Author Topic: I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten (Read 497078 times)

Dormouse · « **Reply #900 on:** April 12, 2021, 01:53 PM »

I thought it might be helpful to give an idea of the main PC programs that I'm using now. (I've ignored programs used for unrelated purposes.)
Some aren't in frequent use, but are an essential part of the system.
It's a very different system to the one I I had when I started this thread. Evernote and OneNote are out.
Some programs have databases, but everything is saved regularly into individual files. The main programs are cross-platform and I have them synced on all devices.
It's organised with inputs at the top, outputs on the right, and supporting programs below.

I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten

Mindomo is very new, and might not work out, but it fits a clear gap in my system previously tackled with a range of disconnected approaches - a successful bodge job but not the smoothest for workflow or efficiency.

I used it to do the diagram. All floating topics, which is why they don't line up properly. Multitudes of templates and themes, but none quite fitted. I did look at doing a simple change, but quickly learned how detailed and technical some of the configurations were. Will take me a long time to learn those and I'm determined to spend most of my time producing something rather than just learning, so it will be a long journey, even assuming I stay on the path.

Always possible I have forgotten a number of important parts of the system.

wraith808 · « **Reply #901 on:** April 12, 2021, 03:27 PM »

I love seeing your processes, as they point out places that I can improve mine. I'd never looked at my Zettel from a perspective of taking things from my browser, other than what I explicitly consume. After seeing how integrated your browser was with your process, I looked for, and found, a webpage to MD converter that clipped from web pages in VS Code. Finding that minimizes one other tool that I use - Notion. I used that as a storage space for my web clippings, and used automation to get things out when needed. This skips that step!

Dormouse · « **Reply #902 on:** April 13, 2021, 11:34 AM »

Thanks. I'm nibbling away at it, while still trying to get some stuff done.

The big issue I have now in the zettelkasten is the file management. I need to refine programs for doing that. Obsidian doesn't really: it does its bit with its own files, but not files in general. Was always going to be crucial with everything in files. I have ways of managing them, but not a refined system.

Here's the summary of my zettelkasten, as previously described.

Screenshot_20210413-172048_DrawExpress Lite.jpg

I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten

Dormouse · « **Reply #903 on:** April 13, 2021, 03:03 PM »

The big issue I have now in the zettelkasten is the file management.
-Dormouse (April 13, 2021, 11:34 AM)

I have many file managers & TagSpaces. Plus Search utilities.
In the past, I've found that I tend to have a preferred file manager and setup for particular activities. But none of them jumped out at me once I was doing zettelkasten type notes in .md files. I probably don't want to change Directory Opus, which has been my general go to. I like Q-Dir for shuffling files between folders.
Will need to think about XYplorer more.
dk about TagSpaces. I suspect that I will stop using it. I like the idea, but I'm not sure it can be configured as part of a simple and efficient workflow - display is a bit noisy but also not as detailed as is needed for huge numbers of files.
I have OneCommander installed (v2 + v3 beta), and look at it from time to time. The attraction is Miller columns, and that does offer a genuine alternative in the way the file system is presented.
I like mouse rather than keyboard, which is different to many users, and many explorers which seem optimised for keyboard with less attention to mouse options.

wraith808 · « **Reply #904 on:** April 13, 2021, 05:01 PM »

I already stopped using TagSpaces. With largish collections of documents, it really lags. I'm just using tags in my md documents for the markdown, and one of the editors that I'm using - Deepdwn- categorizes by the tags in the yaml.

Dormouse · « **Reply #905 on:** April 13, 2021, 05:52 PM »

I already stopped using TagSpaces. With largish collections of documents, it really lags.
-wraith808 (April 13, 2021, 05:01 PM)

It does. And the interface just isn't showing me enough. I don't remember it being like that on the desktop - different resolution, faster processor - but this ought not to be slow. So TagSpaces will go. That's OK, not invested much in it overall.

Still dk about Xyplorer. Tags etc aren't multi-platform etc, but it does at least have them. Test documents aren't really an issue because, as you say, they are typed in, but other types of files are. So I will look at how well it might do that.

But my big winner will be OneCommander (v3 beta). For the purpose of going through a very large collection of files, I find that the Miller Column approach suits me (and the mouse) perfectly. Has 7 colour tags - so something for very temporary visual use. But it's no use for tagging.

Dormouse · « **Reply #906 on:** April 13, 2021, 06:43 PM »

Also noticed that Gingko is moving to $5 a month with a free trial rather than a document limit.

wraith808 · « **Reply #907 on:** April 14, 2021, 08:55 AM »

Also noticed that Gingko is moving to $5 a month with a free trial rather than a document limit.
-Dormouse (April 13, 2021, 06:43 PM)

It's been that way for a while (the $5 a month), and it gets you the desktop app too, which is a self-sufficient application rather than being tied to the online version. I think it's been in transtition for a while, but I've been happily paying the $5 for a while.

Though I see he's developing v2, and it's a bit pricier- at $10 a month after beta!

Dormouse · « **Reply #908 on:** April 14, 2021, 10:20 AM »

Though I see he's developing v2, and it's a bit pricier- at $10 a month after beta!
-wraith808 (April 14, 2021, 08:55 AM)

The email I received seemed to suggest that those paying 5 would just continue unchanged.
But I can see it being worth it for users who are productive with it. There's nothing else like it really.
I might have a look at the new version, but never progressed beyond quite liking the old one.

wraith808 · « **Reply #909 on:** April 15, 2021, 02:56 PM »

Though I see he's developing v2, and it's a bit pricier- at $10 a month after beta!
-wraith808 (April 14, 2021, 08:55 AM)
The email I received seemed to suggest that those paying 5 would just continue unchanged.
But I can see it being worth it for users who are productive with it. There's nothing else like it really.
I might have a look at the new version, but never progressed beyond quite liking the old one.
-Dormouse (April 14, 2021, 10:20 AM)

Unless I just didn't pay attention, I never received an e-mail, and I'm a subscriber.

What it seems like to me taking a look, they are going to be separate products. The two options as I saw it were:

You can continue to pay for v1 and know that it will get no updates and be fine with it (after taking a look, I don't see anything compelling about v2, so might just do that).
You can migrate to v2.

The reason it seemed that way was that to use v2 at all, I had to set up a completely separate account.

A third option seems to be the new desktop app- I might go with that as it's supposed to be receiving updates and should get synchronization (which the current one doesn't have).

Dormouse · « **Reply #910 on:** April 15, 2021, 04:04 PM »

Unless I just didn't pay attention, I never received an e-mail, and I'm a subscriber.
-wraith808 (April 15, 2021, 02:56 PM)

That's very odd. I half wondered if they said $10 to those currently paying $5.
From the email

if you are ...

A current paying customer paying 5$/month or more, your subscription also applies to the new version without any changes.
A customer paying less than 5$/month, you will eventually be asked to upgrade, or close your account. I can't continue to provide my time (in terms of customer support & software development) at that low a rate.
An existing free user, and happy with the service, you will eventually be asked to pay to continue using it.
A desktop version customer that received a number of free months of the web version, you will have those applied to the new web version as well.

My impression is that v2 web is in active development and the desktop app, being developed only slowly, is a lower priority.

Dormouse · « **Reply #911 on:** April 17, 2021, 05:53 PM »

The plugin allows .txt to follow markdown styling. It allows links and transclusions, in .txt files. It doesn't allow .txt to be read natively or to be transcluded itself, and links to .txt files have to be typed out in full. Neither are tags in .txt recognised and nor do .txt files appear in graphs. Having hit these limits, I am now wondering how much use I will be able to make of it. For some things it will work fine, but not being able to be transcluded means that the technique of embedding chapters into a file to produce a complete MSS won't work. Of course, there's no difficulty in renaming them all at that point but working out which format to work in at each stage doesn't seem straightforward now; quite a collection of swings and roundabouts.
-Dormouse (March 23, 2021, 09:19 PM)

Now looking as if there will be no further development, either into other extensions (unless someone writes a plugin for them) or giving any further Obsidian functionality to .txt files. That means the plugin gives me very little that is useful, which is a bit sad after seeing the possible gains.

And naturally limits what I might get from Obsidian. I don't use Obsidian Search because I usually want to look across all files with text not just the extensions that Obsidian reads. Tags (ditto). The key feature in Obsidian for me is the wiki-link linking, so that means making sure I have .md versions of everything I might want in the linking system. I can live with that.

I'm still playing with different approaches (and programs) for search and tagging.
Still love nested vaults.

Dormouse · « **Reply #912 on:** April 18, 2021, 04:20 AM »

I've had further thoughts about Obsidian locking itself into full functionality only for .md files. That seems far too limiting for both writing and research where dealing with other formats is usually essential in real life. Like deciding on one wheel for motorised transport; yes, it's technically possible; yes, there are some advantages: but in the real world it ends up losing to alternative approaches.

The big remaining advantage for the program (because I really like wiki-links) is the automatic finding of files typed in a [[file]], and offer to create new if it doesn't exist. (And backlinks.) And it strikes me that it's not so difficult to set up such behaviour with the right search system, especially given nested vaults or folders; greater friction but not disqualifyingly greater. That leaves backlinks. Regex presumably required. Slower, and friction quite a bit greater than an automatic pane, but with the gain of working across all formats with text. And nothing to stop me just using Obsidian when pure .md will do.

At this rate, the programmatic centre of my system will be a search program. And, to be fair, that's always been the centre of my managing data/file concerns.

Dormouse · « **Reply #913 on:** April 20, 2021, 11:57 AM »

I've been interested to notice that my interest in new developments in Obsidian has dropped right away.

Apart from the students & developers who appear to be the core of the user group, I ought to be a prime target, since I make a lot of notes, am an active writer, and most of what I write has been in .md or .txt for a long time. They see Obsidian as a PKM application, but much pre-existing K is stored in non markdown files. The freedom of feeling that I could forget about conversions and just work with data and files in original format has been liberating.

I'm a little surprised I didn't develop it before, as I'm sure many people have been doing it for years, but the concept of nested vaults has been key. (And, conceptually, the 'vault' is quite different in this context to 'folder'.) But it absolutely requires relevant files to be in the vault. It's data and file organisation by project rather than folder. It means a 'vault' can be copied and moved separately on to any device or shared with other people, with no impact on anything else. Links work, but then the file location has to be considered and managed separately. I don't mind having more than one copy of a file if necessary, but once a project is completed the vault is automatically subsumed into something larger and any issues with doubling can be dealt with then. I'm not keen on symlinks, but maybe that will change.

For tags, I'll use a mix of #tags in text files and windows meta fields, and the XY database approach. This does imply potential issues in some future decade but the theoretically more resilient approaches just come with too high a cost at this point.

And I'll save everything into the nested vaults. (I am aware that this may cause Obsidian itself to slow dramatically.) I'll use Obsidian where it works, and other programs and formats when they are better. I'm happy to type wiki-links and #tags into all text tiles, whatever their extension.

Search will give me #tags and [[backlinks]] and identify the existence or not of files for [[links]]. The greatest friction will arise from creating the linked files that do not already exxist. That's okay, I anticipate it taking time to establish the best search system and optimal way of creating those files. Obsidian has system for marking blocks and linking to headings; I've never use either and have always felt the block marker to be an ugly kludge. I doubt I will need a replacement, but think I will just use a timestamp if I do.

Tranclusions are another matter. They are, effectively, a property of Obsidin .md files. By continuing to use Obsidian, I won't lose anything I have but I don't have an alternative for other formats.

wraith808 · « **Reply #914 on:** April 20, 2021, 02:16 PM »

Tranclusions are another matter. They are, effectively, a property of Obsidin .md files. By continuing to use Obsidian, I won't lose anything I have but I don't have an alternative for other formats.
-Dormouse (April 20, 2021, 11:57 AM)

I've seen you talk about Transclusions before, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around what they entail. Do you have any examples you'd be willing to share?

Dormouse · « **Reply #915 on:** April 20, 2021, 03:31 PM »

I've seen you talk about Transclusions before, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around what they entail. Do you have any examples you'd be willing to share?
-wraith808 (April 20, 2021, 02:16 PM)

I'll try to explain, because I think that will be easier.
Transclusion = Embed

The Syntax
[[linked file]]
![[transcluded file]]

So, if I'm writing a section, which I want to contain three photos, I will put in three links to those photos which preserves all my screen space for the writing.
There can be many photos to a section and, for example, four sections to a chapter. Each section to contain the photos as links.

I will have one note per chapter. All that note will contain is links to the sections, leaving plenty of space for comments produced during editing, review or development.
I will have one note for the book as a whole. All it will contain is links to the chapters. All easily fitted on one page, plus a few comments if needed.

The comments will not show on preview, export or print.
If I add an exclamation mark in front of every link, they then become transclusions. And an export of the book will include all the chapters and sections including the photos (apparently they can go many layers deep). If the CSS is right, then it's formatted just like a normal book.

This is the way I use them, I'm sure other people have very different uses.
The ease of adding or deleting the questionmark makes it very productive.

wraith808 · « **Reply #916 on:** April 20, 2021, 05:18 PM »

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks!

Dormouse · « **Reply #917 on:** April 24, 2021, 12:01 PM »

I'm coming to realise that I don't like using Obsidian for serious writing. I don't even like sharing the files with it. I don't know why. It works perfectly well. The table and link technique is ideal for organising and managing a MSS. I'm quite happy using it for notes and short pieces - which is, after all, what it was designed for - but not for longer pieces. (I'm also vaguely aware that my preferences shift depending on whether a piece is short, long short, medium/moderate, long and very long.) I am able to write with many programs, and don't object to mixing and matching, but, I suppose, I dislike nearly all of them in one way or another. Such are the personal idiosyncracies in the search for a perfect system.

UPDATE
On reflection, I think it is down to file explorer. I'm used to seeing files in a hierarchical sequence reflecting position in the MSS. I find the explorer pane hogs too much space for the number of files displayed. The table of links is perfectly serviceable, but somehow the appearance disrupts my focus; too habit bound, I guess. Maybe I should look for reformatting the explorer pane, but I'm sticking to vanilla program until I'm totally confident of stability and data security (I'm keeping the number of moving parts I have to watch as small as possible).

Dormouse · « **Reply #918 on:** May 10, 2021, 08:04 AM »

Just an update to the programs I'm using.

Files remain central, but I now do no format conversion without explicit reason. This means that if a file starts as an .rtf or .docx it may stay like that and I will work with a program that can use that format. My own writing is usually in .txt.

Most of my files are in Obsidian vaults, with heavy nesting (especially for projects) even when Obsidian cannot read those files. I use wikilinks extensively even when the program I am using cannot interpret them - they are nearly always written with a mind on future use anyway. I use #tags, preferably written in the file but otherwise done using the file explorer; these systems aren't consistent some use metadata, some a database in the folder, but the tags are; not ideal, but I decided in the end that tagspaces was too slow for me. I use search programs, and imagine that I might end up learning regex, but I'll go no further in that direction than I have to.

I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten

IainB · « **Reply #919 on:** May 11, 2021, 10:27 PM »

...I use search programs, and imagine that I might end up learning regex, but I'll go no further in that direction than I have to.
-Dormouse (May 10, 2021, 08:04 AM)

To ease the pain, I thought this might help:
How to Learn Regular Expressions
https://www.labnol.o...r-expressions/28841/

Dormouse · « **Reply #920 on:** May 14, 2021, 02:16 PM »

To ease the pain, I thought this might help:
How to Learn Regular Expressions
https://www.labnol.o...r-expressions/28841/
-IainB (May 11, 2021, 10:27 PM)

Thanks. I'm gathering a list of resources, just in case, so I've added it to that.
I'll avoid regex while I can, because normal search does everything I want for now, and probably would be good enough for 99% of the time anyway.

Dormouse · « **Reply #921 on:** May 14, 2021, 03:09 PM »

I have OneCommander installed (v2 + v3 beta), and look at it from time to time. The attraction is Miller columns, and that does offer a genuine alternative in the way the file system is presented.
-Dormouse (April 13, 2021, 03:03 PM)

My heavy use of nested vaults (folders) requires easy navigation through many layers of folders.
Solutions to this include the many tabs of most file managers and the four pane view of Q-Dir, but I have found the Miller Column implementation in One Commander v3 far superior. As a mouse user, the key feature is being able to move the mouse quickly through the layers with hover giving a full expanded view of all the file details in that folder.

I noticed that X2 introduced Miller Columns with v5 earlier this year and thought I'd test it out, but afaics its implementation isn't half as useful. It does add the columns, but full details are only in the furthest right and I found no setting that allowed me to change this behaviour. I will admit that my search could have been more thorough, but going through the menus and features seems even more complex than DO and I couldn't find a dark mode which means automatically that I won't buy it.

Dormouse · « **Reply #922 on:** May 18, 2021, 06:58 PM »

Plottr notes, including the notes for scene cards, can contain links.
I naively thought it would be neat to be able to use these links to open the document in the program used to write them.
So tried with WriteMonkey (3) and Obsidian, and No and No. Obsidian opens the program, but only the most recent file. WM3 doesn't open at all (maybe because it's not an installed file?).
There are many programs that I could use, and I suppose that the best choice will depend on what I would usually want to do in that workflow (and I can't know that yet). But it is disappointing, especially if it turns out that I'm likely to want to write; most editors are entirely usable, but I don't like many for writing. Atlantis possibly best after WM. But a bit heavy for a little txt file.

And the link only opens with the default program; there's no right click open with.
But easy enough to change default, so I'll just switch when I know what I want.

UPDATE
I'll have a look at Jarte Plus (no longer being developed, but now free) and have downloaded FocusWriter (no zoom!) as options. I've no idea how much I will use file links as an access method or what I'll be doing if I do, but I'd rather establish my options sooner rather than later. Setting the default colours up is key, and both these do that well enough. So they're reasonable alternatives to Atlantis. I would have looked at Write! too if it had a free trial, though it doesn't really sound like what I'm looking for.

Dormouse · « **Reply #923 on:** May 24, 2021, 06:08 AM »

I like FocusWriter. No learning curve, does what I need, integrates well with everything else.

Despite my shift to simple files, it's paradoxical to note that this troublesome project is now being worked on with three programs, all using databases.
Mindomo, despite its good exporting is still a database program. And primarily a web one at that.
WM3 is using a json database. I have a linked file, but I'm using the database because I want the folding specificity (this arises from the chosen first draft sequence, not my normal practice).
And, for good or ill, I'm using Plottr for some of the lifting.
I never minded using databases for processing, and most of the underlying data is in plain files, but nevertheless I'm using databases. But they'll all go when (if) I finish the project.

wraith808 · « **Reply #924 on:** May 24, 2021, 10:47 AM »

I've always liked FocusWriter. It was one of the first minimalist editors with background music that I used, and it did its job well. I moved away from it when WriteMonkey had the feature added.