I think Dendron is on to something great here - it's not just about note taking, it's also about highly efficient retrieval of notes. I have poked around it, but I intend to take a deeper dive and think about how I can make it part of my process.
Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
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Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#42I met Kevin at the YC hackathon last year and first heard about Kevin's ideas around note-taking there. I'm really enjoying Dendron so far.
The biggest thing for me is the lightweight structure- I would have never created a hierarchical structure if I had to create multiple nested folders every time I wanted a new category.
Hoping for some mobile support in the future.
Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#43This looks extremely impressive and polished, especially for a single dev. Looking forward to trying. Congrats
Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#44Having a graph-based interface for the relationships is nice.
But i think this works best with big monitor (think 43'') and when the graph is the main interface, not just a small window somewhere. I.e. display the content of nodes directly in an infinite-pan&zoom graph view.
Code reading could be nice this way. I suppose mentally one builds up a similar graph everytime reading through code. And eventually get lost. One can hold only so many things in flesh(sic) memory...
Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#45This is really interesting for me. I've just got into roam the last few months after an intertest in trying zettelkasten (and my notion growing rather unwieldly), but the $15/m is grinding at me. The idea I'll be locked in at that price forever more doesn't sit well For me org-roam doesn't scratch the portability itch (easily add notes on my phone etc), but I'm actively looking for alternatives I can make the jump fo…
Foam is a Roam-like that is open source, easily modifiable and assembled on top of VSCode but leaves you with plain jane markdown. I use a vanilla markdown editor on my phone for quick notes, and then fire up VScode when I need tools.
It's less an "app" and more a set of recommended extensions that work well together. At the end of the day you have markdown files in a directory, however you want to manage and sync them (git, dropbox, rsync, whatever).
https://foambubble.github.io/foam
My personal setup also integrates heavily with my Zotero toolkit for tracking and storing papers and other materials.
Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#46How is Dendron different from Foam[1]? At first glance, both projects are very similar.
Not the author, but foam isn't hierarchical for one
Foam can be setup and run hierarchical. I use this setup for mine with broad groupings at the top (history, medicine, politics, etc) and then subgroups as needed (history -> pandemics, history -> wars, etc). You can use foam-doctor to regenerate paths and titles on a regular basis.
Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#47The web platform I've created ( https://quanta.wiki ) has a lot of these same design principles, and I run a local copy of it for my personal note-taking. Some day there should emerge some kind of de-facto winner in this category, because it's so sad that it's 2020 and there's still not a super wide-spread mass-adoption kind of general purpose app for handling hierarchical data and interacting with it. When XML was i…
Interesting but your app promotes this list of culture-war entertainers [0] and presents them as the "Intellectual Dark Web", including Ben "just sell your underwater house if the sea levels rise" Shapiro; that's a big red flag
[0] https://quanta.wiki/app?id=5ca14747487e8f0001a3bcff#5ca25b1a...
Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#48I tried Dendron in the past, solid tool. I personally use Obsidian and would recommend it over others like Roam. It is super fast and super responsive.
Advantage that Dendron has is that it is based on VSCode which is fantastic foundation. Pretty much why I love Obsidian, you type fast and can work on ideas quickly.
I personally couldn't care less about graph, it looks pretty but to me not useful at all.
Good thing about tools like this is that you can sync and backup text files.
Bad thing is that having mobile app would be difficult. However, I use IAWriter to write into type of Inbox on my phone and this file is in Obsidian (again same workflow like Dendron)
To me personally, Dendron is too similar to existing one I am using, otherwise solid tool and would recommend to people.
Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#49I miss Typora's WYSIWYG Markdown editing in VS Code. For a note-taking, two pane window (one for editing and one for preview) makes very less sense.
So much this. I think it's the number one problem that Roam, Obsidian, and this has. Without live-rendered markdown it's more mental overhead than it's worth.
Re: Show HN: Dendron – A Hierarchical Tool for Thought
#50I still haven't found anything that beats markdown files in a competent text editor like VSCode
Same, I open my notes/ folder in iCloud drive in VSCode and edit markdown files from there. I paid for a markdown notes app (iAWriter) for my iPhone so I could edit from there.