[HN Gopher] Grimoire: Open-Source bookmark manager with extra fe...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Grimoire: Open-Source bookmark manager with extra features
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 227 points
       Date   : 2023-11-26 08:04 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | hschne wrote:
       | I love products with a bit of personality. There's tons of
       | bookmark managers out there, but how many of those take the
       | magical-mystical angle?
       | 
       | I don't have a use for Grimoire - not willing to change my
       | bookmark workflow at this point - but you can be sure I'll
       | remember it just based on that.
        
       | talkingtab wrote:
       | It would be helpful to have an overview of how to use this. I
       | understand that I run a docker image, but what does it do? Do I
       | have a bookmarklet? Can I import and reorg my saved bookmarks?
       | Does it tie in with Chrome or Firefox saved bookmarks? Etc?
       | Thanks!
        
         | devsda wrote:
         | Documentation is still WIP and incomplete.
         | 
         | As per https://grimoire.pro/docs/roadmap sharing, import,
         | export, bookmarklet and browser extension are on the roadmap.
         | 
         | Offtopic: I've heard the word Grimoire only from the Black
         | Clover anime and expected the author to be a fan of the series.
         | Didn't know that it's such a common word, so TIL.
        
           | hprotagonist wrote:
           | susan cooper and d&d, for me.
        
             | TeMPOraL wrote:
             | Touhou Project for me.
        
         | asdffdasasdf wrote:
         | (for now?) it's just a sample webapp. Like those TO-DO lists
         | exercises. It have a dozen random metrics dashboards about how
         | many bookmarks you add per day etc but not a single use case is
         | done yet.
        
       | 9dev wrote:
       | Aside. I completely stopped using book marks. Everything relevant
       | to me will be an open tab, and closed once read or no longer
       | useful; everything not immediately relevant enough to warrant an
       | open tab will probably not be read anyway, or the link broken
       | once I get back to it.
       | 
       | This has made my digital life a lot less burdensome to manage,
       | and it also felt freeing to drop all that unorganised baggage.
       | 
       | To all those bookmark junkies out there - do you really actually
       | read all that stuff, or is it just data hoarding? (And I don't
       | mean this in spite, I've hoarded lots of data at one point or
       | another myself :-))
        
         | mkotowski wrote:
         | Yes, but now you can run into risk of becoming 1000-tabs-open
         | junkie like me :-)
         | 
         | Off-topic, but given how people try to apply LLMs to everything
         | right now, I am surprised there is no extension or something
         | similar to help manage bookmarked and open tabs.
        
           | hendler wrote:
           | I use quicktabs
           | 
           | https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/quick-
           | tabs/jnjfeinj...
        
         | buro9 wrote:
         | I bookmark things in pinboard that I may wish to find again, at
         | some other point in time... I am helping my future self, and I
         | appreciate that by paying pinboard to ensure a backup of the
         | page is saved. I search the bookmarks every week or two, and I
         | frequently search back years to "I recall a passage, but now
         | want to read the full article again or share it with
         | someone"... this works even when the site has long-ceased to
         | exist because of the backup scraped at the time. I have
         | bookmarks going back to the mid-1990s, and I do periodically
         | (every year or two) look at which still work and which have
         | fallen by the wayside for which I have no saved page -- and I
         | delete those.
         | 
         | Additionally I have this page https://david.kitchen/bookmarks/
         | which is my browser home page in all browsers, and is another
         | form of a bookmark collection, and this is how I mostly
         | interact... where pinboard is long-term storage of bookmarks,
         | anything I interact with regularly enough is on this page. I
         | update this whenever I find myself returning to the same thing
         | for more than a few weeks.
         | 
         | I don't feel like I carry any baggage, the opposite in fact...
         | I feel like this clears the mind of the responsibility to
         | remember as this is mostly long-term memory and short-term
         | convenience.
         | 
         | I also keep my browsers in permanent incognito mode with
         | NoScript... so tab-city is not a thing I've ever done, every
         | session is a blank session. I view bookmarks like data on a
         | computer... it should be extremely portable across devices and
         | OSs, and so bookmarks should transcend the device, a specific
         | browser, and be available everywhere.
        
         | duiker101 wrote:
         | The problem is when I suddenly remember something I saw a month
         | ago that is now relevant and I can't find it anymore. That's
         | why I preemptively bookmark interesting stuff
        
           | progbits wrote:
           | This. I also edit the bookmark title to include a bunch of
           | keywords. Finding an article I have only a vague recollection
           | of on the wide web can be hard, but finding it in my
           | bookmarks is easy.
           | 
           | I was a big del.icio.us user back in the day, maybe self
           | hosting something like the OP is the way to go.
        
             | pbhjpbhj wrote:
             | Self hosting only makes sense to me if the bookmark search
             | is integrated into the address bar?
        
             | otteromkram wrote:
             | > This.
             | 
             | ...
             | 
             | Isn't submitting a response enough to convince the rest of
             | us plebs that you agree or have other strong feelings about
             | the parent comment?
             | 
             | Chances are good that, unless you're James Joyce, folks
             | will read through the entirety of your statement to draw
             | inflection from what you've conveyed.
             | 
             | When you don't agree with the parent comment, have you
             | kicked things off with, "Not this" or, more succinctly,
             | "!This" before making your counterpoint?
        
               | andygeorge wrote:
               | this isn't it
        
               | rpxio wrote:
               | have you never heard or read someone start a reply with
               | "i agree" or "i disagree"? in any case, what an awfully
               | off-topic, pedantic thing to get bent out of shape about.
        
               | wruza wrote:
               | I understand "This" below a comment as a sort of a sign
               | that it messages exactly what the replying person wanted
               | to say. Akin to inheritance. If you just reply with an
               | extension, it may not be as clear that you fully support
               | it.
        
           | bemmu wrote:
           | In that case I search my browsing history or re-navigate to
           | that thing with a search engine.
        
             | devsda wrote:
             | History search is not an option when my browser is mostly
             | in private window.
             | 
             | For me, Google has a mind of its own and has not been
             | reliable in giving out related links even when I search
             | with the exact page title from memory. Happened a lot with
             | stackoverflow type sites.
             | 
             | I use Firefox bookmarks and think it has a reasonably good
             | bookmark manager with support for tags and custom keyword
             | searches etc.
             | 
             | Tip: In Firefox you can search bookmarks directly by
             | prefixing searches with a * . It can even search bookmark
             | tags.
        
               | cyberbolt23 wrote:
               | In Chrome you can search bookmarks too. Start typing
               | @bookmarks and it autocompletes search on your bookmarks.
               | Same with @tabs to search through open tabs.
        
               | pbhjpbhj wrote:
               | Edge has helpfully copied Firefox's "awesome bar" in
               | doing bookmark search and history search with * and ^,
               | respectively.
               | 
               | Sadly Edge doesn't do tags, I initiate them by appending
               | keywords to the bookmark name.
               | 
               | (I have to use Edge at work.)
        
           | wruza wrote:
           | Having bad memory is a nice solution to this. You just don't
           | remember, so there's no problem.
        
         | barefeg wrote:
         | Have you tried the arc browser? It embraces having lots of open
         | tabs and organize them as you wish (or not) https://arc.net/
        
           | otteromkram wrote:
           | I updated their slogan just now:
           | 
           | "Firefox is the Chrome replacement I've already been using."
        
         | arthur_sav wrote:
         | For me the trick was to no hoard random bookmarks. I still keep
         | a short list of bookmarks that I visit often of very likely to
         | re-visit.
         | 
         | Anything else is purged.
        
         | creesch wrote:
         | I mostly use bookmarks as "speeddials" for frequently visited
         | websites in my browsers bookmark bar. Just the icons, no text
         | so it is fairly clean as well.
         | 
         | I then keep one directory for stuff that is on my short term
         | future "todo" list. For example, when I am deciding on buying a
         | product I might have multiple shop listings there.
         | 
         | So to your statement here
         | 
         | > To all those bookmark junkies out there
         | 
         | My response is that there is a middle ground ;)
        
         | rsolva wrote:
         | I did not stop bookmarking, I just radically simplified my
         | routine. No (sub)folders, no system, just bookmark everything
         | into one folder, lightly sprinkled with some tags from the top
         | of my head.
         | 
         | Since I never know what I will actually find useful at a later
         | time, I spend no energy organizing them. But having a simple
         | record of my (want to) reads is super useful whenever my brain
         | vaguely remember having seen or read something that comes up in
         | a conversion/project, but not where and the exact name. Since I
         | use broad on-the-top-of-my-head tags, I usually find what I'm
         | looking for within a few seconds.
         | 
         | This strategy has lowered my barrier to bookmark something
         | significantly, and reduced the mental overhead to almost zero.
         | 
         | Decades of overthinking my bookmarking habits and this has been
         | by far the most useful system!
        
           | vi2837 wrote:
           | I use the same approach, which works great for me.
        
         | dotancohen wrote:
         | For me it's now a tree of org mode files that quote that actual
         | relevant part of the page, and a link back to the original.
         | 
         | But yes, over two and a half decades of storing URLs with
         | little context other than their place in a hierarchy of topics
         | has led me to the conclusion that data on the internet is
         | ephemeral. If you want to save it, copy it.
        
         | Semaphor wrote:
         | I'm using only browser bookmarks, and only the always visible
         | bookmark bar. I tried a few others, but the friction, any
         | friction, is too much for me to consistently use them. And
         | yeah, I use bookmarks a lot. For a few different purposes.
         | 
         | First off, I almost never encounter dead links. That's an
         | absolute rarity and I can't even remember when that last
         | happened. That's more for reddit/SO links.
         | 
         | Some that I have as favicon only for regularly visited sites,
         | but not regularly enough to have them as pinned tab.
         | 
         | Following those, I have temporary bookmarks. That's currently
         | fantastic fiction as a reminder to myself to use it, that will
         | probably be gone next year as I got used to using it.
         | 
         | Then, folders. First is cooking stuff, from before I used a
         | recipe manager. That's around 100 bookmarks there that are
         | categorized into subfolders.
         | 
         | Music. Mostly YT vids that are not on Bandcamp where I have a
         | wishlist. Usually use those for songrequests on twitch.
         | 
         | Next is the voice folder, a long-term project of replacing
         | alexa with something fully local, everything I researched or
         | even just hardware sources.
         | 
         | Sesotho, for information for learning the language. Only
         | relevant when I'm actually studying something new there.
         | 
         | 3 gaming folders for build inspiration from tabletop guides
         | (WotR, Solasta, BG3; videogame guides are way too minmaxy for
         | me)
         | 
         | Following those are random links. I'm now roughly at 1/3rd to
         | 1/2 of my window size, everything that follows is currently
         | relevant stuff that I still want to lookup or make use of. New
         | ones get added to the left. Once something falls into the
         | overflow area, it's probably irrelevant, but often I do get
         | back to those links before that happens.
         | 
         | So yeah, I love bookmarks.
        
         | ranting-moth wrote:
         | I bookmark and tag a lot of stuff. It's come in handy multiple
         | times.
         | 
         | Even stuff I've read, if I remotely think I'll want to see it
         | again, I bookmark and tag.
         | 
         | I never manually go through my bookmarks, only search them. But
         | they are a pointer back in history for me.
        
       | hendler wrote:
       | While humans are still browsing (instead of agents), there is
       | definitely a need to manage our collections better.
       | 
       | I worked on something in 2007 for bookmarking, too.
       | https://vimeo.com/60251128
        
       | kristjank wrote:
       | I went from firefox to shaarli back to firefox now that sync is
       | fairly reliable, tagged and optimized, better search is the
       | reason I might check this out.
        
       | skilled wrote:
       | Why did browsers fail when it comes to bookmark management? I
       | mean seriously, it is arguably one of the most important features
       | for organising your digital life and the best that a browser
       | vendor can do is "folders"? This has always baffled me.
       | 
       | Who enjoys opening their bookmarks and seeing 500 links in an
       | unordered list? Metadata has been a thing for how long now, and
       | yet no browser that I know of has gone ahead and implemented a
       | proper bookmark management workflow.
        
         | oulipo wrote:
         | because it's contrary to their business model? Google wants you
         | to search for all your queries, so it knows in real time what
         | matters to you
        
           | skilled wrote:
           | I don't think that argument makes any sense. Do people who
           | use external bookmark managers suddenly stop using search?
           | Also, this isn't just about Chrome.
        
             | erinnh wrote:
             | I don't think the point is they will stop searching.
             | 
             | But they will search less. Which, as we have seen in the
             | recent Google anti-trust case, is also a point Google looks
             | at intensively when they introduce new features.
        
             | biugbkifcjk wrote:
             | I think the idea is they don't want people to use bookmarks
             | at all and just search every time
        
             | devsda wrote:
             | For many people, Google is sort of their bookmark manager.
             | 
             | Want to open Facebook? Search 'Facebook' and click on the
             | link.
             | 
             | Want to open your bank site ? Again google bank name and
             | click on the link.
             | 
             | I've see even tech people do this. The only bookmarks I've
             | seen my colleagues use are for internal reference wikis and
             | links which are not readily searchable.
             | 
             | I don't know whether this is a search or UX or people
             | problem but the whole workflow can be improved for sure.
        
               | pbhjpbhj wrote:
               | Browser opened to Bing? Type "Google", then type
               | "Facebook" then click on the link. Nevermind that typing
               | "F"+enter in the addressbar would have worked.
               | 
               | It's UX, but Google and Bing want it this way, so...
        
               | xcdzvyn wrote:
               | I've found I manually type out certain subsets of URLs
               | where possible[0], maybe that's subconsciously associated
               | with my impression that Google Search results have gotten
               | worse and worse over the years.
               | 
               | [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/<term> and
               | https://docs.rs/<lib> come to mind.
        
               | devsda wrote:
               | > I've found I manually type out certain subsets of URLs
               | where possible
               | 
               | If you are doing this often enough, may be adding a
               | custom keyword search might help. Both chrome and Firefox
               | support it. Very useful with random JIRA and other
               | ticket/id type navigation to skip search and jump
               | directly to their pages.
               | 
               | > maybe that's subconsciously associated with my
               | impression that Google Search results have gotten worse
               | and worse over the years.
               | 
               | It has gotten worse and I don't think even Google will
               | contest that claim.
        
           | melagonster wrote:
           | and Google can remember which results you want when typing
           | keywords to url column.
           | 
           | it almost work like I can access all things I need by
           | "search" with Google...until I found Google does not remember
           | anything after two year.
        
         | mrklol wrote:
         | I mean, it depends on the features. Browsers have bookmarks,
         | basic bookmarks.
         | 
         | Now there are bookmark tools which are archiving a page for
         | example, have full text search. And you can add more and more
         | features, it's an endless game - that's why we have that many
         | bookmarking tools. Everybody has different priorities and needs
         | different things.
        
         | keb_ wrote:
         | For what it's worth, I gave up on all external bookmark tools
         | and went back to using Firefox's built-in bookmark manager. I
         | enjoy that it's a CTRL+B away to see all my bookmarks, and that
         | I'm able to sync it with my Firefox account.
        
           | asdffdasasdf wrote:
           | With a s* for brains search.
           | 
           | It fails to search anything, even it's own folders! or parts
           | of the url. or the tags that gets added and removed from the
           | UI every now and then and are ignored in search.
           | 
           | heck there's a 18yr old bug about performance being so bad in
           | this search that if you have over 1k bookmarks it will just
           | hang for several seconds.
           | 
           | edit: that said, i also use firefox bookmarks exclusively,
           | but just for the (only one true in the entire industry) e2e
           | server backups. Then i just manually export them and search
           | outside of firefox, which sucks.
        
             | theonemind wrote:
             | That's strange. I use Firefox bookmarks pretty heavily and
             | haven't had any of these problems. I type any bit of a URL
             | or title for any bookmark I have in any folder, and Firefox
             | finds it instantly every time. I think I have more than
             | 1,000 at work (internal wikis, blahblah). A large part of
             | my never switching to Chrome came from how much better
             | Firefox worked for bookmarks. I use tags and ability to
             | show tagged bookmarks from the URL bar a lot, especially.
             | (i.e., "tag +" will show all of the bookmarks with that
             | tag, but actually, you don't have to type the '+' unless
             | you want to exclude matching the substring for anything but
             | tags, because it searches tags when you start typing it
             | also)
        
             | yborg wrote:
             | Agree with sibling, works on my machine, I have over 2k
             | bookmarks in FF. Make a new profile and reimport the
             | bookmarks and see if this all still happens.
             | 
             | That said, all you have is the url and description if you
             | don't tag, so yeah, it's hard for it to be really smart
             | about what you are looking for. As another commenter
             | mentioned, this is an area that an AI assist tagger or
             | search would be useful. But the industry want to drive you
             | to a search engine so you can be data mined and shown ads.
        
         | eviks wrote:
         | Why wouldn't they? What other areas of UI do browsers excel at?
        
         | marginalia_nu wrote:
         | Chrome doesn't want you to use anything other than Google to
         | mediate web access. Makes business sense for a search company
         | to build a browser that is basically just a search bar.
         | 
         | Other browsers copied their homework. Makes less sense.
        
         | orbital-decay wrote:
         | Classic bookmarks failed for the same reason manually curated
         | directories lost to search engines - because the mnemonic
         | organization doesn't work well at the required scale. Firefox
         | has tags though, and is generally good at the classic bookmark
         | management. You can use it to bookmark a couple hundred sites
         | without getting lost (more or less), especially with
         | extensions.
         | 
         | But what you _really_ need is a google-like, or even better,
         | LLM-powered search for the locally cached text of the pages you
         | bookmark. README for this software mentions fuzzy search, not
         | sure if it 's capable enough.
        
           | allenu wrote:
           | > Classic bookmarks failed for the same reason manually
           | curated directories lost to search engines - because the
           | mnemonic organization doesn't work well at the required
           | scale.
           | 
           | That's exactly it for me. Once I get a few bookmarks in the
           | list, I'll inevitably need to organize them, but then I'll
           | find I don't want to take the time to do that, so I just
           | don't bother saving the bookmark.
           | 
           | At the end of the day, I just want to dump all my links
           | somewhere and be able to find them again. I don't want to
           | think about where they should go.
           | 
           | I built a journaling app recently [1] (the UI is similar to
           | twitter, but for your personal thoughts), and what I've ended
           | up doing a lot is dumping links in there. What I've found
           | that helps is writing a quick note and adding tags, but even
           | more than that, having a link preview generated makes it
           | easier to remember what the link was later. (Based on
           | screenshots, it looks like Grimoire is also generating a link
           | preview.)
           | 
           | The fact that the journal UI is a "feed" also means I can
           | browse through my history and see when I saved the link, so
           | it has a chronological aspect to it as well. I think having
           | all these affordances for finding things (commentary text,
           | tags, link preview, chronology) is way more useful than
           | hierarchical management.
           | 
           | [1] https://minders.ussherpress.com/
        
             | james_marks wrote:
             | Love this concept, and the implementation looks nice and
             | simple. Nice job.
        
             | murermader wrote:
             | I am doing something similar, but far simpler: I have a
             | chat with myself in Telegram, that I can access on all my
             | devices (Telegram has a desktop app). If I want to remember
             | something, I just write a message to myself with the link
             | and some keywords. Telegram search is good enough to find
             | most stuff easily. You could also add tags with a #, but I
             | don't even bother.
        
           | renegat0x0 wrote:
           | That is exactly right.
           | 
           | That is why I included search on my bookmark manager. I use
           | it daily. It contains search.
           | 
           | https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive
        
         | wruza wrote:
         | My bookmarks are all well ordered, it's just a matter of
         | putting them in order. For documentation I even indent them
         | like this:                 Docs (folder, expanded)       Node
         | FS         Path       SQLite         Database         Statement
         | Syntax       ...
         | 
         | When I add a bookmark, I always select or create a folder for
         | it. I also clear any marketing bs from the title. I believe no
         | tech can organize bookmarks in a useful way if you don't want
         | to. Although I have some ideas, I bet that no fancy bookmark
         | manager ever thought of implementing them.
         | 
         |  _Metadata has been a thing for how long now_
         | 
         | It would be naive to assume that it will contain a systematized
         | coherent description of a page content.
        
       | crossroadsguy wrote:
       | After delicious and pinboard I am done with bookmarks. You know
       | why? Because I never access them ever again and if I do, and that
       | is ridiculously rare, finding them elsewhere in is actually
       | easier and faster. I am all for cute little services and one app
       | for one need, but bookmarks for me are not a need at all.
       | Whatever little need it has are squarely served by the browser's
       | bookmark service and I think all of them have one these days.
       | They're not the easiest but it's fine.
        
         | dewey wrote:
         | Fully agree, I used to be the same but if I can't find it again
         | through a search engine it was probably not important enough.
         | So far I was able to track down everything I wanted.
        
       | manojlds wrote:
       | The person who created the Custom GPT with same name will be
       | pissed
        
       | b1476 wrote:
       | This looks great and I'll definitely give it a spin when I get a
       | chance. What I'd really like though is the ability to save the
       | pages locally, I often revisit bookmarks from years ago only to
       | find that the page no longer exists.
        
         | pbhjpbhj wrote:
         | I used a Bash script for a long time that would take my new
         | bookmarks each month and download a copy of the page. It came
         | from an idea presented on HN, I would ack-grep it for search.
         | 
         | Stores using it because I use several computers and two OS now,
         | and the utility of it is pretty low for me.
         | 
         | You could make a donation to Archive.org and just a script to
         | check for an "archive-this" tag in your bookmarks, then pass
         | those pages to archive.org??
        
           | dotancohen wrote:
           | Do you still have the script perchance?
        
             | pbhjpbhj wrote:
             | I'll have a look, you might find the one I based it off if
             | you search here?
        
       | ankit70 wrote:
       | Browser bookmarks were always ignored. Now I just save them to
       | Pocket (getpocket.com).
        
         | renegat0x0 wrote:
         | I don't like any service that requires account, and is managed
         | by a corporation.
         | 
         | I use self hosted solutions whenever possibile. For bookmarks I
         | wrote a special program for myself for that, as no other
         | program, service fully ticks all the right requirements.
        
       | DLion wrote:
       | I use https://www.gettoby.com/ to organise and save my bookmarks
        
       | s1291 wrote:
       | Zotero can save webpage snapshots. IMO, It's a good bookmark
       | manager choice.
        
       | hruzgar wrote:
       | I use raindrop https://raindrop.io/ to manage my bookmarks but
       | would switch if this actually gets browser extensions and stuff
        
         | thenbe wrote:
         | I'm in the same boat, currently using Raindrop and looking to
         | switch. I'm currently eyeing Linkwarden as the alternative, but
         | I'm not sure how painless the migration will be.
         | 
         | https://github.com/linkwarden/linkwarden
        
         | adhamsalama wrote:
         | Same. I love Raindrop, but I don't feel well about keeping my
         | digital brain in a closed source SAAS.
        
       | sundarurfriend wrote:
       | Having a first-class UI for bookmarks really does make a
       | difference. I used to agree with some of the sentiments expressed
       | in comments here - that bookmarking is a write-only activity,
       | that just feels satisfying without actually being useful. Then I
       | started using Zotero for my bookmarks, organizing them into
       | collections, tagging them, adding descriptions ("Abstract"),
       | etc., and I find that I actually go back to them a lot more, and
       | find it really useful.
       | 
       | The UI browsers provide for bookmarks is pretty atrocious, and
       | seems to have been the main reason I didn't go back to use them
       | much - which I didn't realize until I had the idea to use Zotero
       | as a bookmark manager. It has a lot of the features that Grimoire
       | lists, including separate "user accounts" - I have a separate
       | Work profile, for which I've created a desktop shortcut the same
       | I do for Firefox [1], with its own collections and tags.
       | 
       | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37953035
        
         | LunarAurora wrote:
         | If you overlook some idiosyncrasies due to its main purpose
         | (references), Zotero really shines as a bookmark manager. It is
         | mature and has a lot of advanced features. The last one I
         | discovered is enabling hierarchical tags with an addon. [1]
         | 
         | I still welcome any new well-built alternatives like Grimoire,
         | and I agree with you that a first-class UI is important.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-actions-tags
        
           | actuallyalys wrote:
           | I've been really liking Zotero, but I don't use it for
           | webpage bookmarks outside of topics I'm researching. Maybe I
           | should rethink that.
        
           | dr_kiszonka wrote:
           | Are there any good apps that allow you to add bookmarks to
           | zotero from a phone? For example, I would like to easily
           | bookmark websites that I come across in a HN app. I found Zoo
           | for Zotero but it is pretty clunky in this respect.
        
       | Ringz wrote:
       | My perfect bookmark manager is Markdownload
       | https://github.com/deathau/markdownload
       | 
       | Just save the complete page, only selected text or only the link
       | to a markdown file or Obsidian. With downloaded, linked or
       | without pictures. My OS and Obsidian can search those files, they
       | have more (automatically added) metadata.
       | 
       | I can even edit them in the browser: add your thoughts, tags or
       | change the name of the file before they are saved.
       | 
       | I can (automatically) do with them what ever I need. They can be
       | used to (automatically) generate an always up to date start page
       | or a data vault on GitHub.
       | 
       | My local AI assistant can parse them.
       | 
       | Local, versatile, permanent, flexible, cost effective, future
       | save. No need for a bookmark manager.
        
         | s5ma6n wrote:
         | This sounds like the solution I could benefit a lot as well
         | since I am using Obsidian for almost everything.
         | 
         | Could you elaborate more on the "local AI assistant parsing"
         | part please?
        
           | Ringz wrote:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36933452
           | https://khoj.dev/
        
       | poisonborz wrote:
       | For users like me, finding a server like this is the easy part,
       | it's just a glorified CRUD for links. Well-working, up to date
       | extensions and mobile app are all that matter and where most such
       | projects (like wallabag) fail. I just want a selfhosted Pocket
       | with a similar quality UX.
        
       | ode wrote:
       | I haven't tried Grimoire yet but I've recently started using
       | Shiori - https://github.com/go-shiori/shiori
       | 
       | A big plus is that is a single Golang binary so very easy to set
       | up. It also has a browser extension.
        
         | Tomte wrote:
         | Unfortunately, you can only import bookmarks from a Netscape
         | HTML file once. There is no update.
         | 
         | That mens I cannot periodically import my Raindrop bookmarks to
         | shiori. After I've done the import I can either add new
         | bookmarks to both immediately and by hand. Or I do a total re-
         | import in shiori, which re-archives everything (and if a page
         | isn't retrievable anymore, that's bad luck).
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | It's VERY nice (and this is absolutely about to be a question
         | in the form of a comment), the one thing that is perhaps a
         | deal-killer for me that I'm actually unable to get a clear read
         | on:
         | 
         | It appears to be impossible to have a "public" page? How it
         | does everything else is perfect for my style, but I'd like to
         | be able to share my link page to my students without login?
        
       | bigfishrunning wrote:
       | I feel like "docker as the preferred installation method" is a
       | dealbreaker for me. This means that either the dependency
       | situation is out of control, or the author just doesn't want to
       | think about it, but either way it's a no from me...
        
         | plagiarist wrote:
         | I didn't realize this was a perspective. Yeah, that's true, the
         | dependencies may be whack.
         | 
         | I kinda prefer docker installations because I don't need to
         | guess what implicit "works on my machine" dependencies someone
         | had, and the whole thing can be mostly stateless or the extra
         | state is made pretty obvious.
        
         | Someguy1098 wrote:
         | What don't you like about a project needing dependencies?
        
           | evanjrowley wrote:
           | There is a belief that risk of vulnerabilities introduced by
           | insecure package ecosystems goes up with the number of
           | dependencies.
           | 
           | For example, a study on this was recently conducted for PyPI.
           | https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.11021
        
             | Someguy1098 wrote:
             | But it's inside the Docker container so even if a
             | dependency was compromised it's in a separate userspace and
             | chrooted so unless theres a docker zero day it should be
             | pretty secure still it seems like.
             | 
             | An updated Docker environment is pretty secure I think.
        
         | DandyDev wrote:
         | I think Docker is a great installation method.
         | 
         | - People who use Docker (Compose) can easily get up and running
         | with a project in minutes
         | 
         | - People who dislike/don't use Docker can at least use the
         | Dockerfile and Docker Compose file as a reference to learn how
         | to install the dependencies and the service itself.
        
         | caymanjim wrote:
         | I feel the opposite. I won't install anything except official
         | OS packages outside Docker, if I can avoid it. Sick of
         | polluting my filesystem with things that are hard to update,
         | conflict with other installed packages, mess with my shell
         | startup files, unnecessarily request root access to install,
         | install to weird places, don't play nice with other installed
         | packages, and on and on.
         | 
         | Docker is not without complications, but it alleviates far more
         | problems than it causes. I get annoyed when something is
         | released and _doesn 't_ have an official Dockerized version.
         | Especially when it's a web service.
         | 
         | I'm a Python/Ruby/Javascript developer, and I don't want any
         | part of those installed except on my dev machine. Unfortunately
         | Python has infested too much of Ubuntu to avoid.
        
           | robcohen wrote:
           | Have you given Nix a try? It's fully solved this problem for
           | me, and it also has Dockerfile generation down great. Nothing
           | else comes even close
           | 
           | What's really nice is using direnv to cd into a directory and
           | having a flake.nix file in it which changes the entire system
           | to what I need to do in that folder. So I don't need any of
           | my dev environment to be system-wide, everything is per
           | project. That alone has cut my system down to pretty much
           | just system tools (replacements for shell commands),
           | productivity tools (Obsidian, bitwarden, etc), and my
           | browser. It's just so nice.
        
             | quadrifoliate wrote:
             | > What's really nice is using direnv to cd into a directory
             | and having a flake.nix file in it which changes the entire
             | system to what I need to do in that folder.
             | 
             | How cross-platform is direnv + Nix? Do flake.nix files have
             | macOS/Linux versions?
             | 
             | One of the biggest advantages of using Docker images as a
             | package format is that it's (sort of) cross-platform via
             | Docker desktop and such on a Mac. I would prefer to use
             | something like Nix if possible if it solves the problem a
             | different way (being aware of platforms).
        
         | bityard wrote:
         | On the other hand, I will generally only try open source web
         | apps if they have a docker image because I know that whatever
         | the app does will be isolated to its container and if I don't
         | like it, I can just "docker rm" and be done with it.
         | 
         | Beats the tar out of the obnoxious curlpipe pattern anyway.
        
       | paulyy_y wrote:
       | Gotta love the generic LLM generated description
        
       | lucb1e wrote:
       | Screenshots: https://grimoire.pro/screenshots
        
       | caymanjim wrote:
       | This is a total nonstarter without a browser extension. I know
       | it's in the roadmap, but I'm not willing to even look at this
       | without the extension as the starting point. It's also the part
       | you need to get right before anything else matters.
       | 
       | Right now I use xbrowsersync. It's got major problems, like
       | sometimes (always?) breaking the ability to add bookmarks at all
       | when sync isn't working, having to authenticate with a long-ass
       | sync ID that you can't possibly remember, and not remembering
       | recently-used bookmark folder order. But it works on the browsers
       | I use and can be self-hosted. I'd love an alternative with a
       | better UI that fully integrates with the browser (in my case
       | ungoogled Chromium).
        
       | andrethegiant wrote:
       | Will give this a try. I had given up on bookmarking and now rely
       | on Raycast to search through my browser history, which works
       | pretty well. But I miss the browsability, and screenshots for
       | each page entry.
       | 
       | What would be awesome is if I could wget all the assets locally,
       | and then use a local LLM to search its contents.
        
       | aledalgrande wrote:
       | nowadays I save everything in Logseq I gave up on bookmarks
        
       | ri0t wrote:
       | In another note: The docker-compose file builds the frontend live
       | on the docker container. I've built similar technology a few
       | years ago and am totally trying to get rid of this kind-of "on-
       | premises" build process, as imho it is WAY to fault-prone.
       | 
       | Interesting to see this project pull it through anyway.
       | 
       | They also begin with updating a lot of deb-dependencies. I
       | imagine this to be hellishly difficult to maintain. Props for
       | even trying!
        
       | breadchris wrote:
       | I used to use Pocket extensively until I realized it wasn't going
       | anywhere with features. I have since moved to Omnivore [1] and I
       | couldn't be happier.
       | 
       | The devs are also ex-Pocket users and have worked hard to get
       | feature parity and then some. There are mobile apps too for
       | reading on the go (and work offline) which I use extensively when
       | I am on flights. There is a graphql API and webhooks you can use
       | for extending its functionality. Search could be a little better,
       | but I use the labeling system which works well. I also use the
       | logseq integration to keep a persistent log of articles I read on
       | any given day.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore
        
       | pbnjeh wrote:
       | Over 20 years ago, a small software company named Kaylon made a
       | bookmark manager called PowerMarks. Cross browser, handled
       | thousands of bookmarks lightning fast, pretty damned good
       | automated indexing that could be manually supplemented or
       | overridden just by typing in space-separated terms. Lightning
       | fast search; the indexing very quickly got you to what you
       | wanted.
       | 
       | And, local -- thank goodness. Web apps weren't really even a
       | thing, yet.
       | 
       | This also meant a compact, information-rich GUI, as opposed to
       | all the low-density web crap we're forced to put up with, these
       | days.
       | 
       | It's EOL. IIRC, in part browsers closing themselves off to third
       | party application access did them in.
       | 
       | Anyway, if anyone's serious about making a good personal bookmark
       | manager, take a look at PowerMarks, if you can somehow. No one
       | else I've seen has come close to what they had.
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-26 23:00 UTC)