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General Software Discussion / Re: I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten
« on: March 11, 2024, 06:03 PM »I also read a post on the Workflowy Slack from user Frank G - “I have been using Msft Word for Mac (Windows before) for as long as I can remember. I have also played with Craft, Ulysses , Scrivener, Speare, Author , Typora , all excellent alternatives. Today WF finally ate them all up too for my long form docs . The blank page with a few basic formatting choices plus WF’s speed (once opened) , simplicity, and flexibility, has made WF my go to choice for long form doc drafts . I will still need to export to Word (or Craft) for final formatting and PDF conversion, but 95% of my time I will be with WF .”
Essentially this refers to the Roamlike feature where bullets can transform into text blocks. Logsec has had this for some time too.
It struck me that it might be worth comparing the editors in (some of) the apps that I use, what makes them good and how Upnote compares.-Dormouse (February 29, 2024, 06:37 PM)
I did a short experiment using Workflowy like this - I thought it might be easier if I'm already using it for short zettelkasten notes. Being able to move blocks around is certainly an advantage in some notes/articles where there's a bit of brainstorming and of puzzling through to a, hopefully, coherent outcome. But found I hated it.
A bullet always showed on any section where the mouse was hovering.
And, worse, all the bullets that potentially go lower in the hierarchy remain visible. Can be solved with hoisting and folding etc, but not ideal.
Neither Upnote nor markdown editors help here because they don't allow blocks to be dragged. But OneNote is fine. and easy to put a link in Workflowy, and will also export to .md.
From a writing pov, what Workflowy is good at is brainstorming/organising/constructing using bullets as headings and notes as text. Options to view as bullets, kanban or cards. Exports cleanly to Mindomo, which then exports cleanly to Word. A good workflow once I switched to Word.
Upnote is fine, but has nothing that improves this workflow. It exports to markdown and HTML, but that's not quite as good as a direct export to docx (for me). Longform note writing is okay, but not as nice as Tangent. Its big advantage is mobile. And decent webclips for those who don't have other established workflows for them.