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Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

anytype.io

131–140 of 281 posts

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#131
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems should be providing spellcheck to textboxes everywhere anyway. Makes no sense every app rolling their own and not using my operating system dictionary with my own corrections. Extremely frustrating every Electron app just rolls their own rubbish spellcheck, or doesn't have it at all.

That's an interesting take on things. Would you want your operating system to provide a web browser, pdf viewer, and spreadsheet as well? To me it makes no sense that software does not interoperate very well. I think most of this is due to the historical evolution of computers and software. A spell checker used to take up an insane amount of memory, a browser is a competitive product, and interfaces for proper intera…

>Would you want your operating system to provide a web browser, pdf viewer, and spreadsheet

I mean I have little use for an OS without a web browser so yes. PDF viewer, Preview.app is infinitely better than Acrobat Reader so yes again. Spreadsheet I can give or take.

The idea of multiple teams all rolling spellcheckers to build upon the same input boxes is absurd to me. Should be as integrated into the machine as the cursor and caret imho.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's one of the key features of the app that most other alternatives lack, That's their claim, but it doesn't hold up much so far. > it would be weird for them not to mention this There is a difference between mentioning it, and using it as a selling-point. > it's not offline only, it can sync to your other devices over the internet There are many apps who can sync, most of them have it as an option, without a forc…

>That's their claim, but it doesn't hold up much so far. are there any arguments? >There are many apps who can sync, most of them have it as an option, without a forced login and hidden sync. We don’t have any forced login. It’s just basic keychain that generated on your machine, that only can use, and can use off-line. It’s a way do deal with encryption. Where you see a forced login? >So I can't even access my data…

> We don’t have any forced login.

Then how can I use the app without creating first an account and space which will sync my data without even asking? You talk about trust and offline-first, but the first thing you do is uploading data and don't even talk about it.

> we have described our data format,

Where?

BTW Don't reinvent menus. I just now realized that File->Close does not actually close the app, like in any other app. And for whatever reason, there was no information about the App still running. Kinda sus..

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#133

I see this software has tables - are these able to be used like excel sheets? I see this as a necessity for software like this. It's the one feature that Notion has that the competition doesn't seem to have, and it's absolutely crucial to everyday work for so many people. It seems to be a blind spot for programmer-types, I'm guessing because they see Excel as limited?

(co-founder anytype here) tables are simple now, no formulas. Plan to add formulas to data-bases (what I think you mean by notion having it) - it's one of the top requested features on our forum

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#134
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I see the networking portions of the code are Free Software - that's great. How are people expected to use it if their use does not fall under "non-commercial use" as defined in the client license? Do you expect people to write their own clients for commercial use, or do you offer commercial licenses?

The idea if you want to sell clients, you need to get a permission form our association.

Why not use the GPL?

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#135
post #5

(I work at Notion) The Anytype model is really cool - in a way, they’ve rebuilt Lotus Notes with 21st century E2E encrypted protocols and technology. They’ve built a really solid personal knowledge app with many of Notion’s features - and some clear improvements over Notion. However they also demonstrate the complexity and tradeoffs of the E2E approach. Anytype has been a work-in-progress since at least 2019. Their d…

So, yeah, unless Notion becomes Free Software and actually secure soon, there's the Notion killer.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#136
post #28

Note, their idea[0] of "open source" doesn't match the popular Open Source Definition [1] [0] https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-kotlin/blob/main/LICENSE... [1] https://opensource.org/osd/

Hence why the "free" in "Free and Open Source Software" really matters. :)

Not really, someone could just use that misleadingly too, just as with "open source".

"Open Source" already doesn't cover these special licenses, instead, the "source available" is used. Any also acknowledges this actually - the license they are using is called the "Any Source Available License 1.0".

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#137
Here's some project health insights, for those interested.

https://devboard.gitsense.com/anyproto

https://reviews.gitsense.com/insights/github?q=pull-age%3A%3...

Looks like Jira is used for issue tracking, so insights for issues and comments will be incomplete. There also appears to be a good mix of seasoned contributors (2+ years) and new (look for the gift icon in the review tool to see how long they have been contributing).

Full Disclosure: This is my tool

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#138
post #6

i've been following anytype since 2019, when the initial public release plan was for autumn of 2020 (lol), and since then it has transitioned from being a libp2p based google docs alternative into something more complicated, with relationships, sets, etc, and tbh i just never use it, because it's become too complicated every time i open the app, which uses electron btw ;(, i catch myself looking at the explainer vide…

It really is amazing how little competition Google docs has with free or open tools. I just want something that lets me write a never ending river of rich text documents. I don't want to write markdown source (by default), I don't want a "preview" as I type, etc.--I want WYSIWYG. I don't want to micromanage folders and hierarchies and classifications and tags and whatnot, I don't even want to think about storage or f…

Google Docs being free probably has a lot to do with the lack of competition.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea if you want to sell clients, you need to get a permission form our association.

Why not use the GPL?

Because we want to provide other organizations with the opportunity to offer paid sync services, we needed to incorporate the concept of a network into the license. We crafted the license with that consideration in mind

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#140
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting take on things. Would you want your operating system to provide a web browser, pdf viewer, and spreadsheet as well? To me it makes no sense that software does not interoperate very well. I think most of this is due to the historical evolution of computers and software. A spell checker used to take up an insane amount of memory, a browser is a competitive product, and interfaces for proper intera…

>Would you want your operating system to provide a web browser, pdf viewer, and spreadsheet I mean I have little use for an OS without a web browser so yes. PDF viewer, Preview.app is infinitely better than Acrobat Reader so yes again. Spreadsheet I can give or take. The idea of multiple teams all rolling spellcheckers to build upon the same input boxes is absurd to me. Should be as integrated into the machine as the…

Well, neither Google’s cursor or caret are drawn by the system. They want ultimate control, not ultimate integration with the host browser/OS.

Most electron and web editors that use ContentEditable should be able to use the OS spellcheck. Notion uses OS spell checking on web & Mac electron. I think on Windows there’s some weird issue we had to work around but I think we resumed using the OS dictionary, I’m not up to date on that.

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