[HN Gopher] Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledg...
___________________________________________________________________
Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management
software
Author : thunderbong
Score : 237 points
Date : 2024-12-26 02:26 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| gwelson wrote:
| This looks nice but nearly identical to Obsidian. How does it
| differ from Obsidian's features?
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| It seems to be open source, which is a big plus compared to
| obsidian
| kelsolaar wrote:
| Why is it a big plus, genuine question? You do not need
| Obsidian to use your Markdown written content and are not
| vendor locked in as such.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| The same reason it is a plus for any other open source
| software. You can modify it and fork it if it's
| discontinued.
| jraph wrote:
| Open source / Free software comes with all the usual
| benefits:
|
| - you can fork and adapt to your needs
|
| - should the original authors stop developing it or take a
| direction you don't like but your started depending on it,
| someone can take over the development of a fork
|
| - you can study how it works
|
| - you can reuse some of the code to build an alternative
| product
|
| - you can contribute patches if the project accepts them
|
| - if you have to migrate, even if the format is specific,
| you can at least check how it works
|
| That thing being open source is a big plus, and Obsidian
| using a standard format is a big plus.
| colordrops wrote:
| That's like saying "you do not need oracle to use your
| bytes on disk". I may be mistaken but doesn't obsidian
| provide a ton of functionality on top of markdown?
| veidr wrote:
| No, just a little bit. Your docs remain 98% compatible
| with other Markdown editors. The functionality is mainly
| around a.) better UI for editing Markdown, b.) plugin
| ecosystem (optional), c.) paid sync (optional, and
| achievable otherwise e.g. SyncThing, your own rsync
| script, etc), and d.) optional (and very bad) "publish-
| as-a-website" feature.
| Tomte wrote:
| If you only use standard Markdown. But the advocacy often
| focuses on DataView and a thousand other features that
| are simply not available without Obsidian.
| veidr wrote:
| True, but it seems very obvious that if you add a bunch
| of plugin dependencies (or even one), you are
| deliberately choosing to forego "standard" Markdown
| (there's actually no such thing, but roughly speaking).
|
| That's why they're plugins.
|
| I do use the Excalidraw plugin, but nothing much else,
| and that is why I have an easy time making my Obsidian
| notes web-accessible (currently, via SilverBullet, but
| any tool that makes markdown web-editable will work -- as
| long as you don't go nuts with plugins, that is).
|
| Having said that, I think the reason Obsidian "failed" --
| to the extent that Notion and some others have massively
| more adoption amongst organizations larger than me and my
| gray beard - is that they failed to _combine_ their
| (super awesome) files-and-folders approach with a web
| _editable_ solution.
|
| They thought - obviously wrongly, in hindsight -- that
| _web accessible_ would be enough.
|
| It's not. It's the 10%, Notion etc cover the 90% (but
| with fairly bad tradeoffs, they have export and it works,
| but you can't easily interop with your data where it
| lives).
|
| But I've had such an easy time making my Obsidian web-
| editable that I suspect in a few minutes (or months)
| Obsidian will be like _heyyyyy... edit yo vault via web
| yo -- and for free!_ and then we will all be like _woo
| Obsidian boo Notion_!!
|
| But we'll see
| SamPatt wrote:
| The plugins are no small thing though. I replaced Anki
| with a spaced repetition plugin, now my notes can be
| flashcards and I don't need to maintain two separate
| apps.
|
| Also the UI for search and navigation is much better than
| just a collection of Markdown files. I rolled my own note
| system using Markdown before this. Obsidian is way
| better.
| colordrops wrote:
| So not much of a value proposition then is what you are
| saying? Why use it at all?
| brunoqc wrote:
| Not fully open source. It seems you need to pay to get the
| privilege to "Export PDF/Image with watermark".
|
| https://b3log.org/siyuan/en/pricing.html
| elashri wrote:
| It doesn't have to be free everything to qualify for open
| source. The source and licence are available. You can
| actually bypass payment if you want to do that as the
| source ia there.
| brunoqc wrote:
| Right but it's a bit unusual. I was expecting the "pro"
| features to be in a separate repo or something.
|
| I don't think I would even bother to update a local patch
| on every releases. I'll just use another foss app without
| silly "pro" features.
| oefrha wrote:
| The code is indeed entirely AGPL, I looked at license
| headers in the specific files implementing paid features. I
| wonder if it's an oversight. See my other comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42514304 for details.
| skaragianis wrote:
| The file format isn't markdown, instead a proprietary format in
| JSON
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Is it not open source?
| skaragianis wrote:
| It locks your efforts to the vendor/project which is
| different to Obsidian
| adhamsalama wrote:
| It is still open source, not proprietary, and you can
| export files to Markdown anyway.
| Pooge wrote:
| I'm not an Obsidian user, but I agree with their "file over
| app" philosophy.[1]
|
| If SiYuan stops being developed, are the files still
| readable/parse-able?
|
| [1]: https://stephango.com/file-over-app
| pg999w wrote:
| Yes, if SiYuan stops being developed, you can still get
| your notes exported as markdown files. Since SiYuan is
| open-source, you can also use the internal code to parse
| the JSON format notes.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| It's open source, so yes, and you can export files to
| Markdown anyway.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Yes, your existing installations on your devices, whatever
| they are, can read your data as long as you use the correct
| Repo keys that are used to encrypt stuff. In the worst
| case, you can deploy the docker instance with older images
| to keep going on.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Isn't Obsidian limited to markdown files? This uses a different
| format so it can add more features like databases.
| rlupi wrote:
| No, Obsidian is quite more powerful.
|
| Obsidian has built-in support for markdown, images, PDFs,
| canvas (via JSON Canvas which they developed and open sourced
| https://obsidian.md/canvas), and others.
|
| For databases, you can add fields/properties both in the
| markdown frontmatter or in the text and query it via very
| popular plugins:
|
| https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview
|
| There are tons of community plugins that support all kind of
| stuff: tasks, kanban, LLM/Copilot, graph analysis of links,
| charts.
|
| It can also be extended in JS, both writing your own plugins
| or via a few plugins that allow limited JS support.
|
| ---
|
| Obsidian is actually quite good as a NoCode prototyping
| platform for personal apps :-)
|
| E.g. CRUD:
|
| - Use templates, via Templater: to define the content of your
| data
|
| - Use links and tags to define relations and connections
|
| - Use dataview or graphs for views
|
| - There are even plugins to define buttons and the actions
| they perform, if you need commands
| tcper wrote:
| Obsidian sync feature is paid service, this project you can
| setup your own service
| hxii wrote:
| There are free alternatives, e.g
| https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync
| shim__ wrote:
| You can just sync Obsidian with nextcloud, Dropbox or
| whatever
| number6 wrote:
| Also you need a license for anything work related. Since I
| code in my work time and my free time I can't separate this
| clearly. To be compliant I would need a license
| SamPatt wrote:
| I use Syncthing with Obsidian. Free and open source.
| echelon wrote:
| Obsidian has a free git plugin.
| TnS-hun wrote:
| Its editor is fully WYSIWYG, so it does not switch to raw
| Markdown when you want to modify something.
| cyberax wrote:
| Notion.so, but free. Nice!
| k_bx wrote:
| I can't find how their multi-user collaboration looks like. Do
| they even have one?
| Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe wrote:
| Apparently it's on their roadmap:
| https://github.com/orgs/siyuan-note/projects/1/views/1
| adhamsalama wrote:
| I absolutely love this program and recommended it multiple times
| on HN.
| eddywebs wrote:
| Not bad ! Is there way to migrate existing evernote
| notebooks/notes to this ?
| la_fayette wrote:
| I am using markdown files in a private GitHub repo for personal
| knowledge management. For me this works just fine... Is there any
| feature you think I might miss from tools like these?
| adhamsalama wrote:
| Graph view, backlinks and databases.
| mxuribe wrote:
| I see the value in backlinks (I assume you mean backlinks
| between said markdown files, right?), and graphview might
| come in handy once in a while...but am not seeing the value
| brought by databases here? Unless the db becomes part of a
| top/management layer for said files, which adds other things
| like maybe possibly faster search or easier query of content
| (that is, easier than find/grep, etc.)? Not knocking if DBs
| can be used, with all apologies, am genuinely curious how DBs
| could help here? (Context is that if this person is using
| simple markdown files in folders/repos, then they probably
| don't need/want more than that and typical file management
| tools)
| rmnclmnt wrote:
| When people mean DBs in these note taking tools, they are
| usually referring to the Notion like databases: a
| lightweight Airtable-like table allowing a few data
| manipulations and analysis. Basically a CSV file with a
| nice UI on top if you will
| mxuribe wrote:
| Ah-ah, Ok, i can see that something like that could help.
| Thanks for the clarification!
| pglevy wrote:
| This is what I do with my Obsidian repo. Feels like best of
| both worlds to me. I have my files in open format in my repo.
| And I use Obsidian primarily for the editing experience. If I
| want to quickly capture a thought on my phone, I use the GitHub
| app to create an issue in that repo and process it later.
| praptak wrote:
| It seems AGPL but also has a paid tier which makes me wonder what
| their business model is.
|
| Is it only the hassle of self hosting that stops potential
| customers from having the paid features for free?
| SuperShibe wrote:
| Welp it appears from what I could find on their website that
| the Pro tier is needed to use all features even for selfhosted
| instances.
|
| Am I missing something here or couldn't people just fork this
| and pull off a vaultwarden?
| phforms wrote:
| I believe convenience and actually wanting to give something
| back to the creators would have many people pay for pro
| features, since it's actually "Pay once, use for life", which
| is a rare and welcome sight in this subscription-flooded world.
| And it still leaves people with low income the option to
| (legally?) circumvent payment. Not sure how sustainable this is
| as a business model, but I think it's pretty nice compared to
| being forced into continuous payment.
| mano78 wrote:
| I've been self-hosting it for three months now, and I am happy. I
| came from Joplin; I lost the offline access, but it's much more
| "expressive" and nice, so to speak. I don't miss any other
| feature, even in the pro version. Doesn't depend on other docker
| containers, I just used authelia for auth, and while it uses its
| own file format I backup the data volume and it's possible to
| export manually in simple markdown. The web UI is responsive for
| mobile use and yes, I am happy. Fits my case better than the
| others.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Same here. I am self-hosting it on the web on my VPS instance
| so I can access it from any device and anywhere in the world.
| And then, I use a self-hosted S3 instance to sync all my
| installations on devices, including OSX and Android/iPhone.
| Sync has worked wonderfully well.
|
| I felt with the number of features it has, this program simply
| knocks out Obsidian in comparison. I would say it is more of a
| Notion equivalent. I am currently working on a small self-
| hosted companion for Siyuan that lets users share notes
| publicly.
| r3verse wrote:
| I tried to give it a shot a few months back, but the lack of vim
| bindings were a blocker for me, and seems like it isn't planned
| yet. Hope to try it sometime in the future.
| coldblues wrote:
| I keep seeing these note-taking tools pop up again and again. I
| am heavily invested into Logseq already and the new database
| version is coming out soon. Unless these tools provide import and
| export utilities to convert your notes between the most popular
| applications like Logseq and Obsidian, only new users will use
| them and people with very few notes who can put in the time to
| move.
| janwillemb wrote:
| Creating a note taking, personal productivity app is an
| elaborate but common procrastination technique for developers.
| K0balt wrote:
| I feel exposed lol
| sbt567 wrote:
| After forcing myself to learn and adapt to some note-taking
| system, I too didn't find it useful for me _yet_. But i keep
| pushing myself through because I still believe that there
| must be some value that I could take from taking notes. Just
| I didn 't find a system that suits me well...? One thing that
| i find the real benefit/value from all this learn and adapt
| is "writing as a way to think" (is it by feynmann?). When
| doing complicated work, writing really help to ease your
| cognitive load and help you find the gaps in your line of
| thought. But, I couldn't find a suitable method when dealing
| with general/every day note-taking. I still have that
| "graveyard for thought" problem when writing general notes
| randomcatuser wrote:
| right up there with creating your own personal website
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| What is the benefit of the database version? I like that the
| backend is in text files. I guess there could be some
| performance/compression benefits to be had, but given the
| amount of writing a mortal is likely to do over a lifetime, I
| am not immediately sold on the idea.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| What I miss from this type of apps, including notion, is the
| ability to "inherit" properties from databases.
|
| I would like, for example, to create a superdb with basic task
| properties (title, deadline) and then create subdatabases that
| add more project-specific properties.
|
| This, I'll be able to create a single view with all my tasks for
| the day in a single place, but also add all the info I need for
| individual tasks.
|
| Unfortunately, for some reason, nobody (that I know of) built
| something like this into their apps.
| Dyac wrote:
| I think Tana can do this with the "supertags" feature.
|
| https://tana.inc/docs/supertags
| neodymiumphish wrote:
| Tana has had this for a long time with super tags, and Logseq
| has it (at least in the test builds of their DB version; I
| can't speak to the traditional MD-based version) in their sub-
| tagging functionality.
|
| I agree that it would be great across the board, though!
| int0x29 wrote:
| Trilium has attribute inheritance and is scriptable. The
| default task implementation uses templates though, not
| inheritance. So you would need to script it.
| sourraspberry wrote:
| I've been using this for a couple of years on my home-server.
|
| It's an Obsidian knock-off. It's pretty janky and the
| documentation is lacking. It's open-source which is nice... But
| the company behind it is ??? I don't know. They are Chinese but I
| couldn't find much about them.
|
| I use it because I can self-host it, it has most of the features
| Obsidian has, and I can use it in a web-browser from anywhere -
| which is the biggest feature for me that Obsidian lacks.
| rukshn wrote:
| I also installed it on my computer to give it a try, but then
| as you mentioned I could not find who are behind it other than
| it's based in China. So decided to just keep with Obsidian
| oefrha wrote:
| Took me like a minute to find out who are behind it.
| Committers on GitHub project point to two profiles:
|
| - https://github.com/88250
|
| - https://github.com/Vanessa219
|
| The first profile has a README (zh-CN, easily translated)
| introducing themselves as a married couple as well as their
| career trajectory leading to their current company. Googling
| the company name leads me to
| https://www.tianyancha.com/company/3153162387 showing the
| company's legal structure, the legal names of the couple,
| their address, etc. (again, zh-CN but easily translated).
| Looks like I can view their financial reports too if I have a
| subscription.
|
| The profiles also link to their social media accounts (on
| their own dev-focused community).
|
| What more is there to know? At least it's more than the
| average ShowHN asking for your email and sometimes credit
| card. I don't understand these "couldn't find much about
| them" claims.
| bflesch wrote:
| The link you posted gives me "According to relevant legal
| regulations, access is temporarily not supported in your
| current location." and "If your device or the Wi-Fi
| environment you are in is using a VPN service, please
| disable it and try again."
|
| I'm not using any VPN. Normal internet from Germany
| TheGeminon wrote:
| It is also unavailable from Canada.
| wumeow wrote:
| Same in the US.
| Sabinus wrote:
| And Australia.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I vaguely recall this being part of a tit-for-tat thing
| between China and the anti-Chinese. There have been
| movements to restrict Chinese access to FOSS, because
| forking FOSS lowers Chinese dependence on the West, along
| with (ironic) accusations that the "authoritarian"
| Chinese are limiting access to Western tech products. I
| thought there was some sort of legislative or judicial
| outcome that came out of it, but no luck with a quick
| google.
|
| -----
|
| _U.S. restriction on Chinese use of open-source
| microchip tech would be hard to enforce_ - October 13,
| 2023
|
| > U.S. lawmakers are pressuring the administration of
| President Joseph Biden to place restrictions on RISC-V to
| prevent China from benefiting from the technology as it
| attempts to develop its semiconductor industry.
|
| https://thechinaproject.com/2023/10/13/u-s-bar-on-
| chinese-us...
|
| -----
|
| _China's Use of Foreign Open-Source Software, and How to
| Counter It_ - April 2, 2024
|
| > Democratic governments also need to reassess which
| products should not be made open-source because they're
| at risk of being weaponized by malign actors.
|
| https://chinaobservers.eu/chinas-use-of-foreign-open-
| source-...
|
| -----
|
| Whatever the US did, Europe would do. Anybody in the US
| or Europe working on a FOSS project with Chinese
| contributors that they're friendly with? Has anything
| happened recently?
| hajimuz wrote:
| They open sourced it and you can self hosted. I mean, does it
| even matter where they are from? Why it's automatically
| suspicious when you know the authors are Chinese.
| rukshn wrote:
| True the origin does not matter, but it would be better to
| have more transparency about the contributors even if it's
| an open source tool. Because you can still get injected
| with a malicious code when an update is pushed.
|
| But I agree we should not categorize according to
| geolocation, but more transparency would be better
| irrespective of the location in any project.
| number6 wrote:
| It's this D and Vanessa - I think this might be
| Nicknames. But I don't see how they should be more
| transparent.
|
| They also have a forum and they answer quite quickly
| dammaj wrote:
| I assume you want to self host in order to sync locally, right?
| If that's the case, you can use Obsidian with git plugin and
| you get sync + versioning (all what git offers).
| number6 wrote:
| Sync is premium since some versions. Before it was free, you
| had only to provide a S3 bucket or a webdav location
| Terretta wrote:
| Which git plugin do you like? And have you used the plugin
| from more than one machine to a repo more than one machine
| also syncs with?
| asdf147 wrote:
| Why are you not using Obsidian itself? Anything wrong with it?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Logseq is floss(gnu license, closurescript) and almost perfect
| for me but it's totally mysterious to me what's stopping it
| from serving a web interface that serves files on the web
| server. It's an electron app with an HTTP API but for some
| reason the web demo only opens files clientside with filesystem
| API
|
| Anyway, one of these days I'll fork it and make it work for me.
| I also have a perverted desire to change the serialization
| format from markdown to XML so I can manipulate the graph with
| other tools that talk xpath, xquery, basex.
| phforms wrote:
| It seems like they borrowed heavily from Notion, Obsidian and
| RemNote, as far as I can tell (wouldn't call it a knock-off
| though, since there are sooo many apps in this space that you
| don't really know who came up with what anymore). But the app
| doesn't feel janky to me at first glance, it definitely feels
| more responsive than Notion and less "slippy" than RemNote.
| Although it is quite noisy with all the tooltips popping up
| immediately.
|
| My first impression is that they really wanted to include
| everything (even RemNote-like spaced-repetition flashcards,
| Notion-like Databases and of course there has to be AI too) and
| it seems like they did a pretty decent job at that. I also
| appreciate that there are so many export options, even for Org-
| Mode (preserving internal links, images, code-blocks, etc.).
|
| I like that it provides a solid, feature-rich alternative to
| all the cloud-first, closed-source apps in this space. But it
| may be too distracting/overwhelming for my use-cases with all
| the advanced layout capabilities and features though. Tana is a
| similar all-in-one solution that is really well done (and more
| innovative than this one), but I always seem to gravitate
| toward more focussed apps.
| oefrha wrote:
| The licensing is kind of strange. Self-hosted syncing is
| supposedly a paid feature, and there are indeed license checks in
| the code, but unlike your typical open core product with a
| separately licensed ee/ directory, this one including license
| checking code is entirely under AGPL, and FAQ specifically
| stresses "SiYuan is completely open source". As such one can
| patch out the license check (literally a one line change if I'm
| not mistaken, I only scanned the code) and still completely
| license-compliant, and one can even distribute binaries of the
| patched out version, though that would be a major jerk move. So,
| is that intended? Only selling convenience of prebuilt images?
| jraph wrote:
| My company does exactly this intentionally for everything we
| sell at our extension store. Everything under LGPL, license
| checks that you could bypass with not much effort.
|
| It allows selling actually free software and can work well if
| you do this well.
| oefrha wrote:
| Yeah I know this is a fairly well-trodden model recommended
| by FSF (okay, maybe I shouldn't have called it kinda
| strange). I'm not confident it works out in most cases,
| though. So I'm wondering if it's intentional in this case.
| jraph wrote:
| > I know this is a fairly well-trodden model
|
| Actually, if you have other examples of this happening in
| the wild, I'd be quite interested.
|
| The other widespread example I have in mind (which seems to
| work well) is WordPress extensions with premium features,
| but I've not encountered this too often neither.
|
| Edit: thanks all for your examples :-)
| aldonius wrote:
| The Ardour DAW is kinda like this. Downloads of prebuilt
| images through the website are paid, but you can download
| and build yourself from source. (Most Linux users
| probably have free access via distro package manager
| anyway.)
| rmnclmnt wrote:
| If I remember correctly, other examples of OSS code with
| premium addons and license check, on the top of my head:
| Bitwarden, Metabase, EmailEngine
| elashri wrote:
| I want to add a niche example. The famous Thunderbird
| addon owl for exchange
| (https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-
| US/thunderbird/addon/owl-f...) where you can open the
| source of the addon and change the licence checks to
| always return true.
| jraph wrote:
| I believe making paid open source code to handle
| interoperability with something inherently closed / paid
| (if not outright expensive) is a good approach. Would be
| users are already used to pay for a related provider
| anyway, and it's not like the features are so useful
| without the functionalities of the other provider.
| brunoqc wrote:
| > though that would be a major jerk move
|
| Would it? If they don't want people to do it they could just
| use a proprietary license.
| ghgr wrote:
| I can also recommend Trilium Notes [1], which I have been happily
| using for years. It's currently in "maintenance mode", which I
| personally see as a feature (no risk of bloatware).
|
| Self-hosted, great webapp, optional native clients and works
| offline.
|
| https://github.com/zadam/trilium
| McSido wrote:
| As another fan of Trilium Notes for years, I just want to add
| that there is now also an active community fork continuing the
| work on the tool.
|
| https://github.com/TriliumNext/Notes
| sunshine-o wrote:
| Looks cool, but as I have been on this knowledge management /
| productivity journey like everybody. Here are my findings:
|
| If you are reasonably comfortable with computers / Unix.
|
| - You need to first rely on a directory structures, filenames,
| plaintext, lists and maybe markdown. Stick with a "File over
| app", Unix approach.
|
| - Try to sort things with universal concepts: locations, things,
| people, events, metrics, howtos. A bit like the 5Ws approach.
|
| - Leverage good Unix tools: unix commands, make/justfiles,
| (rip)grep, git, fzf, etc.
|
| - Do not try to solve the problem through the Web. Because you
| will end up trying to solve web problems instead of basic
| knowledge management and productivity issues.
|
| - The smartphone/touchscreen is a major problem, but as with the
| Web do not try to solve it. Use your file manager or even fzf in
| termux can be adapted to be reasonably usable on a touchscreen.
|
| Something I have been wondering about is the "backlink" feature.
| It would be cool to link items/notes together through references.
| What I would be looking for is a Unix tools that can scan my text
| files for references to other files in the hierarchy.
| echelon wrote:
| Obsidian lets you live on top of the filesystem structure using
| markdown files, and it gives you links, tags, topic clouds, and
| more.
|
| If you use it with reasonable conventions, you can compile and
| deploy a web version with ghost or zola or something
| automatically run in CI.
|
| It's backed up, synced, and comes with desktop and mobile apps.
| It has vim key bindings and git plugins.
|
| It's a pretty sweet system that works nicely with Unix, and it
| adapts to multiple navigational and organizational paradigms.
|
| I've tried a lot of things, and nothing has ever come close to
| Obsidian.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I've been experimenting with Flatnotes
| (https://github.com/Dullage/flatnotes) for a while and really
| like the design. No notebooks or even folders, just a single
| directory with markdown files and decent search & tagging. It
| feels a lot like what happened to email when we gave up all the
| up-front structuring with deep hierarchies and just said index
| it and we'll find it when we need to.
|
| The project is just "good enough" for what I need, and aside
| from tiny bugs whenever I find a gap I can either work around
| it or live without. Constraints are a powerful motivator for
| both creativity and getting stuff done.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Tagging is a strictly more powerful tool than hierarchies, at
| least with same amount tags vs directories/categories,
| because an item can be tagged using multiple different tags,
| but can only be in one directory, unless you create
| duplicates or symlinks or whatever.
| cal85 wrote:
| I find the opposite. Being forced to consider hierarchical
| categorisation leads to a more powerful system in practice.
| It helps me create a mental reference to the item being
| stored. And it often causes me to see a better way to form
| an item in the first place -- eg maybe this note is really
| two notes, maybe this idea can actually just be discarded,
| etc. Or, on rare occasions, a new item doesn't fit anywhere
| (but is important) so I need to tweak the hierarchy itself
| -- and that's a good thing, once in a while, as it can lead
| to creative insights about the domain as a whole.
|
| I've found tagging systems usually become a kind of dark
| swamp where things go never to be seen again. The lack of
| structure means I have little memory of what's gone into
| the system, so I end up with too much duplication of ideas
| and inconsistency of style (mess). All this makes it
| uninviting and difficult to 'explore', so I don't use it
| much except as a dumping ground, and the swampiness
| compounds over time.
| kortilla wrote:
| Hierarchy doesn't make sense if you care about multiple
| dimensions, which I often do with notes.
|
| Sometimes I want to look at all notes relating to c++,
| sometimes everything related to a personal project.
| Directories don't support that without symlinking
| everything that mentions c++ into a folder for that.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| I really like tagging but somehow the concept could never
| become central to any filesystem:
|
| - I believe BeOS tried,
|
| - MS tried with WinFS but cancelled it in Windows Vista,
|
| - I am sure some cloud storage service bet on it but can't
| cite any.
|
| Actually tagging is probably mainly successful in cases
| where we can reliably automate the tagging such as email or
| photos.
| WillAdams wrote:
| For a long while I was trying to keep text notes in a
| structured set of directories, Tombo.exe made that a lot
| easier/nicer to use:
|
| https://openhub.net/p/p_7697
|
| sadly, it looks to have dropped off the 'net.
| ruthmarx wrote:
| I just use TexStudio. I don't use proper tex files, but it
| never complains unless I were to try and compile. But their
| navigation tree and tabbed interface for multiple files makes
| organizing things really nice.
|
| I can have multiple instances at once, and it's all managed via
| files and my filesystem.
|
| Eventually I want to build a web frontend to index and
| reference my data, but for now the above approach is working
| well.
|
| Unlike Obsidian, TexStudio is open-source, which I consider a
| plus.
| heavensteeth wrote:
| I'll leave my imcomplete mind dump below for posterity but I'll
| make it known that while writing it, I did realise that what
| I've invented is a text editor.
|
| ----------------------------------
|
| I had an idea for a deeply unix-y note taking software a while
| ago and I've continued to think it would actually work very
| well.
|
| Notes could either be an sqlite database (nets you compression,
| performance, easy backups, etc.) or just text files on the
| filesystem (easy searching, less lock-in, whatever). The
| "editor" just creates a new temporary file and opens it in
| `$EDITOR`. You can optionally name it after, otherwise it's
| named the current date.
|
| Want linking? Use a filesystem-aware editor. Want syntax
| highlighting? Use an editor with syntax highlighting. Want to
| sync your notes? Combine it with Syncthing. Want to search your
| notes? fzf.
| packetlost wrote:
| I do this except with git, fzf, and a simple CLI tool:
|
| https://codeberg.org/ngp/tsk
|
| Contributions welcome :)
| exe34 wrote:
| org-roam gives you backlinks. directory of text files.
| skydhash wrote:
| After using Bear.app and Things.app for a while, I've moved
| firmly in the file over app camp. Apps can be enjoyable to use
| until you don't have access to the app anymore (platform,
| longevity,...). Now I'm using Emacs with org files, but could
| just as well use any tools that favors files. Any novel use
| case I want, I can script it out in a moment, while still
| enjoying the benefits of viewing my information on most
| platforms.
|
| > _Something I have been wondering about is the "backlink"
| feature. It would be cool to link items/notes together through
| references. What I would be looking for is a Unix tools that
| can scan my text files for references to other files in the
| hierarchy_
|
| The only thing you need is some kind of structure, like the
| wiki link format or org link format, and you could 'rgrep' the
| notes directory for a particular link (vim and emacs can put
| the result in a buffer).
| packetlost wrote:
| This is _exactly_ the conclusion I came to. I still use
| Obsidian for a lot of things, but I 've developed my own task
| management software that uses plain text files and fzf for
| everything: https://codeberg.org/ngp/tsk
|
| It has worked great for me! That being said, sync and mobile
| usage is still a bit of a sore spot with it. It works
| beautifully with Termux, but I wish there was some way to slap
| a basic UI on top of a CLI application for mobile. Tk/Tcl is
| the closest but there's only options on Android (I'm mostly an
| iOS user) and even then it's not really ideal. For sync, I at
| least have a reasonable plan: IMAP4 or git-based sync. The
| roadmap and tasks for the project are tracked in-repo with
| itself, so it definitely works.
| withinboredom wrote:
| If you want some windows-forms-esq app development, I highly
| recommend checking out Flutter Flow. It isn't exactly cheap,
| but I've used it for some basic personal apps.
| packetlost wrote:
| I kinda doubt FlutterFlow would meet my needs, it looks
| like it's primarily build on web technologies which is a
| nonstarter for this.
| vopi wrote:
| As far as I know, it's the opposite (using Skia to
| render). Flutter for the web is a second-class citizen,
| whereas for mobile apps, it's quite productive.
| withinboredom wrote:
| FlutterFlow is just the UI to build Flutter apps, which
| yes, is built on web-tech. However, Flutter runs natively
| on mobile devices.
| ankitrgadiya wrote:
| I have gone through the whole journey similar to you as well.
| It is so frustrating to keep searching for that perfect app
| only to find that every other app lacks something or the other.
| For the last year or so, I've settled on just plain markdown
| and the directory structure for hierarchy just like you.
|
| I use my preferred editor (Emacs) to modify the files. I get to
| use all the functionality like key-bindings, search, version
| control. I push my notes to my self-hosted Forgejo instance
| (but it can be Github). Forgejo already has a web-interface the
| notes and links just work there.
|
| On my laptop, I have mdbook configured to watch the directory
| and build the notes into static website. So if I just want to
| go through by notes or read something I can use that as well.
|
| I tried finding solutions to take notes on my phone. But I
| realised that if its longer than a few lines than I prefer
| using my laptop anyways. I only ever read my notes on the
| phone. I've setup the same mdbook behind VPN so I can access it
| on my phone as well. If I ever want to modify notes on-the-go
| then I can use the Forgejo web interface as well.
| Beijinger wrote:
| I use folders for my data. a-z. This is the basic directory
| structure. b->books->management for example.
|
| Does not solve the fundamental problem of a file system that you
| also could file this under m->management->books
|
| I use recoll to index and find things. https://www.recoll.org/
| And yes, I have a 20 TB HDD. Quite a bit of data and media. If
| someone knows how to make an encrypte mirror of my drive with
| https://www.opendrive.com/ I would be interested. No incremental
| backups, if possible I would like to access it like a drive.
|
| For my notes I just use light speed fast nvpy with simplenote.com
| to synchronized with several computes.
| https://github.com/cpbotha/nvpy
|
| My notes don't follow the a-z approach but have regular
| headlines. I use nvpy as a mixture between a to do list and a
| knowledge database. For to do I have recently thought of using
| paper cards for kanban, but I am not sure. Suggestions welcome.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| > Does not solve the fundamental problem of a file system that
| you also could file this under m->management->books
|
| You can use symbolic links to connect directories and file to
| multiple parents.
| Beijinger wrote:
| I know. But this is asking and would get messy very fast. And
| what if an item has 10 attributes?
|
| John Doe has Birthday on December 12th would have at least 5
| already.
| dmje wrote:
| Obsidian. That is all.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| I can second the recommendations i've read here.
|
| My approach to knowledge management has been super simple.
| Everything is in git, in a big directory structure i've
| organically grown over time. I have so many notes.. 7 to 8
| thousands of them.
|
| Keeping it in git has allowed me flexibility to use it how i see
| fit. Sometimes i'm in emacs/nevom. Most the time i'm in sublime
| text because I have workspaces per project/concept.
|
| Finally, for mobile, I push them all to my own gitea instance. I
| rarely need access to my notes on mobile but it's been something
| i've been thinking about more.
|
| If anyone has any recommendations on how to read a directory of
| text files on android, i'm all ears.
| sroerick wrote:
| org-roam is pretty good. I came from Obsidian and wanted to build
| out some extra personal features for Bible notes.
|
| I made the switch to org-roam because i wanted to use elisp to
| develop instead of JS obsidian plugins.
|
| It took me a while to get over the learning curve but I'm very
| happy with it
| syngrog66 wrote:
| notes.txt
|
| add choice of encryption, vcs, backup. solved for many decades
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