founder here. let me know how it goes. if you're interested, we do personalized onboardings with new users as well, link to book is here -> https://calendly.com/d/mqtk-rf7q/onboard
I think one reason Dendron (and generally PKM topics) resonates on HN is because fundamentally, we haven't figured out "information architecture for humans"
I would complement your knowledge management platform with a passive way to reference previous content. Save every paragraph of text that is being read/written and implement semantic similarity search. For example you could use a Hugging Face model and an Approximate Nearest Neighbor index.
Then integrate this search with an extension on top of your regular search engine, such as Google. Bonus if it logs across all apps, not just the web browser, and if it implements semantic and source based blacklisting to control what is being logged, for privacy.
This is complementary to your approach because manual logging is hard and slow while passive logging + semantic search can follow everything. It will be like an external memory.
And whoever posted it put a second slash at the end of the URL, apparently to trick the HN system into allowing it to be posted again. I’m not saying I care, I’m just pointing out that it seems like that’s what was done, because I believe you can only post a link again after a certain time has passed.
Gave this a try once but I remember that the performance on even relatively normal files was really bad. (Something like a few hundred urls as nested bullet points) which made me use Obsidian. Does anyone know if this is still an issue?
Sorry to hear about this. When did you last use Dendron? we've had lots of updates in terms of performance over the past few months so that shouldn't be the case today
I was once involved in Topic Maps, a failed ISO standard that was challenged Semantic Web at some point.
One thing I remember is the tacit knowledge that all kinds of mind maps are useful on the spot to the person who writes them. Communicating anything via mind maps is difficult, and they become unintelligible even to authors very quickly.
Reminds me of the Apple spin-out name Kalida (sp?) that tried to promote a "personalized programming language" called ScriptX allowing each developer to define their own personal language syntax and write code in that. I was floored something so dumb would get a complete corporate spin-out, developers and the full rah-rah marketing push. Once developed and available, people quickly found nobody could share or even read one another's code. Duh.
Totally agree that mind maps are hard to scale out, either across time or people. This is why Dendron focuses on helping folks create consistent structures (we call them schemas) to help map out their knowledge base. Think of it as a type system for organizing your notes. More details on that here (https://nesslabs.com/dendron-featured-tool) if curious
I propose a Dendron Browser Plugin with same annotation functionality (FTW) =D
It would help with IP (Input + Process) components for those who adhere to the "Modern" Zettlekasten's IPA framework [1] (Input + Process + Action) conceptualized and presented by Marc Koenig.
I was rooting for Topic Maps at the time. The notion of Topics, Associations between them and Occurrences of information about a topic seemed to me to be very powerful. I don't think they were necessarily meant to model mind maps (altho no doubt you could), more of a super charged index of an information space.
FWIW Topic Maps were the inspiration for BrainTool [1], which is a 'Topic Manager' maybe in the same space as Dendron. I wrote about the model here [2]. I'm hoping people will exchange Topic Maps that index an information space or area of research!
Say I wanted to beat these guys at their game. How do I come up with a description more pompous than "personal knowledge management" to describe entering text. Fascinating stuff
A large number of applications, some of them extremely complex, could be summarised as "entering text". It's generally more important what happens to the text after it has been entered. In this case:
- Hyperlinking between documents and sections of documents(without needing to use a full relative/absolute path)
- Visualisation of the relationships between documens
- A metadata schema for documents(title, summary, tags, etc.)
- A search engine which indexes the content and metadata
- Embedding of various content types(other notes, diagrams, images)
Also LogSeq:
"It seems that your browser doesn't support the new native filesystem API, please use any Chromium 86+ based browser like Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge, etc. Notice that the API doesn't support mobile browsers at the moment."
... "Privacy first", and forcing you to use Google infrastructure.
I really wanted to like this the last time I gave it a try, but it just did not do it for me. I though I would like it being a VS Code plugin since "why reinvent a .md editor", but the end result felt pretty janky. Plenty of power features, but they were not particularly intuitive to use....
I ended up finding https://logseq.com/ and have been very happy using that as a local application! I really like its balance of control/abstraction and its markdown based editor is beautiful!
Thanks for recommending logseg. Going to give it a try.
I've been using Dendron mostly because of the search feature and the ability to publish it on web but I didn't really like the experience of editing my notes on VS Code. Seems like logseg have similar feature as well.
sorry dendron didn't work out. was there anything specific that felt "janky"? we've had lots of updates on general ux (see https://buttondown.email/dendron/archive/) and are continuing to focus on that this year.
that being said, logseq is also a great tool. a bunch of folks use both dendron and logseq in tandem
I'm strongly considering moving away from Obsidian to Logseq, obsidian just has some limitations that I think I can work around in Logseq (insufficient syntax highlighting due to old integrated version of prismjs being one issue for ex).
I have sincere doubts that Obsidian will ever go open source.
I've started to use Joplin[1] and haven't looked back. It's open source and their business model is hosted cloud syncing. I already have a self-hosted Nextcloud instance running and WebDAV is supported for syncing as well so I'm not paying anything at the moment.
They also have apps on desktop and mobile. The apps may not have the most polished UI but they work extremely well.
I don't know if I'll ever find a cooler, more interactive, intuitive, and featureful markdown language and implementation. I use it daily to track issues and progress at work. I use it to document the code, because it can be exported to really any format necessary.
I mean come on, the table editor and Babel still make me grin every time I use them. Truly genius.
Is there an app this where the editor is WYSIWYG but the storage format is Markdown? Almost like Confluence from a UI perspective but for a personal KB?
The latest Obsidian release has a WYSIWYG editor mode that's quite good in my experience. It stores everything in plain old markdown files and has a ton of plugins for extra stuff like backlinks, etc.
I've configured VSCode for this purpose. You can set a proportional font, at which point you are already halfway there. The default syntax highlighting already assigns scopes for headlines, bold/underline/italics, lists, code blocks and links, and it is either easy or default to style the text accordingly.
This VS code extension is kind of flying under the radar and unnoticed, but it has an amazingly well integrated full WYSIWYG markdown editor: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=cweijan.... Of all the markdown in VS code things I've tried, this is by far the simplest and nicest I've used.
Love the zettlekasten method! I gave dendron a shot a few months back, but it just didn't stick. Something about using my IDE as a note-taking tool got in the way of my flow. Currently using NotePlan 3 and really liking it.
Something we recommend for folks is to have different flavors of VSCode to side step this (eg. vscodium for dendron, vscode for code). That being said, if you found something you like, that's the most important thing :)
notable is great! generally, anything that comes down to plaintext markdown is great because of data portability and the ability to apply existing tools over your data :)
I have been a moderate user of Obsidian in the past. And have just read the main page of Dendron.
I do not see how Dendron helps navigate in a big PKM base any differently from Obsidian. There is a search bar, and a graph view.
Then what?
For many people, "Obsidian, but open source", would be a pretty compelling selling point. I only became aware of Dendron today, but going to have to evaluate it now
Yep, I agree.
To me it is the "Your instance is always here in the cloud, via CodeServer", that is appealing. I also plan to use that CodeServer stuff so a team can edit in parallel the same PKM.
[btw, is there a collaborative way of working, in Obsidian?]
But my initial question was whether Dendron was providing an innovative way to extract subparts of the graph.
As someone who uses PKM tools I'll say the answer is probably that you _do not_ use the graph view. It makes for nice screenshots.
That being said, part of what makes PKM tools so useful is that they can be used be different people with different workflows, so perhaps other people are using the graph view effectively.
I've been using Dendron since it last showed up here and it's worked pretty well for a large writing project. My main complaint is more of a VS Code issue -- I can't figure out how to soft-wrap lines in a way that allows for vim navigation (with j/k) within a paragraph. Gj and gk work, but that's double the keystrokes. In Vim I can use the vim-pencil plugin and set lines to soft wrap.
Also, Dendron is very clunky with even medium-sized files.
I'm not a big "note-taker" but Dendron has stuck with me mainly because of vscode. I spend so much time in vscode already and the familiar UI is a big plus. I also use the vscode vim extension which works just as well with Dendron.
I used to love Zim, it was almost feature perfect in my opinion. But if you're using it to store notes with code, check first to see if the formatting feature can be disabled, because that changes the stored note text. I had to stop using Zim due to that, though it was years and years ago so maybe this has been resolved since. Other than that show-stopper, it was a great app and it had a great developer.
If you are interested, these are two of the bugs that I filed on the subject. I might triage them again sometime, but if you are interested in ensuring that your code hasn't been affected you might want to look at them:
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Google works for the internet but we don't have an equivalent for PKM or TKM (team knowledge management). This is why we build Dendron (more details at https://blog.dendron.so/notes/N9VxT7G5SovmncezBAGO2.html)
Then integrate this search with an extension on top of your regular search engine, such as Google. Bonus if it logs across all apps, not just the web browser, and if it implements semantic and source based blacklisting to control what is being logged, for privacy.
This is complementary to your approach because manual logging is hard and slow while passive logging + semantic search can follow everything. It will be like an external memory.
I've seen many in the Dendron community use the Markdown import pod to convert their notes over to Dendron: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/f23a6290-2dec-45dc-b616-c218ee...
One thing I remember is the tacit knowledge that all kinds of mind maps are useful on the spot to the person who writes them. Communicating anything via mind maps is difficult, and they become unintelligible even to authors very quickly.
It would help with IP (Input + Process) components for those who adhere to the "Modern" Zettlekasten's IPA framework [1] (Input + Process + Action) conceptualized and presented by Marc Koenig.
1- [https://youtu.be/rjU65enKSEE].
FWIW Topic Maps were the inspiration for BrainTool [1], which is a 'Topic Manager' maybe in the same space as Dendron. I wrote about the model here [2]. I'm hoping people will exchange Topic Maps that index an information space or area of research!
[1] https://braintool.org
[2]https://braintool.org/2021/05/15/Organizing-your-life-with-a...
- Hyperlinking between documents and sections of documents(without needing to use a full relative/absolute path)
- Visualisation of the relationships between documens
- A metadata schema for documents(title, summary, tags, etc.)
- A search engine which indexes the content and metadata
- Embedding of various content types(other notes, diagrams, images)
- Conversion into other document formats
https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/3472226a-ff3c-432d-bf5d-10926f...
For migrating content from Obsidian, you can use Dendron's markdown import pod (pods are ways that Dendron imports/exports notes):
Markdown import: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/f23a6290-2dec-45dc-b616-c218ee...
Obsidian style import: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/9kovmyM4T0ZBeWvp5oH62/
I still use Obsidian on mobile to view my Dendron notes, but use VS Code with the Dendron extension when on my computer :)
Also LogSeq: "It seems that your browser doesn't support the new native filesystem API, please use any Chromium 86+ based browser like Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge, etc. Notice that the API doesn't support mobile browsers at the moment."
... "Privacy first", and forcing you to use Google infrastructure.
I would steer clear of that one, hard.
I ended up finding https://logseq.com/ and have been very happy using that as a local application! I really like its balance of control/abstraction and its markdown based editor is beautiful!
Well, that's going to save me a chunk of time.
I've been using Dendron mostly because of the search feature and the ability to publish it on web but I didn't really like the experience of editing my notes on VS Code. Seems like logseg have similar feature as well.
I have sincere doubts that Obsidian will ever go open source.
The notes are also stored on your computer so you don't even have any cloud dependency or anything.
I really enjoy using it and would pay a one time amount for it no problem.
They also have apps on desktop and mobile. The apps may not have the most polished UI but they work extremely well.
[1] https://joplinapp.org/
I mean come on, the table editor and Babel still make me grin every time I use them. Truly genius.
It’s like an open source Evernote.
* By real I mean that the UI stays WYSIWYG, unlike other apps that fall back to Markdown notation while editing.
https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr
[1]: https://github.com/coder/code-server
But my initial question was whether Dendron was providing an innovative way to extract subparts of the graph.
That being said, part of what makes PKM tools so useful is that they can be used be different people with different workflows, so perhaps other people are using the graph view effectively.
Also, Dendron is very clunky with even medium-sized files.
Also, I wanted a way to just show the markdown preview without also showing the source view.
The author has mentioned a planned WYSIWYG feature, so maybe that will solve these issues.
I wish zim had a proper Mac app!
If you are interested, these are two of the bugs that I filed on the subject. I might triage them again sometime, but if you are interested in ensuring that your code hasn't been affected you might want to look at them:
"Do not parse input as wikicode" https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/585300
"Option to disable all autolinking" https://bugs.launchpad.net/zim/+bug/585301