Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A structured note-taking app for personal use

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 156 posts

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#141

Post by jauntywundrkind »

eviks wrote: post #67
Ringz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Joplin's developer decided to put all Markdown files into a database and thus give up all the advantages of a flat file system, I have uninstalled Joplin. In my view, the last discussion in Joplin's forum on this topic further discredited the developer.

The linked discussion also lists some huge limitations of the flat markdown file system, how did he discredit himself?

I loved the TinaCMS blog post on how they still use flat files as their source of truth, but have a level.js database that powers a bunch of their functionality. https://tina.io/blog/Tina-CMS--Leveljs/

You can blow up the db & regenerate it very quickly. All the data is still flat files. But the advanced functions harvest & are derived from the source of truth. Seems like a perfect compromise.

I haven't done it yet but I have a git-auto-cimmit project I intend to use with logseq, that'll help me better keep a record of changes over time. That ability to have a flat file source of truth feels hugely hugely empowering to me, and I have a hard time imagining having anything else.

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#142

Post by burnished »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #80
burnished wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - but it is a departure in tone and sandwiched by more normal and productive comments (from that dev). It isnt ideal but it is also a pretty normal and minor human mistake (growing frustrated and then short to be specific). And the previous comments were claiming that this project's data was 'proprietary' and not 'open' and the situation was inexcusable, basically because they assumed a database was this big sca…

Sure, it's no big deal and it's completely understandable. I just wouldn't characterise it as "incredibly polite". I think file system vs database storage is very much about trade-offs. Unfortunately the debate descends too quickly into who is right and who is wrong. It's always difficult for developers to talk to users who often really don't know what they are talking about. I know that very well. The only thing you…

Oh! That makes sense, I'm a little jealous then. To me the way that discussion did not crash and burn due to a little friction was incredible

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#143

Post by eviks »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #141
eviks wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked discussion also lists some huge limitations of the flat markdown file system, how did he discredit himself?

I loved the TinaCMS blog post on how they still use flat files as their source of truth, but have a level.js database that powers a bunch of their functionality. https://tina.io/blog/Tina-CMS--Leveljs/ You can blow up the db & regenerate it very quickly. All the data is still flat files. But the advanced functions harvest & are derived from the source of truth. Seems like a perfect compromise. I haven't done it yet b…

You can blow one database (level), but not the second one (git) which you also need to sync, and this doesn't cover the issues of changing the data layout, git isn't always great in tracking those (doesn't store renames). Then also all your data is duplicated in a git db and a flat file db

(they also don't support smartphones?)

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#144

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

bayindirh wrote: post #59
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"? I tried it a few months ago because of all the hype, and from a quick try I didn't see anything useful that my current choice (Joplin) didn't have, but from what you are saying, maybe I didn't try for long enough? I like Joplin, one of its strong points being that it's open source, but I'd be willing to switch if a…

> In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"? It's search is extremely fast, plus with a bit of metadata, you can pack tons of information into a standard markdown file. Moreover, when you start to add more and more knowledge, you start to connect notes to each other, which creates a Zettelkasten-like connected notes web. I write gigantic notes generally, bu…

I tried logseq and obsidian and I'd argue the opposite, obsidian does everything while logseq is good at structuring your text and querying it.

The thing i missed the most is the outline style, where every block can be queried and nested bloxks inherit tags from parent blocks. Huge for note taking

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#146

Post by bayindirh »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #144
bayindirh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In which way does Obsidian "create value and extract structure and knowledge from your Markdown files"? It's search is extremely fast, plus with a bit of metadata, you can pack tons of information into a standard markdown file. Moreover, when you start to add more and more knowledge, you start to connect notes to each other, which creates a Zettelkasten-like connected notes web. I write gigantic notes generally, bu…

I tried logseq and obsidian and I'd argue the opposite, obsidian does everything while logseq is good at structuring your text and querying it. The thing i missed the most is the outline style, where every block can be queried and nested bloxks inherit tags from parent blocks. Huge for note taking

I think that's a fair take, and I believe everybody's brain works a little differently.

This is why I'm a big believer of horses for courses approach about everything in life. If logseq works better for you, more power to you. I believe and love huge text files with tons information, so Obsidian and similar tools works better for me.

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#147

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

bayindirh wrote: post #146
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried logseq and obsidian and I'd argue the opposite, obsidian does everything while logseq is good at structuring your text and querying it. The thing i missed the most is the outline style, where every block can be queried and nested bloxks inherit tags from parent blocks. Huge for note taking

I think that's a fair take, and I believe everybody's brain works a little differently. This is why I'm a big believer of horses for courses approach about everything in life. If logseq works better for you, more power to you. I believe and love huge text files with tons information, so Obsidian and similar tools works better for me.

Sorry I shouldn't have come through as "obsidian is worse", that's not the intent, my point was mostly about "obsidian does everything because it has plugins".

I do have a reason for avoiding obsidian, which is the one I outlined, but your case is totally legit AND a good reason for choosing obsidian over logseq.

The outline vs non-outline is really the big difference between the two. I'm not sure if it's possible to have both approaches in a single editor given the huge difference in behavior

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#148

Post by Aicy »

mejutoco wrote: post #126
Aicy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent lots of time with notion and obsidian and this is what I came to as well. What I do now is have markdown files, and use the OS folder system for organising. I then use OneDrive for syncing - this works perfectly fine between MacOS and Windows, and for both I use Visual Studio Code for editing. For android I use an app called FolderSync to sync and TMarkor for editing. Has been working perfectly for over a yea…

Obsidian also uses markdown files, so you could have stayed with it and backup the folders normally, if you do not want to pay for the syncing.

I don't like how anti folders Obsidian is, the whole tagging way of organising is foreign to me.

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#149

Post by Aicy »

stack_underflow wrote: post #127
Aicy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent lots of time with notion and obsidian and this is what I came to as well. What I do now is have markdown files, and use the OS folder system for organising. I then use OneDrive for syncing - this works perfectly fine between MacOS and Windows, and for both I use Visual Studio Code for editing. For android I use an app called FolderSync to sync and TMarkor for editing. Has been working perfectly for over a yea…

Just curious, any reason you're using TMarkor instead of Markor? ( https://github.com/gsantner/markor/ , https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.gsantner.m... ) Only asking since this was also the editor I ended up settling on in Android, but it seems like TMarkor is just a repackaging of Markor without any references to its forked(?) source. My requirement was that the editor had to be open source so that…

I didn't really think about it much, I just searched for markdown editor on the play store and used the first one that worked.

Re: A structured note-taking app for personal use

#150

Post by atoav »

uxp8u61q wrote: post #140
atoav wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on which notes you take. I still have academic notes from 15 years ago that are useful.

I'm an academic. Any kind of note that I didn't migrate to a durable support from more than a year ago is basically gone.

I constantly have book X that I read ages ago where I need to find point Y. My notes are valuable for that. But I and my note-taking are not universal.

But even if I it wasn't I don't like to think about the lifetime of any thought as I note it down. This os a distraction I don't need. If the closet with the notes in it fails, I want to be able to read them still.

Post reply on HN