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

Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

zettlr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 265 posts

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#31

Post by selykg »

dmytton wrote: post #29

Note-taking seems to be a hot topic lately. I used Apple Notes for a long time because it was very lightweight and minimalist, but recent releases of macOS have been very buggy, so I decided to review all the options. I wrote this up at https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for-mac-m... which has become one of the most trafficked post on my blog in the last few months! The key for me is a) plain text fil…

I had a lot of weird issues with Notes. Notably folders wouldn't delete and would randomly come back after deletion.

Just strange stuff like that.

I ended up switching to Bear for notes.

I use iA Writer for writing longer form stuff like documentation and where I need to work with files directly. It's a great app.

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#32

Post by kd5bjo »

lukevp wrote: post #27
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

I think this trend of better knowledge tools is missing two very important pieces of human nature 1. If we have time to enter something into a knowledge base of any kind - then we have time to just jot it on a piece of paper. 2. If we dont have time (or think it is important at that moment ) then what solves the problem for us is not a knowledge base, but search . You see the thing about Google and Facebook etc, is t…

I agree, the most useful thing these tools can provide is fast data entry and robust search for most users. That’s the focus of the tool I’m building, https://NoteBrook.com . Reach out if you want to be in on the beta, it has been delayed a bit as I’ve been refining the search and editor experience of the alpha version and building super fast apps on every platform, but it should be launching in the next week or two!

I have a suspicion that fast data entry and automated search might be a red herring for this sort of tool. I believe that the real utility of my notes comes from actively engaging with them, and automation runs the risk of damaging that.

My own system (which is an entirely physical one) is designed around this principle; each step is designed to make me engage with my own recorded thoughts in a different way:

- Every note gets written on an A5 sheet of cardstock, with a unique slug written in large print at the top of the card. The bottom ~(1/3) of the card is reserved for cross-references.

- After writing a note, I look through the file box of existing notes for 2-3 related ones; these become the initial cross-references and are notated on both cards.

- The new card gets photocopied, and the original placed in the file box, ordered alphabetically by the slug/title.

- The copy gets turned into a flashcard by blacking out the title and put in a Leitner box (a physical spaced-repetition system)

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#33

Post by harritaylor »

scribu wrote: post #11

The drawback to working directly on Markdown files is that it's hard to synchronize your notes from/to mobile. If I didn't care about sync, I would use org-roam or some Vim plugin, personally.

I use resilio sync for this. https://www.resilio.com/individuals/ The iOS (and I assume android) syncing is fine, and it hooks in with the files API so I use pretext/ whatever markdown editor to edit / look things up on the go. For some reason resilio isn’t talked about highly on HN though, not entirely sure why.

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#34

Post by esperent »

bloopernova wrote: post #2

I'm really happy that the "knowledge base management" type of tools are getting a lot more attention these days. In my opinion, the more brains that look at this area, the better the whole ecosystem will get. I'll have to download this and give it a try, and compare it to my current workflow. (I use org-roam on Emacs. I'm not sure if people are sick of org-mode and Emacs being mentioned on HN? I worry about becoming…

I do think that the area of knowledge management is very interesting and worthy of discussion. When it comes to tooling though, I've tried out a couple and I don't find anything superior to a folder full of markdown files + your favorite text editor (I use VSCode, but I don't think that's especially important).

Systems like Zettelkasten are interesting to read about, but again, everyone's brain is different and for me a bunch of folder categories and one misc/daily folder is just as good.

On a purely personal level, any tooling or system more complex than what I already use is unnecessary.

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#35

Post by fastball »

Shameless plug: I've been building a similar tool for the past couple years, although it is not FOSS :(

The major differentiator is that content is based around notecards rather than documents/files, and there are multiple ways to structure these cards.

The most powerful way to organize things is with multi-parent nesting, where you put cards inside of other cards, and each card can have any number of parents. You can share these cards with others, and they can add their own parents to it that don't interfere with yours, allowing you to have shared cards that exist within entirely different hierarchies that are unique to each individual user.

That's a feature that I think is unique in the space, but we also have the links/backlinks and tags that you will see elsewhere (though tagging is similarly powerful in that shared cards can have tags that are public vs tags that are private to the user).

You can check it out here:

https://supernotes.app

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#36

Post by mftrhu »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

I think this trend of better knowledge tools is missing two very important pieces of human nature 1. If we have time to enter something into a knowledge base of any kind - then we have time to just jot it on a piece of paper. 2. If we dont have time (or think it is important at that moment ) then what solves the problem for us is not a knowledge base, but search . You see the thing about Google and Facebook etc, is t…

> I want a web browser that remembers every single page I have visited (#) and then lets me search them.

Did you check out WorldBrain's Memex " rel="nofollow">http://worldbrain.io/> browser extension yet?

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#37

Post by wenc »

scribu wrote: post #20
wenc wrote: post #13

Folks who are familiar with Zettelkasten: Would it be correct to say that most of these tools are identical to Wiki software with one exception: the ability to see "what linked to this"?

It's not that. Wikipedia, for example, has a separate "pages that link to this" view. What makes Roam Research different is "block addressing", i.e. you can get a reference to a single paragraph and use it in other docs (either referencing it or embedding it). (and of course a nice UX for editing)

I see. What else separates it from Wikis? (genuine question)

Side: I've read books and articles in an attempt to understand what sets it apart from other techniques.

I know Niklas Luhmann used it to write tons of books and articles, while others claim to have been able to use it as a "second brain".

But I'm still having trouble understanding how to deploy the Zettelkasten technique effectively -- a lot has been written about the technique, but not much has been written about actual use cases where someone has used it to accomplish something useful, which they couldn't have as easily or at all without Zettelkasten. Due to the lack of examples, I'm trying understand by analogy, by comparing Zettelkästen to something familiar like Wikis.

Re: Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing

#40

Post by bachmeier »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

I think this trend of better knowledge tools is missing two very important pieces of human nature 1. If we have time to enter something into a knowledge base of any kind - then we have time to just jot it on a piece of paper. 2. If we dont have time (or think it is important at that moment ) then what solves the problem for us is not a knowledge base, but search . You see the thing about Google and Facebook etc, is t…

> what solves the problem for us is not a knowledge base, but search

There are problems with search: you have to know to search for something, and you have to know how to search for it. In some cases this is an issue, in some it isn't. I have had many times over the years where I reviewed my notes and reminded myself of things I had completely forgotten. Search is useless in that case.

But in any event, there's no conflict between a knowledge base and search. They are different things and you can search a knowledge base.

Post reply on HN