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Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

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Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#121

Post by sunshine-o »

packetlost wrote: post #91
sunshine-o wrote: post #56

Looks cool, but as I have been on this knowledge management / productivity journey like everybody. Here are my findings: If you are reasonably comfortable with computers / Unix. - You need to first rely on a directory structures, filenames, plaintext, lists and maybe markdown. Stick with a "File over app", Unix approach. - Try to sort things with universal concepts: locations, things, people, events, metrics, howtos.…

This is exactly the conclusion I came to. I still use Obsidian for a lot of things, but I've developed my own task management software that uses plain text files and fzf for everything: https://codeberg.org/ngp/tsk It has worked great for me! That being said, sync and mobile usage is still a bit of a sore spot with it. It works beautifully with Termux, but I wish there was some way to slap a basic UI on top of a CLI…

> but I wish there was some way to slap a basic UI on top of a CLI application for mobile

I have only relied on fzf so far but have played with the various components of the Termux:API [0] for basic UIs, and it works well.

There is also Termux:GUI [1] with Bash bindings which allows to build more advanced UIs.

- [0] https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API

- [1] https://github.com/termux/termux-gui

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#122

Post by oefrha »

bflesch wrote: post #46
oefrha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Took me like a minute to find out who are behind it. Committers on GitHub project point to two profiles: - https://github.com/88250 - https://github.com/Vanessa219 The first profile has a README (zh-CN, easily translated) introducing themselves as a married couple as well as their career trajectory leading to their current company. Googling the company name leads me to https://www.tianyancha.com/company/3153162387 sh…

The link you posted gives me "According to relevant legal regulations, access is temporarily not supported in your current location." and "If your device or the Wi-Fi environment you are in is using a VPN service, please disable it and try again." I'm not using any VPN. Normal internet from Germany

Okay yeah appears to be heavily geolocked. Still a lot of information otherwise.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#123

Post by maroonblazer »

setopt wrote: post #118
sunshine-o wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like tagging but somehow the concept could never become central to any filesystem: - I believe BeOS tried, - MS tried with WinFS but cancelled it in Windows Vista, - I am sure some cloud storage service bet on it but can't cite any. Actually tagging is probably mainly successful in cases where we can reliably automate the tagging such as email or photos.

MacOS has had first-class support for file tagging for years: You can add arbitrary tags either from “Save as” dialogs or from Finder, and can then browse by tags in Finder or search through your file system filtered by tags.

Does the native file tagging see much adoption? I'm a lifelong Mac user and tried using the tags when they first launched, but eventually it was too much work and I resorted to using search to find what I'm looking for. Not macOS native search but tools like LaunchBar, Alfred, et al or apps like EasyFind.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#124

Post by oefrha »

jraph wrote: post #52
oefrha wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I know this is a fairly well-trodden model recommended by FSF (okay, maybe I shouldn’t have called it kinda strange). I’m not confident it works out in most cases, though. So I’m wondering if it’s intentional in this case.

> I know this is a fairly well-trodden model Actually, if you have other examples of this happening in the wild, I'd be quite interested. The other widespread example I have in mind (which seems to work well) is WordPress extensions with premium features, but I've not encountered this too often neither. Edit: thanks all for your examples :-)

I know there are some open source Mac apps sold for a couple bucks but you can also build for yourself.

That said, I assumed it’s fairly well-trodden mostly because FSF for as long as I can remember approved/recommended something along the lines of selling builds but completely opening the source. I guess RHEL arguably falls into the camp as well, but they sell more than builds.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#125

Post by packetlost »

sunshine-o wrote: post #121
packetlost wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the conclusion I came to. I still use Obsidian for a lot of things, but I've developed my own task management software that uses plain text files and fzf for everything: https://codeberg.org/ngp/tsk It has worked great for me! That being said, sync and mobile usage is still a bit of a sore spot with it. It works beautifully with Termux, but I wish there was some way to slap a basic UI on top of a CLI…

> but I wish there was some way to slap a basic UI on top of a CLI application for mobile I have only relied on fzf so far but have played with the various components of the Termux:API [0] for basic UIs, and it works well. There is also Termux:GUI [1] with Bash bindings which allows to build more advanced UIs. - [0] https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API - [1] https://github.com/termux/termux-gui

I'll have to look at Termux GUI again. I've tried poking around with Tasker and it's Termux plugin but it seems so confusing and poorly documented that I'd rather just write a native app at that point lol

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#126

Post by melagonster »

sunshine-o wrote: post #56

Looks cool, but as I have been on this knowledge management / productivity journey like everybody. Here are my findings: If you are reasonably comfortable with computers / Unix. - You need to first rely on a directory structures, filenames, plaintext, lists and maybe markdown. Stick with a "File over app", Unix approach. - Try to sort things with universal concepts: locations, things, people, events, metrics, howtos.…

>Something I have been wondering about is the "backlink" feature.

I trust this is why everyone tries to rely on network-like structure.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#127

Post by veidr »

colordrops wrote: post #112
veidr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, just a little bit. Your docs remain 98% compatible with other Markdown editors. The functionality is mainly around a.) better UI for editing Markdown, b.) plugin ecosystem (optional), c.) paid sync (optional, and achievable otherwise e.g. SyncThing, your own rsync script, etc), and d.) optional (and very bad) "publish-as-a-website" feature.

So not much of a value proposition then is what you are saying? Why use it at all?

Well I'm not an evangelist of the app or anything, but I use it because it has the best UI I've found so far for editing markdown collections.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#128

Post by nxobject »

maroonblazer wrote: post #123
setopt wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacOS has had first-class support for file tagging for years: You can add arbitrary tags either from “Save as” dialogs or from Finder, and can then browse by tags in Finder or search through your file system filtered by tags.

Does the native file tagging see much adoption? I'm a lifelong Mac user and tried using the tags when they first launched, but eventually it was too much work and I resorted to using search to find what I'm looking for. Not macOS native search but tools like LaunchBar, Alfred, et al or apps like EasyFind.

Colours, yes – but then again I worked in a print shop that'd been using Apple since MacOS 8, so they might be used to those quirks.

Re: Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software

#130

Post by xoa »

jraph wrote: post #52
oefrha wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I know this is a fairly well-trodden model recommended by FSF (okay, maybe I shouldn’t have called it kinda strange). I’m not confident it works out in most cases, though. So I’m wondering if it’s intentional in this case.

> I know this is a fairly well-trodden model Actually, if you have other examples of this happening in the wild, I'd be quite interested. The other widespread example I have in mind (which seems to work well) is WordPress extensions with premium features, but I've not encountered this too often neither. Edit: thanks all for your examples :-)

A very cool entertainment one (vs other good examples given so far) that got some nice attention on HN earlier this year [0] is the videogame Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Full GPL3, wonderful fun with a lot of great effort put in and very active ongoing development. You can hack away on it and compile it yourself, but then there are also convenience paid versions on the all the major platforms that seem to do reasonably well.

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0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39773641

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