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Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

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Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#471

Post by bayindirh »

1oooqooq wrote: post #463
bayindirh wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notion's data model is incredible, actually. You can embed almost anything into it, and make it work across your knowledge base. Databases work like spreadsheets, and you can embed pages inside them, too. In fact, every row is a potential page, if you want. While I prefer Obsidian for my technical (public and private) knowledge bases, life organization, and specific help pages I create for relatives live in Notion, a…

are you a notion employee? the data model is banal. just a tree with limited "type" strings for the special things. it's literally no different than any other file format. and they make it as difficult to export as all the other companies

> are you a notion employee?

What I do is clearly written in my profile. Tangentially, do somebody has to be employee of $CORPORATION to like $CORPORATION.$PRODUCT?

Banal is boring, boring is good. If they can do useful and novel things with banal and boring things (which they can from my experience), it's doubly good.

They give a Markdown and CSV version of the stored data, which is not that bad, IMHO. Still doesn't beat Evernote on that regard, though.

As with all tools, Horses for Courses, YMMV & moreover, Caveat Emptor.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#472

Post by e12e »

ctrlp wrote: post #466
e12e wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just cannot understand the appeal of these browser based note taking apps. Notion, Obsidian, Outline? Is it the collaboration feature? Why not just use Google Docs or equivalent? Google docs is also browser based? And obviously not foss or self-hostable. Are you saying "why does Google have docs app in addition to a note taking app?" (Google docs vs Google Keep, Microsoft Word vs Microsoft OneNote etc?)

I'm saying that there are already collaboration tools like Google Docs or whatever. I don't see how managing notes in such a tool beats having some text files. Working with a browser kind of sucks for write operations. It's fine or even good for reading. But writing into a browser goes through obscure layers so that, what? it can go into a database? Files on disk solve this issue. Grep over files or even a more robus…

But google docs is also a web browser app?

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#473

Post by thrance »

mmooss wrote: post #445
maelito wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I hope too. Trump's failure could be our far-right failure to win the 2027 elections.

That's been the Democratic Party's strategy for decades: Don't confront them and the Republican candidate, Trump in particular, will 'shoot themselves in the foot'.How is that working? On their part, it's just cowardice and laziness. There is no way you will win, no way they will stop, unless you fight (politically and socially) and defeat them.

This very much. Defeat them and then actually address the growing inequalities and social issues, to curb discontent. Otherwise it's back to square one in the next election.

I don't trust our neoliberal politicans (Dems or Macron here in France, whatever his party is called today) to do the right thing. If they get reelected it will be more mostly pro-buisness politics with a dash of mildly progressive policies, when it's convenient.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#474

Post by ctrlp »

e12e wrote: post #472
ctrlp wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that there are already collaboration tools like Google Docs or whatever. I don't see how managing notes in such a tool beats having some text files. Working with a browser kind of sucks for write operations. It's fine or even good for reading. But writing into a browser goes through obscure layers so that, what? it can go into a database? Files on disk solve this issue. Grep over files or even a more robus…

But google docs is also a web browser app?

Yes, I'm saying that if you need collaboration, sure, but if all you want is personal note management then I don't see the appeal over plain text files.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#475

Post by Xelbair »

jdvh wrote: post #78
Xelbair wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>government projects like these are not likely to really push the state-of-the-art forward. why it would need to be state of the art? it needs to be stable and 'good enough'. This isn't rocket science, nor quantum mechanics - this is literally a glorified CRUD app that focuses on documentation.

Because when innovative software isn't made inside the EU then Europeans will simply use the best products made elsewhere.

you seem to have missed the point that we are talking about glorified CRUD app.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#476

Post by Savageman »

sylvinus wrote: post #231

Hey. A few developers from the team are on HN and will be happy to answer any questions here! We also made a small scratchpad you can use to test collaboration features, if it doesn't get too flooded :) https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/docs/a3f0becc-f2b7-45be-a5e5-...

Really cool to be able to test this directly, thanks for setting it up.

I found something I would qualify as a bug: if you click on the right of any text, the cursor is placed at the beginning of the line, where I would expect to have it at the end.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#477

Post by WhyNotHugo »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #394
KronisLV wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, even if this software wouldn't be 1:1 capable of replacing the established players, it still feels like a good idea. With how much people (rightfully) complain about how open source is underfunded and with how often we're forced into borderline exploitative dealings with the established players in the market (the likes of MS Office, Adobe products, Atlassian products, even some Oracle stuff), funding the…

This will be a controversial take here on HN: I'm not too excited about governments getting directly involved in the development of software, let alone open source. With possibly a few exceptions (internal software for national agencies, etc.), it is way outside their area of expertise. I think it would be better to pay a vendor like Redhat or SuSE or Cannonical to do it. And, the gov't can write the support contract…

The governments fund projects which are of public interest. They don't actually have development teams in-house.

This is much like the EU funding open source projects of public interest through grant calls.

It's exactly what we want: to fund individuals who's interests align with the public. In fact, it would be great if there were a browser which matches this criteria: publicly funded and designed for the average citizen (as opposed to designed to maximise ad revenue).

> I think it would be better to pay a vendor like Redhat or SuSE or Cannonical to do it.

We don't want governments to fund for-profit corporation. These corporations typically have interests opposite to end-users. E.g.: less digital rights, less digital autonomy, more vendor lock-in, and solidifying their position of power.

In an ideal world, you'd have none of these type of organisations, but much smaller teams and individuals working on individual projects which can inter-operate.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#478

Post by j45 »

jahewson wrote: post #199
staplers wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is very much one of the most reproducible apps ever Would love to move to an alternative that also works in the browser, got any suggestions? I haven't found one that does what Notion does. I genuinely want to get off their AI training grounds but cannot. Your comment reeks of condescension because you are not the target user.

AppFlowy is pretty notable. https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy

Thanks for the recommendation.

Anytype seems worth checking out too. No affiliation, just tried out a bunch Of these and this is one that stood out. Appflowy looks well rounded too.

https://anytype.io/

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#479

Post by 1oooqooq »

bayindirh wrote: post #471
1oooqooq wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you a notion employee? the data model is banal. just a tree with limited "type" strings for the special things. it's literally no different than any other file format. and they make it as difficult to export as all the other companies

> are you a notion employee? What I do is clearly written in my profile. Tangentially, do somebody has to be employee of $CORPORATION to like $CORPORATION.$PRODUCT? Banal is boring, boring is good. If they can do useful and novel things with banal and boring things (which they can from my experience), it's doubly good. They give a Markdown and CSV version of the stored data, which is not that bad, IMHO. Still doesn't…

so they store the data in a tree with special types for text or images... and output only a csv or markdown for you outside? honest question, how does this make the data model relevant? internally it's the same as Microsoft word even, and you can't benefit from it as it export without the structure.

Re: Docs – Open source alternative to Notion or Outline

#480

Post by PoignardAzur »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #425
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #12

Why am I starting to believe that france is now more culturally shited towards being a new super power in this multi polar world instead of USA. Seriously , I never used to really think about france that much , but Emmanuel Macron correcting trump on live air really made me trust france more as a non US citizen.

If you trust E.Macron, I have a nice bridge to sell you. Trump is a liar, but so is Macron. France's government is working on a law to force the messaging providers to implement a backdoor that would break E-to-E. Macron has promised to end homelessness before being elected. It never happened. He was supposed to stop the rise of the far right, the far right has never been higher. He was suppose to simplify France's b…

There's a lot to things to blame Macron for, but your post is an incredibly bad faith caricature. Like, this:

> He was suppose to simplify France's bureaucracy to help entrepreneurs and trim the fat so that we stop burdening the new generation with crippling debt. The debt has literally exploded under his presidencies

Was Macron supposed to magic Covid out of existence? The "whatever it takes" approach he took was the best possible policy for preserving the economy, and exploding debt was the cost.

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