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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

#141

Post by bliff »

cborenstein wrote: post #98
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…

> 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. Great point. I often see people sharing strategies for organizing notes but I rarely see people discussing how they get stuff down in the first place. And there's a lot of improvement we can make here. I wanted to add more modularity to my jot-downs so that it would be easier to organize t…

My system lately has been to write every note as a raw text file that I save to a git repository on the fly. Later I process these notes and give them Zettlekasten style IDs. This step forces me to organize the knowledge: either everything gets a fresh ID (e.g. "25"), or it gets a derived ID that relates it to whatever subject or task it's related to (e.g. "44a3b9"). But it also means I can stream thoughts into a lightweight inbox without having to do the organizing upfront.

I then have derived categories from the main stream of thoughts. If the thought is a task, I further process these into categories. I have recurring tasks and events that I handle on a "Time" page that is effectively a calendar, and I have one-off tasks that go into a Kanban style backlog.

What I really got from Zettlekasten is that trying to establish your system upfront is a mistake. Things inevitably leak through your categories and then you lose faith in your system. By just having a running stream of thoughts and then relating them after the fact and deriving categories afterward, you get the benefits of organization without a lot of its failure modes.

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

#142

Post by eggsmediumrare »

hjek wrote: post #77
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…

As a vegan Emacs + org-mode user, I found your comment hilariously spot-on!

Only a vegetarian, but I do crossfit (lower case very intentional).

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

#143

Post by codethief »

bbx wrote: post #110

One feature I have yet to find in any Markdown editor is a simple "block" mover, which I describe here: https://twitter.com/jgthms/status/1225513837379641350 Underneath, the data structure would remain straightforward Markdown. So the data wouldn't be stored as separate blocks; the moving would act similarly to Sublime Text's "Swap Line Up/Down".

This (and showing/hiding blocks) is the one feature I miss from org-mode.

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

#144

Post by koheripbal »

npongratz wrote: post #130
koheripbal wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just been using Google Docs. It's simple, searchable, and I can read/edit my notes while sitting on the can. The only markup I use are: links, lists, bold/underline/strikeout, embedded images? What am I missing?

My experience with Google Docs makes me want to strangle it. It's slow, unresponsive, uses a ton of memory, and I can't shake the constant nagging weight of surveillance being done against me. EDIT: Oh, and just this last week, I found it couldn't understand that I wanted to use "set up" as a verb, instead of "setup", the noun. Constant underlining when underlining was neither necessary nor desired. Apparently when I…

My daily journal is up to 110 pages long. I haven't noticed any performance issues (though it does take 5-6 seconds to load on mobile).

As for autocorrect - you can turn that off in Tools->Spelling and Grammar.

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

#145

Post by miles »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #46
dmytton wrote: post #29

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 fil…

Seeing as your list is pretty comprehensive, it might be worth having a look at Writemonkey. It's been in development since 2006 - so long before the markdown editor trend in recent years, and probably even pre-dating the distraction-free trend about a decade ago. The most recent incarnation (v3) fits your two criteria well and its plugin system is very versatile. Sadly cross platform supports only came with version…

> Sadly cross platform supports only came with version 3 and that means saying goodbye to the small Windows native downloads, but it's not an Electron monstrosity.

Yes, it's NW.js instead of Electron, but that's still an almost 100MB framework (and the >50MB sounds directory doesn't help much either). It's also closed source, though the documentation is hosted at GitHub: https://github.com/writemonkey/wm3/wiki/Documentation .

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

#146

Post by nemetroid »

jldugger wrote: post #124
vvillena wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Zettelkasten-style system is just a bunch of files in a single folder, with lots of links between them. What makes these kinds of notes work is the purpose they are written for, and the links. Two people can have the exact same notes, but link and tag them completely differently, because each of them will have different goals and purposes.

So basically a personal Wiki for generation Z.

Why is it for generation Z?

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

#147

Post by koheripbal »

bbx wrote: post #110

One feature I have yet to find in any Markdown editor is a simple "block" mover, which I describe here: https://twitter.com/jgthms/status/1225513837379641350 Underneath, the data structure would remain straightforward Markdown. So the data wouldn't be stored as separate blocks; the moving would act similarly to Sublime Text's "Swap Line Up/Down".

Maybe I'm missing something, but what's wrong with cutting and pasting blocks of markdown up/down?

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

#148

Post by ziftface »

grok22 wrote: post #135
unsungNovelty wrote: post #39

If anybody is sad about Zettlr not having the graph view of like the one in Obsidian or RoamResearch, please be patient. A PR is already open for it. -> https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/pull/921 OpenSource powaaaaa! :)

Does anybody find that graph view (like in Obsidian) useful? I play around with it for a while, but I don't really find it useful for any particular thing. Also overtime that graph grows too big to be visually easy to see patterns etc.

Sometimes it's an alternative to search. If you don't know exactly what to search for but remember generally what it's related to, you can zoom in to nodes you know are somewhat related and find something you're looking for that way. I can't say it's something I do every day but it's come in handy.

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

#149

Post by cborenstein »

bliff wrote: post #141
cborenstein wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Great point. I often see people sharing strategies for organizing notes but I rarely see people discussing how they get stuff down in the first place. And there's a lot of improvement we can make here. I wanted to add more modularity to my jot-downs so that it would be easier to organize t…

My system lately has been to write every note as a raw text file that I save to a git repository on the fly. Later I process these notes and give them Zettlekasten style IDs. This step forces me to organize the knowledge: either everything gets a fresh ID (e.g. "25"), or it gets a derived ID that relates it to whatever subject or task it's related to (e.g. "44a3b9"). But it also means I can stream thoughts into a lig…

Awesome. Glad to see that separating the "getting stuff down" from organizing has worked for you too.

Do you create a new raw text file for each note? How long does it typically take you to do the organizing process?

> trying to establish your system upfront is a mistake. Things inevitably leak through your categories and then you lose faith in your system.

I don't know if it's a mistake. I think you need to embrace the fact that your current system won't be perfect, and you'll need to adjust as you go. It doesn't mean you shouldn't start with something.

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

#150

Post by dddw »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #46
dmytton wrote: post #29

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 fil…

Seeing as your list is pretty comprehensive, it might be worth having a look at Writemonkey. It's been in development since 2006 - so long before the markdown editor trend in recent years, and probably even pre-dating the distraction-free trend about a decade ago. The most recent incarnation (v3) fits your two criteria well and its plugin system is very versatile. Sadly cross platform supports only came with version…

Wow, indeed weird I never heard of it. Looks pretty great! Multiplatform, text files as base. Gonna give it a spin.
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