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Useful Article Explaining Zettelkasten
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Posted by Paul Korm
Mar 14, 2020 at 05:53 PM
Thanks.
Apart from the Typora advice—useful—the thing I noticed is the quoted 11 “principles” for note-taking promulgated by “David Clear” (whatever his bona fides are). The joy of note taking is that it is so free-form and open to invention. I suspect Niklas Luhmann enjoyed his note taking deeply. Wrapping that in a bunch of stifling rules is so-2020s.
satis wrote:
I thought this was an interesting article about creating a Zettelkasten
>in Typora (cross-platform, in free beta for Mac for years):
>
>https://medium.com/@stoweboyd/building-a-zettelkasten-in-typora-f22857c98301
Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 18, 2020 at 04:35 PM
Heh, I was quite inspired by the Typora article - enough to unearth Typora from my list of apps and reinstall it.
It’s a great app. The search engine is fantastic - blasts through multiple files in multiple folders at very high speed, highlighting hits like a pro.
And I’ve discovered themes - notably a theme that turns Typora into a Bear (Writer) clone. Because you can tweak the CSS, you can turn it into even more of a Bear clone! Although I love Bear, it’s being officially retired for the time being (until Typora finally sorts out a pricing plan of some kind, at which point Bear may be reinstated!).
What we need now is Typora for iOS/iPadOS. On the other hand, you can easily share files between Typora on macOS and e.g. iaWriter or 1Writer on iPadOS.
The tip about using a plus sign (+) for tags is a good one; Typora does have the rather irritating habit of interpreting hashtags as headings, even when there isn’t a space immediately after the hashtag. Typora also handles images quite well, unlike many other markdown apps.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 19, 2020 at 09:26 AM
Sorry, I meant to mention the name of the theme that turns Typora into Bear: Ursine (Polar or Umbra). I thoroughly recommend it - it even plays humorously on Bear’s background graphic when no note is loaded, showing a bear cub flying a balloon…
I’m currently using 1Writer as the Typora equivalent on iPad - I’m delighted the developer is still updating this august but excellent app, and only wish he’d go ahead and produce his own macOS version. But hey, Typora makes an excellent companion (although Typora supports tables of contents, whereas 1Writer doesn’t).
The other very powerful macOS/iOS app it’s worth mentioning here is MWeb, which is also perfectly capable of generating good-quality static websites. It’s been around for a while and continues to improve steadily. MWeb also supports nested folders and tagging, which makes it a great deal more powerful than many other markdown editors (apart from the wonderful TextNut, which appears to have died a death, alas). It doesn’t have nested tagging, alas, but nested folders goes a long way to alleviating that.
Cheers,
Bill
Posted by MadaboutDana
Apr 10, 2020 at 10:31 AM
The main issue with Typora is that it doesn’t distinguish between the markdown hashtag used for headings, and hashtags used for tagging purposes. As far as Typora is concerned, all hashtags = headings!
Unfortunately, this is a bit of a problem, especially if you’re using Typora to reference multiple libraries of markdown notes, many of which include extensive tags.
So I’ve been having a bit of a play with my various markdown editors, and having briefly but thoroughly experimented with MWeb (which is remarkably powerful, and I can thoroughly recommend), I’ve finally found an interesting combination in the form of iA Writer and The Archive.
The Archive, as has been mentioned elsewhere, is Christian Tietze’s app for managing a Zettelkasten system. Its advantages are: speed, quick note-taking, automatic note naming, no need to save, an elegant “smart search” function, a very fast general search function. But it has multiple disadvantages, too (I hasten to add: in its current configuration. The roadmap details some splendid and ambitious goals for the project!)
So I’ve started to work with a mixture of The Archive and iA Writer. I hadn’t realised just how cleverly iA Writer handles tags. As you add folders to iA Writer’s “library” (I put it in quotes because unlike e.g. Ulysses, Bear, etc., it’s not a proprietary, databased library, it’s simply a list of all the folders you like to access when you open iA Writer), it automatically produces a list of all the tags found in files in each of the folders as you add them. It appears to be a comprehensive list of tags, too – whatever extraction engine they’re using works very well.
Unlike Typora’s, however, the search function is a bit more hit and miss. It does find search terms, but also finds “false positives”, sometimes for mystic reasons that appear to have no bearing on the search term whatsoever.
However, it’s a great method for managing lots of markdown notes in lots of disparate folders, because you can add all of those folders into the “library” (folder list). When paired with The Archive (yes, of course I’ve added The Archive’s single folder to the “library”), it makes for a neat combination, not least because iA Writer does things The Archive doesn’t, like show a two-line preview of each file (something I hope The Archive will be doing soon).
Meanwhile, last week I was lucky enough to be offered a preview of the next version of NotePlan. And wow, I can tell you that once it’s been finalised, you won’t need any other markdown editor, or any other Zettelkasten option (unless you’re running on Windows/Linux, unfortunately). There’s still a way to go, but I’m already a convert!
Cheers!
Bill
Posted by Luhmann
Apr 10, 2020 at 12:48 PM
Bill,
Have you tried Roam Research? I was just talking with people on the Roam Research forums about how great it would be to have something that combined the slick user interface of Note Plan or Agenda with the features of Roam… Curious if the new version of Note Plan looks anything like this?