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Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

zettlr.com

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Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#21

Post by input_sh »

steveklabnik wrote: post #7

It’s great to see such an explosion in tooling here. It also seems really hard to write comparisons since there’s so much development going on. I haven’t tried Zettlr yet, but it’s on my list...

I've tried it. I do like the built-in features, but the design makes me despise it.

It doesn't follow any system preferences, even replacing the standard minimize/maximize/close buttons (seriously, why?). Some of the stuff should definitely be a plugin instead of a core feature. Don't need a pomodoro timer / readability feature? Tough luck, you can't even remove it from the interface, let alone remove it completely.

There's also no plugin support, so you can't extend the features in any way.

I'm using Obsidian[0] instead. A little rough around the edges, but it doesn't have these issues.

[0] https://obsidian.md/

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#22

Post by scribu »

regularfry wrote: post #17
scribu wrote: post #11

The drawback to working directly on Markdown files is that it's hard to synchronize your notes from/to mobile. If I didn't care about sync, I would use org-roam or some Vim plugin, personally.

Syncthing ought to be an answer to this, given the right editor.

Potentially!

Looks cumbersome to set up for iOS, tho: https://www.reddit.com/r/Syncthing/comments/ese82l/ios_users...

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#23

Post by daffy »

bloopernova wrote: post #2

I'm really happy that the "knowledge base management" type of tools are getting a lot more attention these days. In my opinion, the more brains that look at this area, the better the whole ecosystem will get. I'll have to download this and give it a try, and compare it to my current workflow. (I use org-roam on Emacs. I'm not sure if people are sick of org-mode and Emacs being mentioned on HN? I worry about becoming…

Do tell if you find this has any advantage over Org mode.

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#24

Post by Fiveplus »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

I think this trend of better knowledge tools is missing two very important pieces of human nature 1. If we have time to enter something into a knowledge base of any kind - then we have time to just jot it on a piece of paper. 2. If we dont have time (or think it is important at that moment ) then what solves the problem for us is not a knowledge base, but search . You see the thing about Google and Facebook etc, is t…

Good points, especially point 1. About the second part here - I remember seeing a (rather creative) guy post a personal project based on that, on here, a few days ago. He wrote a comprehensive post about his addon which aims to remembers exactly in which context has a user encountered said article/author/keyword in the past. I'll see if I can link it.

---

quick update, found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23668507

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#25

Post by ResidentSleeper »

scribu wrote: post #11

The drawback to working directly on Markdown files is that it's hard to synchronize your notes from/to mobile. If I didn't care about sync, I would use org-roam or some Vim plugin, personally.

I've recently started using GitJournal [1] to access my notes on Android, but I haven't used it enough to be able to say whether it's worthwhile. One annoying drawback is that it requires a monthly subscription to get access to all of the (convenience) features.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.gitjournal....

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#26

Post by fastball »

mxuribe wrote: post #5
bloopernova wrote: post #2

I'm really happy that the "knowledge base management" type of tools are getting a lot more attention these days. In my opinion, the more brains that look at this area, the better the whole ecosystem will get. I'll have to download this and give it a try, and compare it to my current workflow. (I use org-roam on Emacs. I'm not sure if people are sick of org-mode and Emacs being mentioned on HN? I worry about becoming…

> I'm really happy that the "knowledge base management" type of tools are getting a lot more attention these days... I share this happiness...It often feels like so many people assume this is a solved sort of area; But i believe it is not.

It's a tough problem to solve.

My co-founder and I worked on our product in this space for two years before we released it, and we still have a huge list of features and ideas that we'd like to integrate.

The problem is that everyone's brains work differently / everyone has a different workflow, which is I think why we're seeing such an explosion of tools in the space. We've tried to address that with our app in a variety of ways, but it is very much an uphill battle.

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#27

Post by lukevp »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

I think this trend of better knowledge tools is missing two very important pieces of human nature 1. If we have time to enter something into a knowledge base of any kind - then we have time to just jot it on a piece of paper. 2. If we dont have time (or think it is important at that moment ) then what solves the problem for us is not a knowledge base, but search . You see the thing about Google and Facebook etc, is t…

I agree, the most useful thing these tools can provide is fast data entry and robust search for most users. That’s the focus of the tool I’m building, https://NoteBrook.com . Reach out if you want to be in on the beta, it has been delayed a bit as I’ve been refining the search and editor experience of the alpha version and building super fast apps on every platform, but it should be launching in the next week or two!

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#28

Post by deepersprout »

douglaswlance wrote: post #19

There is nothing that compares to using your preferred text editor to write personal knowledge documents like this. I swapped over to [Foam]( https://foambubble.github.io/foam/ ) in VSCode recently when it was released, and it's like a breath of fresh air. I can use my keyboard shortcuts, extensions, and snippets. Nothing else can compare.

How do you organize your notes? Do you have one big file for everything, one file for one note, one file for argument, or something else? Do you keep a date on your notes?

Maybe you can share a bit about how you organize your written down knowledge?

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#29

Post by dmytton »

Note-taking seems to be a hot topic lately. I used Apple Notes for a long time because it was very lightweight and minimalist, but recent releases of macOS have been very buggy, so I decided to review all the options. I wrote this up at https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for-mac-m... which has become one of the most trafficked post on my blog in the last few months!

The key for me is a) plain text files I can manage myself i.e. no database or mandatory custom sync; b) markdown.

Apps will come and go. You might decide to switch platforms and maybe a new editor will come along sometime. This means you want a format that can be opened by anything (plain text) but with lightweight markup that the editor can parse to make it look nice, but you can also parse with your eyes and get a reasonable sense of the document structure (markdown).

Then it's all about search. There's no point making notes if you can't find them. This is where something more than Markdown - that allows you to link notes - is handy. It's what is appearing more and more in the likes of Roam, Obsidian, etc.

I ultimately chose iA Writer on macOS because it is lightweight and really nicely designed, plus has good native support for Markdown. I sync using OneDrive but you can use anything because they're all individual files. iA Writer is also native, and I find most Electron apps to be slow and/or buggy. There are exceptions e.g. VS Code, but I prefer native where possible.

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#30

Post by tifadg1 »

Could someone enlighten me what is the biggest advantage or this and similar tools over libreoffice writer? I've been using it extensively for years for technical documentation, have hundreds of bitrot-free documents, and am extensively using:

* tables (2 or 3 columns depending on type, often using sort by column 1 or column 1+2 to keep relevant information grouped);

* preset formatting for different styles (snippets, commands);

* navigation using ToC (on a sideway navigation pane which is always visible);

* auto-generating anki flashcards from the content with no modifications;

* inserting external media;

I've used different methods to keep a single synchronized copy depending on work tech restrictions, i.e. nfs over ssh, sshfs, vpn via vm. Nowadays working from home I just keep everything locally.

What are the selling points to drop all that and move to something else?

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