[HN Gopher] Org-roam-UI - graphical front end for exploring your...
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       Org-roam-UI - graphical front end for exploring your org-roam
       Zettelkasten
        
       Author : coldblues
       Score  : 116 points
       Date   : 2021-08-01 11:23 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | noud wrote:
       | I've seen several posts about Zettelkasten lately. What is it
       | with this whole Zettelkast way of taking notes? How did
       | Zettelkast become so popular out of the sudden?
        
         | coldblues wrote:
         | The book "How to Take Smart Notes" and YouTube productivity
         | gurus, most likely. I like the method, it's a natural way to
         | structure your notes and spend more time actually writing them
         | than categorizing.
        
         | na85 wrote:
         | It's a fad, just like bullet journaling was a few years ago.
         | 
         | I'm certain that (again, like bullet journaling) underneath the
         | hype is a decent productivity system, but you have to wade
         | through hordes of breathless fans eager for you to click that
         | subscribe button, etc.
        
           | Barrin92 wrote:
           | it definitely is a fad but of all the fads the backlink based
           | 'unstructured' way to take notes is honestly a very smart
           | idea. It's the first time I've actually stuck with note-
           | taking because it sort of organizes itself which for me was
           | always the biggest problem with notes.
        
           | tmalsburg2 wrote:
           | Zettelkasten is just one incarnation of the hypertext idea.
           | Wikis and the web being others. Calling it "Zettelkasten" is
           | perhaps a fad, but the thing itself will never go out of
           | fashion because it mirrors our thinking in a fundamental way.
        
           | iLemming wrote:
           | It's not a fad. The methodology has existed since the 14th
           | century. It's just like with Meditation - those who firmly
           | believe that meditation doesn't work usually are those who
           | never practice it. The difference here - Zettelkasten doesn't
           | require years and years of practice to reap the benefits.
           | 
           | And to answer the previous commenter,
           | 
           | > How did Zettelkast become so popular out of the sudden?
           | 
           | It has not become popular out of a sudden. Different
           | applications for the slip-box method for taking notes existed
           | long before. Roamresearch has popularized it relatively
           | recently. I guess maybe they've done something right; I don't
           | know, I never used Roamresearch myself.
        
       | dangirsh wrote:
       | org-roam + org-babel + emacs-jupyter has been my default literate
       | development environment for ~1 year.
       | 
       | This package is a hugely welcome upgrade to org-roam-server, and
       | I'm excited to integrate it with my workflow. Thanks!!
        
       | ryanianian wrote:
       | I was a pretty big emacs fan in undergrad about 15 years ago.
       | Since then it seems like editors/ides have advanced and eaten
       | emacs's lunch, and I can barely understand my own .emacs anymore
       | due to disuse.
       | 
       | Org mode is the one thing that keeps me interested in emacs, but
       | every time I try to get into it I get hit by emacs anachronisms.
       | 
       | I've not used this tool or Roam, but are there modern org-mode
       | front ends?
       | 
       | Aquamacs is a macOS-flavored emacs distro, but it still
       | intentionally feels like emacs. I'd really like an "org-mode-
       | only" app that feels modern and lets me forget I'm using emacs
       | under the covers.
        
         | User23 wrote:
         | > I was a pretty big emacs fan in undergrad about 15 years ago.
         | Since then it seems like editors/ides have advanced and eaten
         | emacs's lunch, and I can barely understand my own .emacs
         | anymore due to disuse.
         | 
         | If I'm writing Java I'll definitely use a JVM hosted IDE like
         | Eclipse, but other than that I'm just not seeing this. For
         | example, I recently decided to try VSCode for a popular
         | scripting language and if anything configuring it to work
         | properly was actually more difficult than getting lsp-mode and
         | few helper packages working in GNU Emacs.
         | 
         | Spacemacs[1] is another popular "modern" Emacs distribution
         | that you may be interested in.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.spacemacs.org/
        
         | procgen wrote:
         | Logseq might fit the bill: https://logseq.com/ I've been using
         | it for a few weeks now after switching over from Roam and it's
         | been great. Everything is plaintext (I use it in markdown mode,
         | but they support org-mode).
        
         | ssivark wrote:
         | > Since then it seems like editors/ides have advanced and eaten
         | emacs's lunch
         | 
         | Is that true? I know that popular editors have tons of
         | extensions available (with VSCode leading the pack), but is any
         | other editor as _programmable_ and _user-tweakable_ as Emacs? I
         | think Atom was an attempt in that spirit, but its momentum was
         | completely killed by VSCode.
         | 
         | As an example, which other app will let you link to emails, or
         | specific locations in code, in your organizational tool?
         | 
         | I feel that Emacs puts the user in the driver's seat in a way
         | that almost no other piece of modern software even comes close.
         | The only comparable, in my mind, is the *nix/GNU ecosystem, and
         | that's about as ancient as Emacs.
         | 
         | ----
         | 
         | PS: One more option that hasn't been mentioned yet is Neorg
         | (Org+Neovim). Was on HN recently:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27802153
        
         | emptysongglass wrote:
         | I started from bare emacs configuration and can safely say I
         | almost never touch a line of lisp now that I've switched to
         | Doom emacs. I just uncomment some packages I want (like magit,
         | org-roam, etc.) and it runs off and configures the packages in
         | a non-conflicting manner ready for production.
         | 
         | That's not saying banging on lisp to get your emacs into that
         | perfect state isn't fun, just that now that I'm a capitalist
         | worker I don't really have the time for it any more. Highly
         | recommended.
        
           | atty wrote:
           | I'd second Doom emacs, I consider it the best way to use Vim
           | :D
           | 
           | However, I am using it less and less, and I find myself using
           | VSCode more and more. I now very rarely find myself using
           | Doom emacs or vim. I'd say for small changes I still use
           | them, but any time I think I'm going to be doing a
           | significant amount of work in a directory or file, I always
           | open it in VSCode. Not sure when that change happened,
           | honestly.
        
         | kkhcxxdf wrote:
         | > Since then it seems like editors/ides have advanced and eaten
         | emacs's lunch
         | 
         | Citation needed, my Emacs talks to the same LSP daemon that my
         | coworkers' VSCode instances talk to, and Emacs has a lot of
         | text editing features VSCode doesn't
         | 
         | Plus VSCode is just uglier, and is Microsoft and is it even
         | GPLv3?
         | 
         | Maybe I'm becoming irrelevant and I'm going to find myself
         | without a job soon
        
           | ssivark wrote:
           | I'm all for Emacs, but calling it prettier than VSCode is a
           | bit of a stretch :D
           | 
           | Of course aesthetic taste is quite subjective, but I think a
           | lot of people will agree that most modern software (including
           | VSCode) looks much slicker than Emacs (excluding extensively
           | customized outliers).
           | 
           | As for my personal taste, Atom is by far the visually most
           | appealing editor I've seen. I don't know enough graphic
           | design to articulate the difference, but I wonder why the
           | look & feel is not replicated more widely.
        
             | xlii wrote:
             | > excluding extensively customized outliers
             | 
             | I might be wrong here but extensive customization is
             | hallmark of Emacs.
             | 
             | I would find it very odd if someone wouldn't customize its
             | presentation to The Exact Way They Like.
        
               | neolog wrote:
               | Emacs is a text-based editor so it cannot be customized
               | as much as a browser can.
        
         | smoldesu wrote:
         | Look for Obsidian[0]. It's very similar, but operates on it's
         | own Markdown flavour (with imports for Rome and Zettelkasten),
         | that allows you to create pretty elaborate networks of info.
         | 
         | [0] https://obsidian.md/
        
         | michaelmrose wrote:
         | Such a tool would inevitably fall behind in what it supports
         | and would lack as well useful integration. It would lack depth
         | and breadth.
         | 
         | If prior to 2020 it would have lacked roam support. If prior to
         | this month it would lack roam v2. Then again its useful that
         | org links can link to everything from a page in a document to
         | an email which isn't possible if disconnected from the rest of
         | the emacs ecosystem.
         | 
         | What does it even mean for something to be "modern"?
        
         | gjvc wrote:
         | "Prelude is an Emacs distribution that aims to enhance the
         | default Emacs experience"
         | 
         | https://prelude.emacsredux.com/en/latest/
        
       | wudangmonk wrote:
       | Every time emacs comes up there's the obligatory hate rant about
       | how they moved on to better more modern tools with vscode being
       | praised but everytime I've tried it, its slower than emacs and
       | crashes more often or just flat out does not work. It seems its
       | only useful for js.
       | 
       | I'm always on the lookout for better tools but I honestly feel
       | there is nothing out there. My requirements are of course an
       | emacs but better, why would anyone switch to worse tools?. It has
       | to be faster, more stable but be customizable, its fine if it
       | lacks features just as long as I'm allowed to add them myself. So
       | far I haven't found anything.
        
         | CJefferson wrote:
         | What are you doing that is making vscode crash? Can you
         | reproduce it? I've never had that happen, and I am sure they
         | would take a bug report.
        
           | iworshipfaangs2 wrote:
           | VS code crashes quite often on linux for me, especially when
           | working with files over ~4k lines.
        
           | wudangmonk wrote:
           | I usually run under linux, with C or C++ codebases. I try it
           | every 3-6 months based on recommendations I read online, it
           | starts fine but after a while it slows/freezes/crashes. I
           | don't bother to do reports to microsoft anymore, wasted
           | enough time doing that with vs studio.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | xcambar wrote:
         | Did it ever cross your mind that comments such as yours
         | contribute to the rant you're complaining about?
         | 
         | It really is a self-feeding flame war, and I agree with you,
         | it's kinda annoying.
        
       | skuthus wrote:
       | You could do all this work, or you could just use
       | https://obsidian.md/
        
         | iLemming wrote:
         | But then, how would you insert a link (in a note) to a specific
         | line in some codebase? In a different branch. Or a link to a
         | specific email thread in a mailing list?
         | 
         | How would you attach images to your notes and manage them in a
         | git repo? How would you encrypt your notes?
         | 
         | How do you insert current or tomorrow's date in a note? How do
         | you find all the notes tagged with a date? 1
         | 
         | Most importantly, what would you do when you accumulate several
         | thousand notes, and suddenly Obsidian authors ask you to pay
         | for it?
         | 
         | Having my note taking system in Emacs has incredible benefits -
         | I have google-translate, thesaurus, dictionary, spell-checker,
         | Grammarly checker, etc., All right here, everything is
         | accessible without focus and context switching. And, of course,
         | I can change virtually any behavior of any part of the system.
         | And I never have to worry that someday, someone would ask me to
         | pay for "premium features".
         | 
         | -----
         | 
         | 1 I don't know, perhaps Obsidian has some of those features,
         | and maybe they are even better and more intuitive than in
         | Emacs, but I doubt it would ever be as versatile.
        
           | lovecg wrote:
           | I'd love to learn more about your setup, especially how you
           | attach images. Still tuning my own org mode config!
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-01 23:01 UTC)