Live data from Hacker News

Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

github.com

51–60 of 79 posts

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#51

I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy. I can see some value in linking/backlinking à la an encyclopedic "See also" reference for discovering similar information that doesn't share keywords. Are there other disadvantages to an "all search" solution I'm overlooking?

We went for search with Emvi [1]. There are people who like hierarchy, but I think if you don't know what you're looking for you won't find it in a structure anyway. Except everyone on the team or you personally put a lot of thought into it. A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch…

> A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch as it is good enough.

Does it support dynamic hierachies? A Hierachy where each level is the result of a search/filter on the parent-level?

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#52

I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy. I can see some value in linking/backlinking à la an encyclopedic "See also" reference for discovering similar information that doesn't share keywords. Are there other disadvantages to an "all search" solution I'm overlooking?

> I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy.

Why not both? Searching is good for makro-managment, navigation and dynamic. Hierachy works well for micro-managment, relations and static access.

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went for search with Emvi [1]. There are people who like hierarchy, but I think if you don't know what you're looking for you won't find it in a structure anyway. Except everyone on the team or you personally put a lot of thought into it. A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch…

> A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch as it is good enough. Does it support dynamic hierachies? A Hierachy where each level is the result of a search/filter on the parent-level?

Hm I haven't heard of this term before but it sounds like it. The filters are additive, which means you reduce the result further by adding more filters. You can for example filter for a tag, add a group to filter for authors and then search through the remaining articles by text search.

I haven't found this feature to be that useful all the time, depending on the amount of articles you have. This is why it won't be in the new UI on day one (but will be re-implemented later, the backend is still there). You can find almost anything by using a few keywords, which is how I navigate Emvi right now.

[Edit] We have the plan to add configurable dashboard filters, which use the filters to show a subset of all articles, tags, members, groups and lists you like. I guess that's closer to what you described.

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#54

I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy. I can see some value in linking/backlinking à la an encyclopedic "See also" reference for discovering similar information that doesn't share keywords. Are there other disadvantages to an "all search" solution I'm overlooking?

It depends on what you are looking for. Your thinking works at least in a different way. You remember things by finding things that connect to the thing your looking for...

One could say their "Link map" enables such a thing but its not quite the same thing.

Personally I do really like the Zettelkasten Method which leans more towards a representation of thought in a written form. Ever wondered how the Zettelkasten "guy" Nikolas Luhman could be so productive(> 50 books) it was because of his Zettelkasten(Method).

http://www.dansheffler.com/blog/2015-05-05-the-zettelkasten-...

So every time I find a new tool, at least for me I evaluate it through that lens: how much does it really help me to represent my thought process. And hiearchical notes are not enough for that, at least for me...

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#55

I find that an ability to search the knowledgebase exceeds the value of organizing according to a hierarchy. I can see some value in linking/backlinking à la an encyclopedic "See also" reference for discovering similar information that doesn't share keywords. Are there other disadvantages to an "all search" solution I'm overlooking?

We went for search with Emvi [1]. There are people who like hierarchy, but I think if you don't know what you're looking for you won't find it in a structure anyway. Except everyone on the team or you personally put a lot of thought into it. A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch…

Ha they even have zettekasten material in their demo Video. Although the tool nothing looks not much helping with it nor mentioning it in the text...

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went for search with Emvi [1]. There are people who like hierarchy, but I think if you don't know what you're looking for you won't find it in a structure anyway. Except everyone on the team or you personally put a lot of thought into it. A hierarchy does not scale well. We tried to make the search as powerful as possible. With filters that can be combined to filter the result set, but I mostly use the textsearch…

Ha they even have zettekasten material in their demo Video. Although the tool nothing looks not much helping with it nor mentioning it in the text...

Well it's not primarily build to be a Zettelkasten. But you can use it like a Zettelkasten if you really want to, like with most writing tools. We have a few users which do that already. I wrote about it here: https://emvi.com/blog/luhmanns-zettelkasten-a-productivity-t...

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#57
Is anyone reminded by this as kind of a smalltalk image?

I mean an environment that is self contained and can be modified?

I wished the authors would think of aspects like that: how to modify the system without restarting it or needing separate tools.

Sure it looks nice but in the end its a browser with some javascript libs glued together with sqllite or something?

Customization seems way to difficult , so the tool can do a bit of tiny things that seem nice for me but so many things that I don't need. The GUI seems very bloated for me.

Is this just me? Or are people generally happy with such GUIs?

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#59

I've been singing the praises of this app every chance I get.. it's really pretty much perfect. * Free (beer/speech) * Self-hostable, including the sync server, which doubles as a web-accessible version of the app (++mobile access!) * Extensible (want UI elements that do things with your notes? Easy. Want to render graphs based on metadata you've entered? No problem. Your own metadata and tagging scheme? All built in…

> Truly cross platform > No mobile

No mobile app*

But the web version is usable on mobile.

Re: Trilium Notes: Markdown autoformat personal knowledge base

#60

I've been singing the praises of this app every chance I get.. it's really pretty much perfect. * Free (beer/speech) * Self-hostable, including the sync server, which doubles as a web-accessible version of the app (++mobile access!) * Extensible (want UI elements that do things with your notes? Easy. Want to render graphs based on metadata you've entered? No problem. Your own metadata and tagging scheme? All built in…

My biggest gripe trying it now is the poor keyboard shortcuts in windows. Hitting ctrl+s is a reflex and while it might not need saving, it's annoying that it redirects focus to the search. Likewise, F2 doesn't rename, instead tries to do something difference. If it proves useful anyway I'll try to contribute a keyboard shortcut map to be more consistent with windows or VS, it might be annoying until then however.

You can set your own shortcuts for actions in the options.
Post reply on HN