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Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

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Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#81

Post by karlicoss »

bachmeier wrote: post #70

A few alternatives in this space: org-roam https://www.orgroam.com/ tiddlyroam https://tiddlyroam.org/ Dendron https://dendron.so/ Foam https://foambubble.github.io/foam/ Remnote https://www.remnote.io/ Obsidian https://obsidian.md/ logseq https://logseq.com/ Not an expert with them at all. I've never had a desire to dig into all their complexity, but some are pretty passionate about it.

My dream would be seamless interoperation between all these tools. Would also mean better 'competition', easier to convince people to try them, avoiding lock-in in one tool, etc etc.

For some tools it's already possible to interoperate -- for them would be nice to have summaries on what are the caveats (e.g. would the tool format my whole note base? would it break any special syntax imposed by the other tool? etc etc)

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#82

Post by tangjeff0 »

jolux wrote: post #74
tangjeff0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to model graphs in Postgres, but it's a lot more complex. This video compares two queries, one in SQL, and one in Datalog (the query language DataScript uses)[0]. We should probably model a knowledge graph with a graph database! SQL databases are indeed operationally simpler but that's because they have been around for much longer and are more battle-tested. [0]: https://youtu.be/tV4pHW_WOrY?t=1772

> We should probably model a knowledge graph with a graph database! I realize this seems intuitive, but the relational model has proven itself to be surprisingly flexible in its ability to store multiple different data models efficiently. Similar arguments were made about the suitability of document stores to social networking websites ten years ago, and I think we know how that panned out. > SQL databases are indeed…

Well the other aspect of it is that DataScript is client-side. That said, we could use sqlite in browser or even IndexedDB at this point. Yes, a pure JS/TS alternative without a graph db implementation is possible. But when I started, I chose the same language and db to ensure parity would always be much more possible.

Haven't tried recursive CTEs before, maybe I should dig into it more!

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#83

Post by tangjeff0 »

pps wrote: post #54
tangjeff0 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not either or as you mentioned! Plan to have user data stored in plain files as well. Roam's performance suffers mainly on first-load because they are server-first, and they load the entire db into memory at the beginning (such that it's quite fast thereafter). Once we have true local-first data structures with something like https://github.com/replikativ/datahike , we could still have fast in-memory, but also f…

> Plan to have user data stored in plain files as well. That would be cool :) > such that it's quite fast thereafter Not always :) I saw that myself and I also see complaints on Roam Slack. In my experience it mostly depends on how many queries you have on given page, but sometimes it lags (long waiting time when switching between pages or opening note in sidebar) also with simple, "atomic" notes. But they overall st…

Ah, very good to know. Don't use Roam too much these days ;) Sometimes it's hard to know if their performance issues stem from networking (they use Firebase) or just client stuff (i.e. datascript and Reagent, Clojurescript's React wrapper).

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#84

Post by diego898 »

Jeff (@tangjeff), Im sure you're already familiar with Tiddlywiki[1]. How does this compare/draw from/improve/etc on that?

For those who arent familiar with TW, I encourage you to check it out. Its one of the original bi-directional linked, open-sourced, graph-based (as revealed with TiddlyMap plugin, though not using a graph database) note-taking apps that is completely customizable.

It was recently posted and discussed on HN as well [2][3].

[1] https://tiddlywiki.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25527581 [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=tiddlywiki

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#85

Post by tangjeff0 »

mmmkkaaayy wrote: post #42

Could you please share some of your experience/plans regarding implementing cross-device sync? eg: * Which db is the source of truth? * How will conflicts from offline editing be handled? * Will you be able to see edits made in realtime across the devices?

* Currently `index.transit` is the source of truth. When a user sees new changes, their current db is saved, and they have the option of opening the new one or continuing to edit the current version. The entire history of the db is saved right now (`{timestamp}-username.index.transit.bkp`) while we work on better conflict resolution and merging. * Don't have conflict resolution yet for offline editing. * We plan to make a websocket server for some the real-time UX.

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#86

Post by tangjeff0 »

code-anth wrote: post #71

This is great, congrats. While I was waiting for this though, I ended up learning emacs, org-mode, and org-roam. Not sure if I wanna change now. Emacs can do all of this already, right?

Emacs/org-mode is pretty optimized for singleplayer, technical users, and plain-text. Further down the road, we hope to support APIs/integrations, collaboration, and rich media, and service the less technical user!

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#87

Post by lancesells »

Off wrote: post #14

Hi Jeff! Great to see a Roam alternative backed by YC! Congrats on the launch! What are you thoughts on the other Roam alternative, Logseq[1]? It seems to be doing really well and has a lot of features, from github sync and encrypted data to custom themes and publishing, it looks like privacy is their main goal, while being local-first and opensource, do you think that such features will be implemented in the near fu…

I don't want to sound too harsh here but I had a loading screen come up to show me a page of text. I know it's not plain text and probably has some giant javascript framework behind it but still a loading screen for that page?

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#88

Post by nynx »

This is great stuff, Jeff. I sponsored athens for a while—stopped after you got funded by YC—but I'm still glad things are going well.

Now that there are a couple of apps that are doing this kind of thing, I think it might be time to start looking at whether bi-directional links could be a W3 standard in some way (i.e. a standard bidirectional link metadata endpoint). It'd be awesome to bi-directionally link across from athens/roam to github to matrix.

Perhaps the concepts need a few more years to bubble and mix a little, but start thinking about how this could work.

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#89

Post by pps »

lancesells wrote: post #87
Off wrote: post #14

Hi Jeff! Great to see a Roam alternative backed by YC! Congrats on the launch! What are you thoughts on the other Roam alternative, Logseq[1]? It seems to be doing really well and has a lot of features, from github sync and encrypted data to custom themes and publishing, it looks like privacy is their main goal, while being local-first and opensource, do you think that such features will be implemented in the near fu…

I don't want to sound too harsh here but I had a loading screen come up to show me a page of text. I know it's not plain text and probably has some giant javascript framework behind it but still a loading screen for that page?

This is not a webpage, but fully functional web app (you can edit that text). That text is stored as plain text, then parsed and moved to DataScript (in-memory clojurescript database). That's why you see loading screen. This happens only when you reload tab, otherwise there are no loading screens when one is working within this app (it also has a desktop app [electron]).

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#90

Post by junipertea »

diego898 wrote: post #84

Jeff (@tangjeff), Im sure you're already familiar with Tiddlywiki[1]. How does this compare/draw from/improve/etc on that? For those who arent familiar with TW, I encourage you to check it out. Its one of the original bi-directional linked, open-sourced, graph-based (as revealed with TiddlyMap plugin, though not using a graph database) note-taking apps that is completely customizable. It was recently posted and discu…

Not him, but I used TW extensively. The problem was the entire wiki is in one HTML file (which is impressive), but it did not scale with additional image tiddlers. At some point it would just not load. There is a separate NodeJS hosted version which I ran for a year, but it had memory issues. (Again, probably tied to the number of images). I totally get it's mainly for notes, but I'm lazy and sometimes I paste snippets from papers rather than rewrite them, so it balloons easily.

It's fantastic software, though!

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