In the past days I have been both exploring my process for second order note taking, and part of that is evaluating tools. I’ve been trying the note taking process in both WordPress and Evernote. In parallel I have also been looking at other tools for note taking. I’ve looked at a few tools that say to have implemented the Zettelkasten method, but I don’t want tools that assume to shape my process. I want to shape my tools, based on my routines.
In terms of tools that support me, I want tools that increase networked agency. Tools that treat data as fully mine, the tool itself as a view on the data, and its interface(s) as queries on that data.
Between WP and Evernote, the first does that, the second most definitely not. At the same time Evernote makes note taking much easier than WP can ever do. This is not surprising as WP is a blogging tool that I am using as a wiki on my local host while Evernote was designed for note taking. From the other tools I looked at, Joplin and Obsidian stood out, both tools that use markdown. Joplin because it is open source, allows easy import from Evernote, and can save webpages locally, can sync with Nextcloud allowing easy mobile access. It does store notes in a sqllite database which makes accessing my data more difficult.
Obsidian is still in beta but already looks pretty amazing to me (similar to Roam it seems). It operates on text files in a folder, thus allowing direct access through my file system to any data I add. It provides a view on that data that allows easy linking between notes, and you can split off any number of panes in the interface with whatever content or query. This means you can have a variety of notes open, pin them, see what links to what etc. There is also a graphical view, that allows you to explore notes based on the cloud of links they form. That makes it look a bit like the Brain of old. It’s all in markdown, so easy to use on mobile with a different client if I sync it through Nextcloud. I added the same notes I previously added to WP and EN in Obsidian, to experience differences and commonalities. In comparison with the other notes tools I tried a key difference is that I left this app open since I started it up this morning. A key difference with WP and EN is that I want to add notes to this tool. It does mean I need to relearn markdown, which has gone rusty since I last used markdown (in a locally hosted wiki), but of course it was easy to make a note and pin it to use as cheat sheet.
Obsidian screenshot, list and search pane on the left, a graphical overview middle top, a note middle bottom, and my markdown cheat sheet on the right
Having used Obsidian for a day, I am now wondering if I still need my local WP instance. The combination of Obsidian and Zotero which I started using for reading references even looks like something to replace Evernote with. This is the first time I’ve thought that in the past 4 years for longer than an hour.
I found Obsidian completely unusable until I switch the theme from Dark to Light.
yes, I agree. One of the first things I did was to switch the theme.
Another helpful tweak: the hotkey default for “search and replace in this file” is Command + H on the Mac, which conflicts with the macOS hotkey for “hide this app,” which is something I do a lot, especially with an app like Obsidian that I keep open all the time. So I disabled this hotkey (under Settings > Hotkeys).
You don’t need to disable the hotkey, you can edit it to a hotkey of your choice.
@ton Did you also have a look at Zettlr? It is also open source software using Markdown file and has great integration with Zotero.
Zettlr looks interesting; thanks for sharing @jeroensangers
@jeroensangers thanks Jeroen! Hadn’t check Zettlr out (although I think I came across it at some point.) Seems I can test it on the same file folder as Obsidian. Zotero connection would be useful. It misses the network graph. Will check if/how it prescribes certain things.
@ton I remember having seen comments in the Obsidian forums about people combining both tools.
As for the network graph, when trying out Roam Research it was the feature I was most interested in, but after a while I found that I never used it.
I have been using Obsidian on my Mac and, in parallel, using Nextcloud Notes to edit and view the same Markdown files.
@jeroensangers that last bit is interesting, esp as a graph is something I had on my wishlist for ages (as an old ‘The Brain’ user), to spot emerging clusters, outliers etc. I am curious to see how I will perceive that in, say 3 or 6 months.