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Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

wiki.dendron.so

61–70 of 89 posts

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#61
post #60

I think it would be really cool if there was a VS code extension where you could embed dot graphs in your .md file within a triple back tick block. Then when you hit the preview button, it automatically renders it. Something like this: https://markdownmonster.west-wind.com/docs/_5ef0x96or.htm But as a VS Code extension.

Dendron supports mermaid diagrams: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/eea2b078-1acc-4071-a14e-18299f...

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#62
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried obsidian? It's directly working on the filesystem, including folders. No vendor lockin.

I did, and I sort of like and sort of dislike it because of the way it handles metadata. For me, this kind of note taking app ought to use folder names as topics or categories (dev/rust) and have an index.md (dev/rust/index.md) as an entry point, and some sub-documents/sub-sections in the same folder. Also, many of these tools only go half way: they have folder support but instead of a "bag of posts" you have to put…

It's up to you how you use it. If you want folders being categories and have index.md'd, then do it, create them. Obsidian is very liberal in it's usage and does not enforce a specific workflow or structure.

I remember there is also a plugin which allows to use folder as notes, by loading a kind of index.md when opening the folder.

But what do you mean with "bag of media" folder?

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of my note-taking is just to get stuff out of my brain. I might never revisit any of it, and that's fine. If I write it down I know I can always go back when I need to, but if I don't , it's going to be an annoying distraction in my subconscious. A lot of my note-taking therefore becomes an excuse to successfully ignore the things I know I don't need to pay attention to. I do have a bunch of notes that I u…

That first paragraph is exactly my experience, too. When I read "Getting Things Done", the lightning bolt that struck me was learning that simply getting stuff out of my head and into a trusted system is enough to let me stop obsessing about it and concentrate on other things. Last week I had one of those dreaming-about-writing-code sort of nights, where I half woke up and was thinking about the stuff I'd been dreami…

Same here. The combo that seems to work for me is onenote combined with zotero.

- Onenote for ideas and scribbles - zotero for bookmarks and documents. Supports tags - physical notebook for note taking during meetings

btw you can easily connect zotero to your own nas via webdav and you have unlimited storage. Works fine for me. The only drawback of zotero is that you dont have a native mobile client.

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#64

I tried out Dendron a few months ago for personal note-taking, technical docs, and organizing tasks. I was excited at first, but overall the cons outweighed the pros for me. Pros/exciting things: 1) There's a simplicity in using VS Code for writing notes and docs if (and probably only if) you already spend your day in VS Code, like I do. 2) The Markdown Preview Enhanced VS Code extension (which is a dependency of Den…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Some additional details on the cons: - 1) Mobile support. We don't have a mobile app but you can access it on mobile using tools like GitJournal or IaWriter. Admitted this is not ideal but we do plan on a native mobile solution later this year. See FAQ here: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/401c5889-20ae-4b3a-8468-269def... - 2) As for navigating notes, this depends on your style. If you…

I think your tool might be helpful for documenting requirements, for teams that have not adopted something like BDD. And maybe for mapping the requirements to tests and source code. Have you seen examples of this?

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#65
One thing that's kind of important to me is that Dendron does not (as far as I can tell) have much in the way of outliner functionality. Other tools in this space do - for instance, org-mode for Emacs users. That would be a nice addition, given how powerful outlines can be.

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Some additional details on the cons: - 1) Mobile support. We don't have a mobile app but you can access it on mobile using tools like GitJournal or IaWriter. Admitted this is not ideal but we do plan on a native mobile solution later this year. See FAQ here: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/401c5889-20ae-4b3a-8468-269def... - 2) As for navigating notes, this depends on your style. If you…

I think your tool might be helpful for documenting requirements, for teams that have not adopted something like BDD. And maybe for mapping the requirements to tests and source code. Have you seen examples of this?

Yep. We have quite a number of technical writers using Dendron. Dendron also integrates nicely with public projects - we support publishing docs as dendron pages with github links back to the original project. This results in publicly referencable docs that can be cloned and used locally. See example here: http://tldr.dendron.so/

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#67

How are people using tools like this and Roam, Obesdian, etc. etc. etc? Personally I could see the use if you were writing a book or something, but I feel like in practice for normal notes I would just have all of these notes that I'd never look at again or spend so much time traversing my notes and not getting things done. As someone with distractive tendencies I'd love to hear the situations where this is useful so…

I’m with you, tried it but couldn’t keep up. I didn’t commit to it for very long which isn’t a fair trial, but I just didn’t see it panning out. One thing I realized was that most of my notes were links to pages on the internet with maybe a few extra words as context, and the rest were chicken scratch step-by-step things I did setting up something nontrivially complex. For the links, now I just use bookmarks in Firef…

I found Zotero (academic reference software) with the browser plugin to be a simple and very effective way to file general information, web bookmarks, Arxiv papers, conference materials, PDF books, etc, etc. My basic workflow is:

* Keep Zotero open, and navigate to one part of its collection (topic) hierarchy.

* Click on the Zotero button in the browser, to save the current web page, PDF doc, paper in Semantic Scholar etc into the currently selected place in the Zotero hierarchy.

* Zotero saves all the metadata about the object.

In parallel, I keep project specific markdown files in the folder I create for every project.

I tried Roam-like hyperlinked Markdown files for a couple of months, but found I kept wanting to keep them alongside other project-specific files.

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#68
I found Dendron via HN a few months ago and absolutely love it. I was hemming and hawing with my Dendron file structure until I found the PARA method (in a Dendron tutorial): https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/. I love that the dots in Dendron file names (e.g. resource.orgs.pacific-energy-center) lets me avoid the awkwardness of folders while still having hierarchical organization. I move around and make changes fast with Dendron's shortcuts. I'm opting to keep a lot of my lists (e.g. my to-do list) in Excel, and rely on Dendron more for the written-out stuff. I'm grateful for this free open-source awesomeness!

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#69

I tried out Dendron a few months ago for personal note-taking, technical docs, and organizing tasks. I was excited at first, but overall the cons outweighed the pros for me. Pros/exciting things: 1) There's a simplicity in using VS Code for writing notes and docs if (and probably only if) you already spend your day in VS Code, like I do. 2) The Markdown Preview Enhanced VS Code extension (which is a dependency of Den…

You might enjoy plain text logging on top of git or Dropbox.

Keep your markdown notes in one location, backed by git. Pull on any device for any reason. Use GitHub's / Dropbox's web interface when required.

- Search with grep

- Structured text + grep is extremely powerful

- use vim / emacs customization for display

- Display anything using, say dot or graphviz

- Edit with VSCode if you like vscode. Anything else otherwise.

I'm always surprised how few solutions manage to reach this basic level of functionality. Not that Dendron doesn't do a fine job!

Re: Show HN: Dendron – fast open-source note-taking in VSCode

#70

I tried out Dendron a few months ago for personal note-taking, technical docs, and organizing tasks. I was excited at first, but overall the cons outweighed the pros for me. Pros/exciting things: 1) There's a simplicity in using VS Code for writing notes and docs if (and probably only if) you already spend your day in VS Code, like I do. 2) The Markdown Preview Enhanced VS Code extension (which is a dependency of Den…

> Can’t access my notes from mobile

On mobile (iPad anyway) try CodeSpaces:

https://github.com/features/codespaces

It’s VS Code in your browser tab, and works great.

Separately, I don’t necessarily use that, since it’s an online experience. I use Working Copy and Textastic (or other local native editor depending). Benefit of git sync and markdown. A smattering of local editors do have both Markdown and mermaid support.

Rest of your feedback, I agree with.

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