Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository • Hacker News Board

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#41

Post by solarkraft » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

kissgyorgy wrote: post #8

I use Wallabag on a daily basis for months now and never been happier. Polar seems more advanced at the first glance, anyone using it? What are the experiences with it?

Downloaded it. Rather large app bundle. The experience I remember is wanting to archive a page, so:

- Copying its link

- Switching over to the app

- Hunting for a way to add a page to the archive

- A browser like window opening, pasting the link into the address bar, clicking an accept button

- It rendering out the page, asking whether it looks okay - it did, so accepting

- Opening the resulting PDF and it being completely fucked up.

I gave up. I like the idea of Wallabag much more, but can't get the FF extension to work.

Edit: Polar does offer a Chrome extension, but research about a FF version (the API is THE SAME) is hindered by me not being able to find any reference to the Chrome extension anywhere outside of the app. Idk, to me it just seemed fishy. I don't hate burtonator, I've just been frustrated. Why would I save my web pages as PDF anyway? That's an even more obscure, hard to process format. I tend to like the WARC format.

Does Wallabag support a full-text search?

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#42

Post by llamaz » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

sixtram wrote: post #33

bachmeier wrote: post #15

AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. The last thing I want is yet another place I have to look for my files, and I sure don't want to have to keep thin…

I've also downloaded this software and my impression is that it is far far from 95% to be an outstanding product. At least I bumped into small ui bugs the author should catched himself before a release. At the same time I agree with his idea that a knowledge base + spaced repetition is a good combination, however outputting spaced repetition into a 3rd party app is not a good idea. I see that burtonator is trying to…

I started out with polarized, but then I moved onto just putting all my pdfs in a folder and highlighting them in adobe reader.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#43

Post by zild3d » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #15

AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. The last thing I want is yet another place I have to look for my files, and I sure don't want to have to keep thin…

Agreed, "Personal knowledge" needs to also include personal knowledge like self-generated notes, journals, and such

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#44

Post by Tharkun » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

7e wrote: post #34

Why would I want spaced repetition for knowledge I don't use? And if I do use it, don't I get spaced repetition for free in the course of using it? It seems there are better uses for my time.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. You don't have to create flash cards. Polar just makes it easy to turn notes into flash cards, that's all.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#45

Post by alexcnwy » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

I've tried everything and I really like Dynalist (or any other outliner) as a personal knowledge repo / place to store notes and ideas.

I find ideas do tend to be quite hierarchical and you can link between nodes if need be.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#46

Post by walterbell » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #19

This would be neater as a self hosted system. I have a haphazard way of managing notes and docs that has too much overhead. I would like a squirrel program to store and retrieve more easily and will eventually just write one. I think we need more tools that rely on self-hosting cheap nodes for data where the owner has complete control. Knowledge management systems are really personal and if third parties go away then…

Devonthink is seamless if you use iOS and Mac. Efficient web scraper via iOS shortcut and split-screen support for iPad. Sync to self-hosted or cloud storage, with client-side encryption.

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#47

Post by burtonator » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

sixtram wrote: post #33

bachmeier wrote: post #15

AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. The last thing I want is yet another place I have to look for my files, and I sure don't want to have to keep thin…

I've also downloaded this software and my impression is that it is far far from 95% to be an outstanding product. At least I bumped into small ui bugs the author should catched himself before a release. At the same time I agree with his idea that a knowledge base + spaced repetition is a good combination, however outputting spaced repetition into a 3rd party app is not a good idea. I see that burtonator is trying to…

> I've also downloaded this software and my impression is that it is far far from 95% to be an outstanding product.

I couldn't parse that. Is this good or bad?

> At least I bumped into small ui bugs the author should catched himself before a release.

If you can point these out we can fix them. I'm still working on fit and finish in some places and rapidly iterating. I'm pushing 1/2 builds a week now based on user feedback so if something is broken let me know and I'll fix it :)

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#48

Post by burtonator » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

sixtram wrote: post #33

bachmeier wrote: post #15

AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. The last thing I want is yet another place I have to look for my files, and I sure don't want to have to keep thin…

I've also downloaded this software and my impression is that it is far far from 95% to be an outstanding product. At least I bumped into small ui bugs the author should catched himself before a release. At the same time I agree with his idea that a knowledge base + spaced repetition is a good combination, however outputting spaced repetition into a 3rd party app is not a good idea. I see that burtonator is trying to…

> Right now it's nothing more than an electron wrapper around pdf.js and knowing how far I read a pdf.

Except for cloud sync, and annotations, and flashcards, and sync to anki, and pagemarks, and archived documents, and flagging, and tagging, and stats on your reading, and a dedicated annotations view, and the ability to export your annotations, and the ability to capture entire web pages for offline use and annotations.

But other than that it's exactly like pdf.js :)

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#49

Post by burtonator » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

gallerdude wrote: post #4

I like the idea of the Personal Knowledge Repository, but I don't like having a 3rd party app for it. 3rd Party Apps are good for creating and editing content, because there's a lot of different ways things can be made. Yet there's no great reason to use one to store content, storing content is basically the same, and OS's do it well.

I think you're missing the forest for the trees here. There's a lot more functionality than just storing files here.

The OS doesn't provide annotations, highlights, flashcards, doesn't have a tag index, doesn't support offline capture, etc.

Install Polar and take the tour...

Re: Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository

#50

Post by burtonator » Sun, Mar 03, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

7e wrote: post #34

Why would I want spaced repetition for knowledge I don't use? And if I do use it, don't I get spaced repetition for free in the course of using it? It seems there are better uses for my time.

The issue is exponential backoff off what your trying to learn. Spaced repetition handles the scheduling. You've learned something important yesterday and you might not forget it tomorrow or the day after but you might in six months.

This is what spaced repetition gives you.