Live data from Hacker News

Zim – A Desktop Wiki

zim-wiki.org

91–100 of 169 posts

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#91
12 years and counting - home, work and business notes - I've tried lots of others but this is still the best notetaking tool out there

* It never changes - the same user-inter face,the same muscle memory, for over a decade * Pages are stored as plain text files and sub pages in sub folders - which means attachments are also in subfolders * The index and todo list can be re-created from the files at any time * Pages are saved as you type them * As well as full text search, you get the ability to instantly search for page names

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#92
post #55

Not long ago, I ran through a bunch of wiki programs and eventually landed on Zim as my comfort zone. It's very light, looks pretty good, and just works! The syntax is a bit weird, and as someone mentioned, it doesn't handle code very well. Still really great and an easy recommend, though. https://ronitray.xyz/personal-wiki/

I did nearly the same thing trying to get a knowledge base started for high speed digital circuit board design. I don't have much time to work on it these days though, so it's still light on content. I love how simple Zim is to work with and export to a static site but eventually it would be ideal to allow anyone to edit like a typical wiki.

https://wiki.shielddigitaldesign.com/

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#93

I really want to share logseq[0] if anyone isn’t yet familiar with it, I’ve been using it for a few months and it is absolutely fucking superb . I like it so much I became a sponsor. Same kinda deal, writes markdown you spaff at gitlab or wherever, but with a graph, amazing linking and soft (unreferenced) links, it’s literally my external brain at this point. Few tools I can recommend so much, and it doesn’t even hav…

Logseq is cool. Do give Zim a try if you can, it’s been around for a while and is one of the more thoughtfully designed OSS GUI applications. Python and GTK impose limitations on the flexibility of extensions in general but it’s pretty fast and easy to extend otherwise. In terms of WYSIWYG I still don’t see anything much better on Linux.

The main reason I don’t use it today is my mobile and tablet experience is much better with Craft, which feels similar to Zim in its WYSIWYG mode (but more like Notion). However, I can run Zim fine on an older raspberry pi, which I can’t do with Craft and wouldn’t bother to try with Obsidian. My cloud-hosted Craft notes aren’t gonna survive after decades of supply chain crises and global turmoil, but my Zim notes and the application will probably outlast me with even a half baked plan.

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#94

I've tried a lot of note taking apps and Workflowy[0] has been my favorite for the last ~5 years. At its core it's a bulleted list that you can expand and collapse. Super simple and works just as well for quick ToDo lists as for in-depth ideation and project tracking. Recently they've added features such as tags and boards, which I mostly ignore, but the core product is super simple, powerful, and flexible. 100% free…

No idea why more notetaking apps have not copied the 'bulleted list that you can expand and collapse' functionality.

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#95
post #66
post #29

I have experimented with Cherrytree, I did org-mode for a year. Recently I did Obsidian. Keep coming back to my beloved Zim. Super extensible without being overwhelming. I do my personal notes, my blogging, my course website and even my Slides (instead of Powerpoint) with it.

Any thoughts on Obsidian vs Zim? I've had both of them downloaded for a long time now, but I've yet to really dive into them as my old habits of saving quick thoughts into .txt files are hard to shake off

Obsidian looked so much better than Zim that I was compelled to try it, but I'd been using Zim for well over 15 years beforehand.

So Occams razor might just be "I'm more used to it;" though there might be an argument for Obsidian growing too slick too quickly? It's got a LOT going on and looks like its flashier and has more features, perhaps too many for me. Also, if mobile is at all important, you probably want Obsidian.

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#96
post #44
post #31

Once again I'm going to recommend tiddlywiki[0]. It has the hackability of emacs but can run anywhere a browser can ( both online and offline ). And of course, an active community and ecosystem built around it. [0] https://tiddlywiki.com/

I never get past the saving problem. Last time (a few weeks ago) I tried rclone with WebDAV. I do what the instructions say, I get a local web site where I can open the empty.hmtl, I do the basic setup, write a tiddler, it says "Saved" and the empty.html is still pristine and never gets written. The times before that I tried several other ways documented on their web site, but failed with all of them. git? Only GitHu…

I don't use tiddlywiki but I have tried widdler https://github.com/qbit/widdler it's a WebDAV server that handles saving.

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#97
post #5

Back when I was searching for a good note-taking system, each and everyone of them had one feature that I wanted that was missing. Zim Wiki was the first system I decided to stick with, and after 4+ years I never gravely missed anything. However, if you don't like organizing your stuff hierarchically, your experience might differ. Also, I kinda dig the desktop-centric approach. It feels more like a real tool than jus…

Zim is awesome and did everything I used to use Evernote for but run on mobile. The notes are kept in plain text, so there’s no lock in. I am glad to know that the author is out there and released the code for us, because that will be usable so long as the necessary Python version is usable (lol).

This might be a little odd but I get a very “homey” vibe from the program, like, there are parts that aren’t as polished and improvements are slow and steady over the years, but there’s something of personal touch that makes it charming to use.

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#98
Used Zim for several years to maintain personal wiki for tech support tasks (mostly email drafts / canned responses on different topics). But I don’t use it now and don’t recall why I dropped it.

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#99
post #66
post #29

I have experimented with Cherrytree, I did org-mode for a year. Recently I did Obsidian. Keep coming back to my beloved Zim. Super extensible without being overwhelming. I do my personal notes, my blogging, my course website and even my Slides (instead of Powerpoint) with it.

Any thoughts on Obsidian vs Zim? I've had both of them downloaded for a long time now, but I've yet to really dive into them as my old habits of saving quick thoughts into .txt files are hard to shake off

The good news is you can work by just saving plain text and then viewing it in the GUI. Obsidian looks pretty but is slower and not as stable. I haven’t gone back to Zim yet but there’s nothing Obsidian really adds beyond GUI polish IMO. Obsidian has the advantage of mobile apps, but the story there isn’t superb — I have a better time piping text into it through Drafts. The iPad version of the Craft notes app is superior but it’s also much more locked down in every sense. I still use Craft though because I’m trying to simplify things these days, and I’m a sucker for OS integration.

Re: Zim – A Desktop Wiki

#100

It is time to give a shout out to my favorite note taking app: Trilium https://github.com/zadam/trilium Pros: 1. Data is saved in SQlite. I am at 33k notes and it springs open instantaneously. 2. Notes can be arranged into arbitrarily deep tree. Single note can be placed into multiple places in the tree. (Think soft-links) 3. WYSIWYG support (CKEditor) 4. Tags, advanced scripting features 5. Other ususal wiki stuff l…

I love this program, I've used it every day at work for years for my personal knowledgebase
Post reply on HN