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Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

anytype.io

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Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#231

Post by monkmartinez »

iudqnolq wrote: post #230

Not to write the classic Dropbox comment, but can't you just do this with any of the notion alternatives based around local markdown files (i.e. obsidian, logseq). Just have local e2e encryption on your laptop and point the app at a shared folder with in-transit encryption (i.e. Syncthing).

You can, but it is definitely not a download and go situation. I use Syncthing for Obsidian and it generally works well. However, I was recently in need to use a VPN on both sides of the "sync" and it choked hard.

Made me miss onenote...

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#232

Post by mickelsen »

hosh wrote: post #227
adr1an wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot to mention, affine.pro is self-hostable too... and it doesn't require any account registration whatsoever on their website.

What I mean by “local-first” is not the same as “self-host”. Local-first software are architected in a way where the local device is the source of truth. It usually uses CDRTs or something like git to sync with other peers. It is not a client-server architecture. Uploading files to a personal server is more of designating the server as a peer and regularly syncing with it, similar to how git works with remote repos.…

Yes, but Affine is local-first. You don't need a container infra or anything, just run locally without an account, data is stored in a user folder.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#233

Post by mickelsen »

ch_sm wrote: post #15

I haven‘t tried it yet, but damnit, you guys really touched a nerve with the aesthetics of the landing page and the references to personal computer pioneers. It gives me OpenDoc vibes. I‘m so easily manipulated.

It was motivating a few years ago, when I started to see all these references to Engelbart and better thinking and whatnot, but after testing a bunch of projects that amount to nothing, get abandoned or in a state of eternal coming-soon walled garden building, where even some of them already closed (Roam Research, Athens) it got tiring.

And I still don't have that promised knowledge-tool-of-the-future in my hands, just some hype with note graphs, prolix bloggers and their 'creative mentation', yet none of the implementations (not the concepts themselves) have proven to be any sort of breakthrough, or usable enough, where commercial last-generation notetaking and journaling tools managed better at a certain point.

It's time to get real, folks! If they can't deliver on their promises, they don't deserve our attention. I'll stick with what actually works, even if it's not as flashy. Rant over.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#234

Post by esperent »

iudqnolq wrote: post #230

Not to write the classic Dropbox comment, but can't you just do this with any of the notion alternatives based around local markdown files (i.e. obsidian, logseq). Just have local e2e encryption on your laptop and point the app at a shared folder with in-transit encryption (i.e. Syncthing).

Yes but it's a lot of hassle to set up on Android. No idea about iPhone. And if you think that's fine for you, cool. But now imagine trying to set that up for a shared knowledge system. It's just not feasible.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#235

Post by iudqnolq »

monkmartinez wrote: post #231
iudqnolq wrote: post #230

Not to write the classic Dropbox comment, but can't you just do this with any of the notion alternatives based around local markdown files (i.e. obsidian, logseq). Just have local e2e encryption on your laptop and point the app at a shared folder with in-transit encryption (i.e. Syncthing).

You can, but it is definitely not a download and go situation. I use Syncthing for Obsidian and it generally works well. However, I was recently in need to use a VPN on both sides of the "sync" and it choked hard. Made me miss onenote...

To be fair this looks like an open source project that aims to be download and go some day, not something there today

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#236

Post by iudqnolq »

esperent wrote: post #234
iudqnolq wrote: post #230

Not to write the classic Dropbox comment, but can't you just do this with any of the notion alternatives based around local markdown files (i.e. obsidian, logseq). Just have local e2e encryption on your laptop and point the app at a shared folder with in-transit encryption (i.e. Syncthing).

Yes but it's a lot of hassle to set up on Android. No idea about iPhone. And if you think that's fine for you, cool. But now imagine trying to set that up for a shared knowledge system. It's just not feasible.

Oh absolutely this sucks. Just not sure Anytype is any better. It doesn't support sharing, for example. Logseq + SyncThing just works on Android, you simply point both at the same folder. Presumably that's impossible on iPhone.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#237

Post by m463 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #18
lewisjoe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Docs have somehow solved E2E encryption with safe sharing and collaboration. They haven't advertised it much, just a mention here and there as an enterprise requirement or something, it's good how they've implemented it on top of an existing web-first collaboration product. They do have technical challenges implementing add-on services on top of content - For example, the grammar checker or any content assista…

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.

I've always thought that textboxes should have some sort of browser-to-os plugin feature, possibly on-demand.

I would love to edit my textboxes using real emacs somehow, even a popup window would be good.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#238

Post by eviks »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #131
smokel wrote: 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…

Why would you compare to Acrobat instead of Skim?

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#239

Post by thayne »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #18
lewisjoe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Docs have somehow solved E2E encryption with safe sharing and collaboration. They haven't advertised it much, just a mention here and there as an enterprise requirement or something, it's good how they've implemented it on top of an existing web-first collaboration product. They do have technical challenges implementing add-on services on top of content - For example, the grammar checker or any content assista…

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.

I worked on spell checking for a web app. It would have been really, really nice if there was just an API to interact with the browser spell checker. We couldn't use the spell check you get in a text area, because like google docs, we rendered the text ourselves and had a custom context menu. And we had very good reasons for doing those things.

However, I think it would be difficult to create such an API without leaking information about what words are in a users custom dictionary (which could be used for fingerprinting). And allowing an app to add custom words would probably have some security implications.

Maybe if there was an API to open a spell check popup that was native to the browser and the only info you get is what word (if any) they chose to replace. But, besides having a suboptimal UX, that doesn't help you know which words to highlight as misspelled.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#240

Post by eviks »

smokel wrote: post #30
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #18

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…

Spell check is a universal composable text editing property, great job for the OS None of the other format viewer apps are
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