cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/18265389

Hello again everyone, Dihar here. It's been a while since the last release of treedome, but here you go! This release is all about UI update, emojis, and bug fixes. Please consult this git diff for a more detailed changelog https://codeberg.org/solver-orgz/treedome/compare/0.4.5...0.5.0. These are the highlight of the release.

• Add emoji picker for title, will show up in tree!
• Text Editor toolbar is back, now with option to toggle both toolbar and floating menu independently!
• Checkbox is here! Thanks Mantine UI!
• You can check the size of each notes by navigating to Escape Menu -> Configure -> Show Note Sizes!
• Add created/last modified date in notes. Note created before this will not have this field and will set as today's date!
• Create child note can now be done through dropdown instead of only from shortcuts!
• Fix bugs of saving empty tree
• General UI update and more stability for auto scrolling in tree view
• Documentation update

I've liked Capacities a lot but never used it as my main PKMS because it was online only and didn't have a mobile app. They've been on a roll recently, adding a very polished mobile app, and now the latest update has added offline mode. I've tested on my cell phone by closing the app, turning off all radios, and opening again. It works like a charm! I then edited a note, closed the app, turned on my data and opened the app again and it handled it just as expected. very impressive!

The mobile app needs some love though it is still pretty new. I would say Capacities and Anytype have similar app experiences, with Logseq and Obsidian being somewhat less refined.

The syncing is also very fast - capacities takes about 4-5 seconds, while obsidian (with obsidian livesync and a selfhosted couchdb) takes 3-4, and anytype being just a touch faster usually being around 3 seconds to sync. Logseq gets a dishonorable mention here, often taking over 15 seconds to sync, and often requiring opening and closing the app the sync. between anytype, obsidian, and capacities, startup time is pretty good. logseq takes a dogs age to start up and then finish syncing. This could be because I have a larger graph with logseq, but I would say it's small-medium if anything.

Capacities also has editable transclusion which is a prerequisite for me to check out a PKMS. it allows you to embed a note within another note and edit right there. Logseq has it built in but the implementation is very very clunky, especially on mobile. It takes up a lot of extra space. Obsidian doesn't have it out of the box, but the Make.md community plugin is unbelievably good! It's one of my favorite implementations of transclusion, and it works on mobile. I especially like that any link can be expanded to view its full content, just by clicking an arrow to the right of the link. you can also make full embeds as well. Capacities has really nice implementation of transclusion as well with one major caveat. embeds are not viewable on the mobile app! I probably will wait to switch over until this is addressed. Transclusion is unfortunately not supported on anytype at this time.

This adds another polished app that fits 4 of my primary criteria for a PKMS: cross-platform, offline capable (full read and write), fast syncing under 30 seconds, and editable transclusion.

Today I discovered a tool called OrgPad which has a lot of potential. Unlike all the major players in the mindmap space right now, each node isn't just a heading, but an actual piece of content, with a title. Each node can be expanded or collapsed so you can focus on what you want to while maintaining context.

It's also got an amazing interface that's incredibly polished.

I've also just discovered TheBrain, which is also a delightful mindmap tool, but the cost is prohibitive at around $20/month just to sync across devices, the interface isn't as slick as mindmeister or xmind, in fact it looks ancient. But it's very powerful and feels really good to use. It also has the benefit of making notes a first class object instead of a tiny icon on a node which the more popular mindmaps do. But the win goes to org mode for being superior in most ways, at a fraction of the cost.

Check the comment of the gist for instructions on how to use. You can set this up to run every few minutes, keeping your readwise items, highlights, and annotations synced with Raindrop! I didn't see anything that accomplished this, even with the multitude of paid automation solutions. I was tempted to sign up for a free one when I realized they were all very flawed, so I just wrote one up for free!

Hope you enjoy! Suggestions and contributions more than welcome :)

• The 3 I'm considering have 2 things in common:

  • They're open source

  • They're offline first. Meaning you'll never lose access to read or edit your notes if you find yourself without internet, in a tunnel, elevator, airplane, etc. This excludes notion and the like from this list

• They are Anytype, Logseq, and SiYuan ( a less known but still incredible PKMS)

  • please note these pros and cons are only in relation to using as a method of brainstorming and working on projects.

• FYI: Logseq is my current PKMS of choice and i've settled on it though if Anytype ever gets trasnclusion support I'll have to go back and see. Also to note: Anytype is currently free, the rest will cost you if you want to utilize syncing across devices

• Anytype

  • Pros

    • beautiful, slick interface

    • creating types allows for projects to have a more first class feeling.

      • A project can be a type with multiple templates

      • a feature can be a type with multiple templates

      • sets allow for displaying alist of projects based on what type of tepmlates, same for any type (anytype, get it?)

    • excellent layout and customizability

  • Cons

    • Major con no Transclusion. I HOPE they introduce it. my discussion on github is the highest after the docker container ask and the stuf the staff prepopulated. Looks like one of the maintainers noticed it.

  • Mobile experience

    • by far the most robust and fuck up proof mobile solution. It handled anything I threw at it and it syncs practically immediately

  • Collaboration

    • I believe this is one of their primary focuses at the moment

  • Examples

    • List of projects. Note these can be any scale - a small script, an extension to a browser, an entire program suite or OS, a physical product. Choose your own way of organizing and anytype should be able to accommodate

    • 

    • Example project main page: Note that I'd prefer to use transclusion here instead of the card previews but anytype doesn't have transclusion support. at first I wrote off the emoji/background, but it's so easy to do (only a couple of clicks) that I did it on a whim and realized I actually love it, and not only that, that little bit of imagery makes it's at least 1 million times easier to quickly identify what page you're on and bring some immediate context to the forefront of your mind. It's a little thing that makes a surprisingly big difference. Anytype uses upsplash images and you just type in what you're looking for (for this example I typed in books), and you'll find a great selection of high quality banners for your pages.

    • also note the organization here. You can have page links (here in cards with previews) as many across as you like and it's easy to arrange them that way.

    • 

• Logseq

  • this is infinite outliner first. collect and connect knowledge. Etc. For projects, it's not as robust as anytype, and while it has transclusion, it doesn't add a lot to a project page

  • This would be better for doing some very quick notes at the genesis of a project. I guess that counts as brainstorming. That said I don't feel as organized and secure as I do working on projects in anytype

  • Pros

    • great for really quick brain dumping (though that's no different than anything else on this list).

    • Transclusion support. though not as beautiful as SiYuan's, it adds about 3 indentations before beginning the actual transcluded content, something they say they're going to address at some point.

  • Cons

    • Interface was designed by engineers and it shows.

    • Feels easy to wreck things

    • has some bugs to work out

    • mobile experience is mostly lackluster and seems to be low priority

  • Mobile Experience

    • mobile is like, mostly unusable for me currently due to a bug where the text your typing scrolls down below your keyboard. so yeah you're typing blind. hope they figure that out soon as it's a breaking bug. Syncing is fairly slow - you can expect to see changes propagate between 10-15 seconds. sometimes a device will say it's fully synced when it's not, and if you don't notice that's not good. best to restart and make it goes through the full sync

  • Collaboration

    • on the radar though not currently in the works. I believe it will come some day and that there are some workarounds but nothing built in

  • Examples

    • project list

  • 

    • example project

  • 

• SiYuan

  • Pros

    • Beautiful editor and transclusion implementation

    • fastest PKMS that exists by a mile

    • can have several notes open in tabs, and it's by far the best implementation of this concept I've seen in any PKMS

    • nice visual customization in line with notion or anytype.

  • Cons

    • ~~no sets/collections/queries. There's no project page unless you build it and update it yourself~~ I take this back, I forgot that SiYuan actually has SQL queries! It's actually VERY robust. You can for example, run a widget that queries all your projects and embeds information from them. It's extremely powerful and belongs in the PROs section but I will keep it here

  • Mobile Experience

    • Mobile device is probably about equal with logseq. Nothing spectacular, nothing too extremely buggy but it just feels like you're a bull in a chinashop with this. Like you have to be very careful not to break things. Still, from what I've seen, it doesn't have the same litany of bugs logseq has

  • Collaboration

    • No idea where they're at with this. I don't believe it's a priority.

  • Examples

    • This is just their tutorial landing page, but you can get an idea of the layouts and customization possible. It just looks gorgeous and it's the fastest PKMS I've used.

    • 

• Ending thoughts:

  • Mobile: Anytype wins

    • without a doubt the best mobile experience. more polished and robust. You don't feel like a bull in a chinashop like you do in logseq or even siyuan to a degree. That said, logseq still wins in one very small but very important department, and that's swiping to adjust indentation. may seem small but if indentation is buried behind several menus, it's just painful when your'e in the middle of jotting down some important notes. That said logseq mobile is broken (at least for me)

  • Collaboration: no one wins, though anytype is focusing on this

    • Most likely will have to choose another program, probably something that isn't offline first. For this there are a million great options

  • Best overall: Anytype.

    • Being able to create a type is awesome. Then having multiple templates off that type, and "collections/sets" to allow organizing lists of those projects with fairly strong filters and sorting is great. This ability, while exists on logseq, requires knowledge of some programming languages. I think called datalog. In SiYuan I don't believe it's possible. One quick sidenote about SiYuan though, it's a fantastic app and the developers/maintainers work at a blinding pace. One time I made a comment about the line spacing on their english forum, liuyun.io, and the developer answered within a few minutes stating that it was already fixed and in the upcoming version. Anything said about SiYuan is liable to change at a moment's notice (but in a good way!)

  • Best for early/initial braindump: Logseq

    • With its infinite outliner, logseq is fantastic for braindumping quick and dirty prototypes to be fleshed out more fully in another PKMS. I definitely don't think Logseq is the best for projects, but it's definitely not worthlesss

  • Best price: Anytype (for now). Anytype is free.

    • It will be free forever if you decide to selfhost. They will almost certainly add paid plan to use their synving infrastructure (which they implemented brand new for the work they're going to do on collaboration soon)

  • Privacy: Logseq, Anytype.

    • Both can avoid the company's servers completely if you set it up that way. Anytype will required self hosting which for now is not very good because to use the mobile ios app selfhosted, you need to compile through xcode and sideload it onto your device...yeah that's a blocker. Logseq is possible to avoid completely their servers, but it's a worse experience. it's hard to set up. And I believe that their syncing is locked to allow them to eventually offer a premium plan. Anytype's syncing mechanism is up on their github right now.

I've just tried this out and it's a really fantastic experience. Development is happening at a rapid pace, and it's open source with 11k+ stars on github. For example, one month ago, they didn't have a ios app. Now they have offerings for every platform imagineable. The app is robust as well.

Allows transclusions but editing a transclusion pops up a window that's annoying, but the transclusions themselves look absolutely fantastic. In general this is what I wish using logseq felt like.

It does tick the 4 most important boxes for me:

1. Transclusion
2. Offline first
3. platform agnostic: ios, macos, windows, android, linux, docker, webview
4. Open Source

Additional goodies:

Looks like it'll have a plugin ecosystem. Logseq and obsidian benefit greatly from this. I have 30 plugins running on my logseq instance and it pushes the experience just that much higher. I have not explored the siyuan ecosystem, i don't even know if plugins yet exist, but I'm certain they'll have some excellent plugins in the future.

I'm not sure about cost but they currently sell lifetime subscriptions for ~$150. Not bad IMO but it's too often that these things shutter or become abandonware so buy with caution. Not sure what the cost of the monthly subscription is, but for reference, I pay$5/mo for logseq sync and it's good but not great and still a work in progress.

I love this quote from the creator's github page: (originally chinese)

"My wife Vanessa and I have been writing open source software since 2009, of which we have been maintaining the Solo project for 10 years now. Our creative field revolves around blogging and community systems, and we've been working hard on the B3log idea - a distributed community network. At the beginning of 2018, Vanessa and I resigned from the company and officially started our entrepreneurial career as a "full-time open source and freelancer". We built a company whose main product is the Sym community system. Its community edition is completely open source, and individuals can use it for free based on its open source license. In addition, we also operate a community chain drop with more than 50,000 users as the community end node of the B3log distributed community network. Recently we launched a new project, Siyuan Notes, which is a local offline-first personal knowledge management system that supports fine-grained block-level references and Markdown WYSIWYG. Welcome everyone to try and give feedback. For me and Vanessa, open source has become more than just a hobby, it is a way of life, and we are very confident in the future of this "open source living" path. Hopefully along the way we can help others with open source software, and others can help us. Open source connects you and me, open source builds the future, let us enter the open source world together! "

Some choice quotes: (saved from highlights from Omnivore a free (for now) open source read it later app that's quite popular. There's also Readwise Reader which I personally use though it's a subscription based model, but it has feature that Omnivore needs to catch up on (which it may).

Anyway, the quotes:

We’ve made a habit of filling those hundred random spaces in our day with glances at Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. But those glances have slowly become stares, and those stares have grown to encompass a major portion of our waking hours.

The end result is the same person who spends 127 hours per year on Instagram (the global average) complains that she has “no time” for reading.

**Much of the time when we pull out our phone, we’re looking for something to match our mood (or energy, or time available, or other context). We use our constellation of shiny apps as mood regulators and self-soothers, as time-fillers and boredom-suppressors, for better or worse. ... So you need a little entertainment, and you open…an ebook? Yeah right. ... **

It’s practical to have organized reading material at hand when you’re on your way to a meeting that may be starting late, a seminar that may have a window of time when nothing is going on, a dentist appointment that may keep you waiting, or, of course, if you’re going to have some time on a train or plane. Those are all great opportunities to browse and work through that kind of reading. People who don’t have their Read/Review material organized can waste a lot of time, since life is full of weird little windows when it could be used.