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Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

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Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#71

Post by wwweston »

This looks cool. At first pass, I have one big question: are there any facilities or even just plumbing for syncing between installs / front-ends?

SaaS/cloud approaches have real downsides in terms of ownership but the big upside is access from multiple points/devices (home desktop, browser on office machine, personal laptop, mobile device, etc). Obviously SaaS isn't the only way to do that, centralizing around self-hosting or some syncing feature can work too. Anything like that on the radar?

Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#72

Post by kvark »

huevosabio wrote: post #34

Tangent! I really wanted to like Notion but it's not smooth enough for writing. The cell system makes it clumsy. I prefer to write on markdown files because it's much faster and I can do it on my text editor of choice. I like obsidian because it's basically that with a bit of extras. But then I lose the concurrent editing. I want Google Docs meets obsidian type of environment. And I am yet to find it. If any of you k…

I feel quite aligned on this. I would push further and say that I need a Markdown-based Google Wave reincarnation!

But if you want collaborative markdown in general, there are solutions like Hack.md

Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#73

Post by Groxx »

enbugger wrote: post #63
karencarits wrote: post #38

I have tried quite many such apps and keep returning to Tiddlywiki ( https://tiddlywiki.com/ ). It is not perfect, and the lack of hierarchy can be both a blessing and a curse. It uses flat-files which can impact performance and be more cumbersome than a database. Also, the integration with external files is a bit clumsy. However, the main strength is customizability. Various data is best presented in various ways, a…

How is it different to Obsidian?

It's a single-file self-hosting wiki.

Rather different from a closed-source desktop file editor.

Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#74

Post by remram »

f0c1s wrote: post #62

I have been making notes for a decade now. I have moved through plain txt files, no extension (linux style) txt files, CherryTree, SimpleNotes, LogSeq, Notion, GitHub Pages, Obsidian and may be more. I have moved through phases of putting notes in physical notebook and scanning. I have 10s of scanned notebooks. I have taken digital notes via stylus, via wacom pen and tablet, Samsung notes (best note taking app with s…

While I don't disagree with the sentiment, an important feature for me is being able to read/write/search notes on mobile.

Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#75

Post by karencarits »

enbugger wrote: post #63
karencarits wrote: post #38

I have tried quite many such apps and keep returning to Tiddlywiki ( https://tiddlywiki.com/ ). It is not perfect, and the lack of hierarchy can be both a blessing and a curse. It uses flat-files which can impact performance and be more cumbersome than a database. Also, the integration with external files is a bit clumsy. However, the main strength is customizability. Various data is best presented in various ways, a…

How is it different to Obsidian?

* Tiddlywiki has existed for many years (first version came 20 years ago, the rewritten version left beta 10 years ago), and longevity and backward compatibility are key values for the developers

* A single-file Tiddlywiki is a single file that only requires a web browser to be used (e.g., you can email it to someone and they can just open it)

* Tiddlywiki is extremely customizable, much more than obsidian. It's almost hard to describe, but you can make very interesting things with just basic knowledge about html and css.

To cite myself:

> the problem with TiddlyWiki is that it's hard to describe since its so flexible. I have a few local tiddlywikis that I use for catalogues and note taking/knowledge base. The note taking was inspired by another HN comment [3] that introduced Drift [4,5], which includes features such as tabs for backlinks, keywords, and freelinks. But you may also find the Projectify edition [6] interesting or one cloning Roam Research [7].

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25305527

[4] Source: https://github.com/bmann/drift-tiddlywiki-template/tree/mast...

[5] Demo: https://ramirosalas.com/

[6] https://thaddeusjiang.github.io/Projectify/

[7] https://rr-tw5.github.io/

Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#76

Post by karencarits »

kvark wrote: post #70
dalmo3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tiddlywiki site is a tiddlywiki document. That alone tells you the difference.

A markdown document (e.g. from Obsidian) can be hosted as easily.

Yes, but the tiddlywiki file is the entire wiki. You've perhaps tried the dataview plugin for obsidian? Tiddlywiki is built on a similar idea, but much more flexible and powerful. However, tiddlywiki doesn't support in-text definition of fields (as far as I know)

Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#77

Post by ukuina »

mayne wrote: post #25
buildj48 wrote: post #20

Very nice work Do you mind elaborating on how this differs from “outline” and “anytype”? I think a comparison table on the website on how this solution differentiates itself from competitors is going to be helpful. Also, what’s going to be the pricing model?

Thanks for your advice. Eidos is more like a PDM tool rather than a PKM tool, but it can be used as a PKM with some extensions, just as the introduction says, it's an extensible framework. I've used the tools you mentioned and more. None of them have a powerful table, which is one of the reasons I decided to create Eidos. Eidos can handle large amounts of data like Excel. Anytype/Outline cannot do this. I plan to fol…

If you allow dependency-included self-host (preferably via an application wrapper like Electron where I can use a firewall to control which outbound connections are allowed), support mobile devices, and charge a one-time fee for p2p sync (decentralized, like SyncThing), this will be an instant buy for me.

Thought: Can you add a logout button?

Also, please consider a name change so SquEnix doesn't sue you out of existence!

Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#79

Post by darkteflon »

rgoodwintx wrote: post #17

I’ve been keeping an eye on these open source block based apps, and this kind of feels like you set out to scratch your itch and managed to release the most feature complete and polished one out there. Well done! Something about SQLite at the core just seems to drive a direction I like, and pushes an open ethos. (Shout outs to Grist in this arena as well.) So much power in such simple interfaces… and when I saw you c…

As a long-time dilettante in this space, I totally agree. I am all-in on Obsidian (and a long-term paying sync customer) which is imo peerless for note-taking, and of course the plugin ecosystem is very vibrant.

But there’s no question that there’s something special about the core “block” abstraction used by Notion (and, I see, AnyType), in that it really does allow you to not only structure and display information in absolutely any way you want, but also to reason about that structure in a unified way. You can come back after a month away and still remember how everything fits together. You can literally build everything a team needs: wikis, datatables, highly customised task/project managers, CRM, etc. And it’s all multiplayer.

Notion the _product_ ain’t it, though. Closed-source, SaaS, very slow, buggy electron apps (Obsidian’s electron apps are very good, by the by - and their sync service is faultless). Hopeless handling of copy-pasted markdown: why can’t I simply paste markdown content in from another app and have it appear - and be editable - as a normal page? Insufficient access controls, no locking of page designs, poor sharing UX (just let me copy a link to the page without throwing up an access permissions dialog box each time and warning me that certain people won’t have access when they definitely will).

The final complaint would be that they’re sort of caught between different audiences. We already had a company wiki we built with the block abstraction and were very happy with, then they went and introduced a new “Wiki” … I dunno … “special type”. Is it composed just of blocks like everything else, or does it get some kind of special treatment. Is every page I create under the “Wiki” folder a normal page, or somehow special? I get that they have to walk a line between power and casual users, but any UX decision that obscures the core block abstraction fails to strike that balance, imo. Why didn’t they make Wikis just another official template built of normal blocks?

All of which is to say: I remain really hopeful on this space and would love to see an open source project come along and take the crown. Certainly an increasing number of promising entrants.

Re: Show HN: Eidos – Offline alternative to Notion

#80

Post by tengwar2 »

meiraleal wrote: post #49
mayne wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many note-taking users like the concept of markdown and plain text. So do I. However, I think plain text has its limitations. There are many other types of structured data in life. Just like Word and Excel, they have different responsibilities. No one worries that Excel will not work in a few decades because it's just an offline software. Similarly, no one worries that SQLite will be unable to open or view bec…

SQLite won't stop working but your format is proprietary. A markdown can be understood even without rendering to HTML but your tables are useless for an user without your app.

This is why I use RTF. It is considerably more flexible than Markdown (which can't do basic stuff like making text red), but not a proprietary format. The application I use (DEVONthink) supports a number of formats including Markdown, HTML and RTF, and documents how to get at the raw files if the application ever becomes unavailable. No use of a proprietary database format. This is for my 30-year files.

I also use RTFD in the same application. This is a variant of RTF which can have embedded images. It's not universally supported like RTF, but there are sufficient third-party editors to leave me confident that I will be able to get at the information. This is for my 5-year files.

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