting, but it feels not playful, but rather rigorous.

OK, so, this is only tangential to the purpose of this community, but still. The concept of a PKMS has tossed me into a wider interest in storing the content of a document entirely in plaintext with nothing but a markup language, and then formatting that content from there (often with PanDoc). Nothing frustrates me more lately than the idea of stuff that could be in text files yet isn't, because text files are rad as hell and computers actually understand them.

Confession: It's a TTRPG rulebook because of course it's a TTRPG rulebook. Of course the traditional method of making something that that is, y'know, Adobe Acrobat, but starting with something like that means that converting to any other format is just harder than it needs to be.

Obviously a PKMS like Obsidian isn't really suited for longform, heavily hierarchical content like this. You used to be able to use nested YAML to hack a chapter / subchapter system together but no longer, and it was never a very good idea- if anything Obsidian intentionally resists attempts at hierarchy. LaTeX is awesome but none of the people who use LaTeX know how to document / tutorialize it in a sane way and it's community consists entirely of mathematicians and technical writers. Seems like an astoundingly useful tool that goes woefully under-utilized.

My idea right now is to try using the DocUtils. It's markup language ReStructure is explicitly hierarchical and, bonus points, ReStructure is used by Project Gutenberg for it's epub tools.

Any other ideas? Am I being a bit of an idiot?

Edit:

I got what I was looking for. It's AsciiDoc. Kind of a holy grail tech thing for me.

I’m not using any particular organization strategy like Zettelkasten or PARA or anything. I am using Obsidian for most things, but my to-dos are in Apple Reminders and there are some scattered pieces of information in Google Docs and Notion that I still have yet to migrate to Obsidian.

Crossposted from @digitalgarden.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/3451107

Check the comment of the gist for instructions on how to use. You can set this up to run every few minutes, keeping your readwise items, highlights, and annotations synced with Raindrop! I didn't see anything that accomplished this, even with the multitude of paid automation solutions. I was tempted to sign up for a free one when I realized they were all very flawed, so I just wrote one up for free!

Hope you enjoy! Suggestions and contributions more than welcome :)

Maybe I should switch to anytype? I am half happy with the Evernote, but it gets the job done.

I gotta tell you. Tossing around folders of projects between PARA is so fun. Some people oppose idea of folders and suggest writing lists. But it makes creating notes just infinte writing. Me personally? I need a break some time. I think what note taking apps need is to not reinvent notes. Instead they need to build different ways to interact with notes. One example would be the graph view. You already have notes, granted you linked them the way note taking app can parse. But still it's cool alternative way to interact with notes. Also it is interesting how you can move folders in obsidian and evernote. Evernote is about pushing buttons. Push button to remove folder from stack. (Stack is like a folder for folders). Then push a button again to move it to different stack. In obsidian you need to long press on folder and drag it to new "stack". Even these trival interactions enriches my experience with managing pkms. And I want more. I don't know exactly what. Right now I have an idea of viewing folder of notes not just by it's names. It would be nice, when having not too big notes, show maybe blocks by 3 columns with preview of notes. That way you can easily grasp the bigger picture of your notes' folder.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/1707114

• The 3 I'm considering have 2 things in common:

  • They're open source

  • They're offline first. Meaning you'll never lose access to read or edit your notes if you find yourself without internet, in a tunnel, elevator, airplane, etc. This excludes notion and the like from this list

• They are Anytype, Logseq, and SiYuan ( a less known but still incredible PKMS)

  • please note these pros and cons are only in relation to using as a method of brainstorming and working on projects.

• FYI: Logseq is my current PKMS of choice and i've settled on it though if Anytype ever gets trasnclusion support I'll have to go back and see. Also to note: Anytype is currently free, the rest will cost you if you want to utilize syncing across devices

• Anytype

  • Pros

    • beautiful, slick interface

    • creating types allows for projects to have a more first class feeling.

      • A project can be a type with multiple templates

      • a feature can be a type with multiple templates

      • sets allow for displaying alist of projects based on what type of tepmlates, same for any type (anytype, get it?)

    • excellent layout and customizability

  • Cons

    • Major con no Transclusion. I HOPE they introduce it. my discussion on github is the highest after the docker container ask and the stuf the staff prepopulated. Looks like one of the maintainers noticed it.

  • Mobile experience

    • by far the most robust and fuck up proof mobile solution. It handled anything I threw at it and it syncs practically immediately

  • Collaboration

    • I believe this is one of their primary focuses at the moment

  • Examples

    • List of projects. Note these can be any scale - a small script, an extension to a browser, an entire program suite or OS, a physical product. Choose your own way of organizing and anytype should be able to accommodate

    • 

    • Example project main page: Note that I'd prefer to use transclusion here instead of the card previews but anytype doesn't have transclusion support. at first I wrote off the emoji/background, but it's so easy to do (only a couple of clicks) that I did it on a whim and realized I actually love it, and not only that, that little bit of imagery makes it's at least 1 million times easier to quickly identify what page you're on and bring some immediate context to the forefront of your mind. It's a little thing that makes a surprisingly big difference. Anytype uses upsplash images and you just type in what you're looking for (for this example I typed in books), and you'll find a great selection of high quality banners for your pages.

    • also note the organization here. You can have page links (here in cards with previews) as many across as you like and it's easy to arrange them that way.

    • 

• Logseq

  • this is infinite outliner first. collect and connect knowledge. Etc. For projects, it's not as robust as anytype, and while it has transclusion, it doesn't add a lot to a project page

  • This would be better for doing some very quick notes at the genesis of a project. I guess that counts as brainstorming. That said I don't feel as organized and secure as I do working on projects in anytype

  • Pros

    • great for really quick brain dumping (though that's no different than anything else on this list).

    • Transclusion support. though not as beautiful as SiYuan's, it adds about 3 indentations before beginning the actual transcluded content, something they say they're going to address at some point.

  • Cons

    • Interface was designed by engineers and it shows.

    • Feels easy to wreck things

    • has some bugs to work out

    • mobile experience is mostly lackluster and seems to be low priority

  • Mobile Experience

    • mobile is like, mostly unusable for me currently due to a bug where the text your typing scrolls down below your keyboard. so yeah you're typing blind. hope they figure that out soon as it's a breaking bug. Syncing is fairly slow - you can expect to see changes propagate between 10-15 seconds. sometimes a device will say it's fully synced when it's not, and if you don't notice that's not good. best to restart and make it goes through the full sync

  • Collaboration

    • on the radar though not currently in the works. I believe it will come some day and that there are some workarounds but nothing built in

  • Examples

    • project list

  • 

    • example project

  • 

• SiYuan

  • Pros

    • Beautiful editor and transclusion implementation

    • fastest PKMS that exists by a mile

    • can have several notes open in tabs, and it's by far the best implementation of this concept I've seen in any PKMS

    • nice visual customization in line with notion or anytype.

  • Cons

    • no sets/collections/queries. There's no project page unless you build it and update it yourself

  • Mobile Experience

    • Mobile device is probably about equal with logseq. Nothing spectacular, nothing too extremely buggy but it just feels like you're a bull in a chinashop with this. Like you have to be very careful not to break things. Still, from what I've seen, it doesn't have the same litany of bugs logseq has

  • Collaboration

    • No idea where they're at with this. I don't believe it's a priority.

  • Examples

    • This is just their tutorial landing page, but you can get an idea of the layouts and customization possible. It just looks gorgeous and it's the fastest PKMS I've used.

    • 

• Ending thoughts:

  • Mobile: Anytype wins

    • without a doubt the best mobile experience. more polished and robust. You don't feel like a bull in a chinashop like you do in logseq or even siyuan to a degree. That said, logseq still wins in one very small but very important department, and that's swiping to adjust indentation. may seem small but if indentation is buried behind several menus, it's just painful when your'e in the middle of jotting down some important notes. That said logseq mobile is broken (at least for me)

  • Collaboration: no one wins, though anytype is focusing on this

    • Most likely will have to choose another program, probably something that isn't offline first. For this there are a million great options

  • Best overall: Anytype.

    • Being able to create a type is awesome. Then having multiple templates off that type, and "collections/sets" to allow organizing lists of those projects with fairly strong filters and sorting is great. This ability, while exists on logseq, requires knowledge of some programming languages. I think called datalog. In SiYuan I don't believe it's possible. One quick sidenote about SiYuan though, it's a fantastic app and the developers/maintainers work at a blinding pace. One time I made a comment about the line spacing on their english forum, liuyun.io, and the developer answered within a few minutes stating that it was already fixed and in the upcoming version. Anything said about SiYuan is liable to change at a moment's notice (but in a good way!)

  • Best for early/initial braindump: Logseq

    • With its infinite outliner, logseq is fantastic for braindumping quick and dirty prototypes to be fleshed out more fully in another PKMS. I definitely don't think Logseq is the best for projects, but it's definitely not worthlesss

  • Best price: Anytype (for now). Anytype is free.

    • It will be free forever if you decide to selfhost. They will almost certainly add paid plan to use their synving infrastructure (which they implemented brand new for the work they're going to do on collaboration soon)

  • Privacy: Logseq, Anytype.

    • Both can avoid the company's servers completely if you set it up that way. Anytype will required self hosting which for now is not very good because to use the mobile ios app selfhosted, you need to compile through xcode and sideload it onto your device...yeah that's a blocker. Logseq is possible to avoid completely their servers, but it's a worse experience. it's hard to set up. And I believe that their syncing is locked to allow them to eventually offer a premium plan. Anytype's syncing mechanism is up on their github right now.