[HN Gopher] Zim - A Desktop Wiki
___________________________________________________________________
Zim - A Desktop Wiki
Author : martinlaz
Score : 194 points
Date : 2022-01-26 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (zim-wiki.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (zim-wiki.org)
| wooptoo wrote:
| For me the killer feature of Zim is the native integration with
| Git. It's super easy to write and commit, write some more, commit
| again. You don't even have to leave the editor interface.
|
| I've coupled this with git pre-commit and post-commit hooks which
| basically ensure that the changes are always pushed to GitHub.
|
| I've found a similar application for Android called GitJournal.
| Unfortunately it doesn't do the wiki syntax which Zim recognizes.
| Only markdown and plain text. So I have a separate repo for my
| mobile notes. They're usually much shorter anyway, the type of
| notes you'd put on a sticky.
|
| Hopefully one of these tools will learn the format of the other
| in the future. That would allow us to use both of them on the
| same repo.
| embeng4096 wrote:
| On Android I use Markor to edit text -- it also recognizes Zim
| Wiki format if I remember correctly. And then Termux is nearly
| a full Linux distro with convenient touch icons for things like
| Tab, modifier, and arrow keys -- I installed the git package
| for it and used that to push/pull to my GitHub repo. Maybe that
| could be a solution for you?
| wooptoo wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, but this approach is not what I'm looking
| for. Being able to (auto)commit to git from the editor is
| priceless to me.
|
| I've used Markor but there's too much file management
| involved, instead of organising pages at a higher level and
| letting the app handle the filesystem ops.
| vhanda wrote:
| I'm the GitJournal author.
|
| I'd be open to adding the zim wiki syntax support, assuming I
| can have at least one designated person who uses Zim, and can
| test things out and report issues. GitJournal now has basic
| support for OrgMode, and the code is now in a state where it
| doesn't necessarily assume Markdown.
|
| How about you file an issue on GitHub? [0]. Ideally, if you
| could get some other people to vote on it, I'll be more
| motivated to prioritize it.
|
| Additionally, do you know a good source for the zim syntax? I
| see [1] and [2], but I'm not sure if I'm missing more.
|
| [0] - https://github.com/GitJournal/GitJournal/issues
|
| [1] - https://zim-wiki.org/manual/Help/Wiki_Syntax.html
|
| [2] - https://zim-wiki.org/manual/Help/Check_Boxes.html
| wooptoo wrote:
| I'd be happy to help. I do use Zim on a daily basis and would
| love for GitJournal to support it natively.
| adamweld wrote:
| I've tried a lot of note taking apps and Workflowy[0] has been my
| favorite for the last ~5 years.
|
| At its core it's a bulleted list that you can expand and
| collapse. Super simple and works just as well for quick ToDo
| lists as for in-depth ideation and project tracking. Recently
| they've added features such as tags and boards, which I mostly
| ignore, but the core product is super simple, powerful, and
| flexible. 100% free and with good web, mobile, and desktop apps.
|
| [0] https://workflowy.com/online-notepad/
| downrodeo wrote:
| No idea why more notetaking apps have not copied the 'bulleted
| list that you can expand and collapse' functionality.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I've used Zim about 8 years ago, but lost interest after a month.
| If I remember correctly, there were no Windows builds for a time,
| just an instruction how to compile it.
|
| I've been looking at Logseq and Obsidian recently.
| csdvrx wrote:
| I use Zim on Windows. It just works.
| roomey wrote:
| I have used zim for notes for well over 10 years now, maybe 15.
|
| It has made the all the difference in my career.
|
| To any new person I know in my career I try to hammer home take
| notes, all the time take notes. I always wondered if some day I
| could write a book just from it
| jrm4 wrote:
| I have experimented with Cherrytree, I did org-mode for a year.
| Recently I did Obsidian.
|
| Keep coming back to my beloved Zim.
|
| Super extensible without being overwhelming.
|
| I do my personal notes, my blogging, my course website and even
| my Slides (instead of Powerpoint) with it.
| culi wrote:
| Any thoughts on Obsidian vs Zim? I've had both of them
| downloaded for a long time now, but I've yet to really dive
| into them as my old habits of saving quick thoughts into .txt
| files are hard to shake off
| jrm4 wrote:
| Obsidian _looked_ so much better than Zim that I was
| compelled to try it, but I 'd been using Zim for well over 15
| years beforehand.
|
| So Occams razor might just be "I'm more used to it;" though
| there might be an argument for Obsidian growing too slick too
| quickly? It's got a LOT going on and looks like its flashier
| and has more features, perhaps too many for me. Also, if
| mobile is at all important, you probably want Obsidian.
| culi wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. Ugh I really wish there was a good
| enough common notes format standard that would make these
| decisions less difficult. I'd like to be able to easily
| take my data with me to whichever note taking app I wanna
| try out
| jitl wrote:
| If open source matters to you, keep in mind that [Zim is
| libre][zim-github] (GPL 2), while Obsidian is [proprietary].
|
| Obsidian: faster rate of change, Markdown, closed source,
| aesthetics
|
| Zim: stable, open source, aesthetics, not Markdown
|
| [zim-github]: https://github.com/zim-desktop-wiki/zim-
| desktop-wiki
|
| [proprietary]: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/open-sourcing-of-
| obsidian/1515/4
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| The good news is you can work by just saving plain text and
| then viewing it in the GUI. Obsidian looks pretty but is
| slower and not as stable. I haven't gone back to Zim yet but
| there's nothing Obsidian really adds beyond GUI polish IMO.
| Obsidian has the advantage of mobile apps, but the story
| there isn't superb -- I have a better time piping text into
| it through Drafts. The iPad version of the Craft notes app is
| superior but it's also much more locked down in every sense.
| I still use Craft though because I'm trying to simplify
| things these days, and I'm a sucker for OS integration.
| account-5 wrote:
| This is what I use for all my notes, and my tasks, and my
| schedule.
|
| Amazing application. Comparable and better than everything I've
| seen on hacker news over the years.
|
| My only complaint is no mobile client, though markor can generate
| a Zim-Wiki file.
| Steltek wrote:
| How do you sync between devices? Dropbox or Syncthing?
|
| I find myself favoring self-hosted webapps over local running
| apps. It eliminates the "no client for X platform" problem
| while also providing syncing across devices.
| account-5 wrote:
| I replied to c-st. USB memory stick.
| c-st wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning markor, I was searching for something
| similar! How do you sync your notebook between your phone and
| your computer, if you don't mind me asking?
| account-5 wrote:
| Haha, this isn't very hacker news but I bought a usb stuck
| with a usb-c port on one side and a usb3 port on the other.
| Copy and paste.
|
| No third party apps, just my version of sneaker-net.
| c-st wrote:
| Great! Whatever gets your job done.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I really want to share logseq[0] if anyone isn't yet familiar
| with it, I've been using it for a few months and it is absolutely
| fucking _superb_.
|
| I like it so much I became a sponsor. Same kinda deal, writes
| markdown you spaff at gitlab or wherever, but with a graph,
| amazing linking and soft (unreferenced) links, it's literally my
| external brain at this point.
|
| Few tools I can recommend so much, and it doesn't even have a vi
| mode yet. I hope to continue using it for many years.
|
| 0: https://logseq.com/
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Logseq is cool. Do give Zim a try if you can, it's been around
| for a while and is one of the more thoughtfully designed OSS
| GUI applications. Python and GTK impose limitations on the
| flexibility of extensions in general but it's pretty fast and
| easy to extend otherwise. In terms of WYSIWYG I still don't see
| anything much better on Linux.
|
| The main reason I don't use it today is my mobile and tablet
| experience is much better with Craft, which feels similar to
| Zim in its WYSIWYG mode (but more like Notion). However, I can
| run Zim fine on an older raspberry pi, which I can't do with
| Craft and wouldn't bother to try with Obsidian. My cloud-hosted
| Craft notes aren't gonna survive after decades of supply chain
| crises and global turmoil, but my Zim notes and the application
| will probably outlast me with even a half baked plan.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Logseq is also oss, obsidian I believe opening is planned but
| dunno much about the status, don't keep up with it.
|
| Why wouldn't you bother to try it? When I was doing my oscp I
| had to take mad amounts of notes, I tried zim, cheeytree, a
| few others I forget and obsidian was clearly the best,
| electron notwithstanding (and it was religious to me also,
| but really it has improved quite a lot since we formed our
| views about electron)
|
| These days, I tend to use obsidian for longer form entries,
| in the same repo I use logseq primarily (and with working
| copy git client on my phone, obsidian mobile gives me access
| to all my logseq files, stopgap until they release the mobile
| app).
| geocrasher wrote:
| Been using it for nearly a decade and have turned many people on
| to it.
|
| I wrote about it some years back on my ugly blog:
| https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/12/tech-tool-tidbit-zim...
|
| [edit. It said I turned many people _into_ it which assumes that
| there are people out there who are Zims. Space invaders
| notwitstanding.]
| quantumite wrote:
| poof! you're a zim.
| nuccy wrote:
| I'm also using it for few years, the only complain I got so far
| is a lack of proper version for Mac OS and any mobile client.
| Obviously Python+GTK work on Mac OS, but few times either
| updates of Python, Mac OS or Zim itself, broke it for me. For
| mobile the only option is either to view files directly, or use
| built-in web server (though no editing is available in this
| case).
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| I just started programming in zig and I have to say that the
| tooling is _incredible_. It has things that I never knew I wanted
| as a C programmer, like automatically detecting undefined
| behavior and integer overflows. If you're looking for an
| alternative to C for a greenfield project I highly recommend it.
| qwertox wrote:
| I'm using Confluence for note taking and as a diary and it works
| pretty well (search functionality is beyond abysmal), compared to
| all the other options I've tried.
|
| But this one is the first desktop application which is really
| interesting and could have become my solution for these tasks.
| I'll definitely keep it installed and try it out.
| smoldesu wrote:
| A bit off-topic (but still related to making Markdown more
| usable), I found an Admonition plugin[0] for Obsidian the other
| day that really knocked my socks off. I love having visual guides
| in wikis that help draw your attention to various things, and
| this is really perfect for my uses. If Zim had a similar
| function, I might be tempted to start using it again...
|
| [0] https://github.com/valentine195/obsidian-admonition
| meristohm wrote:
| I really like Zim for journaling and transcribing RPG texts for
| easier reference.
| c-st wrote:
| Back when I was searching for a good note-taking system, each and
| everyone of them had one feature that I wanted that was missing.
| Zim Wiki was the first system I decided to stick with, and after
| 4+ years I never gravely missed anything. However, if you don't
| like organizing your stuff hierarchically, your experience might
| differ. Also, I kinda dig the desktop-centric approach. It feels
| more like a real tool than just some kind of "app".
|
| Because it's written in python it is comparatively easy to extend
| and through its integrated web server you can serve up your notes
| with a custom design in no time.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Zim is awesome and did everything I used to use Evernote for
| but run on mobile. The notes are kept in plain text, so there's
| no lock in. I am glad to know that the author is out there and
| released the code for us, because that will be usable so long
| as the necessary Python version is usable (lol).
|
| This might be a little odd but I get a very "homey" vibe from
| the program, like, there are parts that aren't as polished and
| improvements are slow and steady over the years, but there's
| something of personal touch that makes it charming to use.
| brocket wrote:
| There are a lot of fancier note taking tools but I keep going
| back to Zim. Been using it for years for private offline note-
| taking for work. I use quick notes and journal shortcuts many
| times a day to quickly jot down a followup note/idea/question in
| meetings. It's also my GTD system with tasks plugin. Love that
| it's just text files so I can manually edit them, version
| control, sync in private cloud service, etc. Never worry about
| losing my data.
|
| There are a few quirks I've gotten used to over the years though:
|
| - Pasting code will be garbled or auto-create tags unless you use
| the source view plugin or paste verbatim.
|
| - Takes a little configuration out of the box to get just right,
| system dependencies, links opening in right browser, plugins,
| shortcuts, fonts. But once you get streamlined it just works.
|
| - The syntax feels a little strange to me but I rarely need to
| edit raw files. I could also export to Markdown if I ever wanted
| to migrate.
|
| My last tip, templates are awesome. I have ones for all kinds of
| things, like interviewing, 1-1s, and architecture design outline.
| account-5 wrote:
| I've never touched the templates, I don't understand derstand
| their documentation. You have any pointers to something less
| obscure?
| mehdix wrote:
| I used it for years for writing a daily journal. I'd press a
| shortkey such as Alt+D and I'd get an entry for the day and
| write. Simple useful tool with an awesome author.
| csdvrx wrote:
| I wish it would eventually move to Markdown in a large version
| change, to open the door to direct-to-MD publishing
| avel wrote:
| Check out https://obsidian.md/ if you haven't already.
| mhink wrote:
| Seconding Obsidian. I started using it recently (admittedly
| for TTRPG notes) and I really like it! I haven't done a lot
| of cross-linking but it seems to work really well!
|
| Even better, it stores everything in plain Markdown files in
| a folder hierarchy, so you can easily back everything up
| and/or interact with them outside the app if need be.
|
| Even EVEN better, they have mobile apps that are perfectly
| happy to let you use your own file-syncing mechanism if you
| want to (although they do offer a sync service of their own
| as well.) Once I got it set up, everything Just Worked.
| c-st wrote:
| Do you have by chance an idea how the rich-content plugins
| might work with markdown?
|
| Tables could just be HTML, but stuff like Gnuplot diagrams or
| GraphViz graphs need to store their input data aswell as the
| actual rendered image.
| brocket wrote:
| Jaap is open to it but it's lower priority. It's been an open
| issue for years https://github.com/zim-desktop-wiki/zim-
| desktop-wiki/issues/...
| sedatk wrote:
| I've been using Google Docs for my note taking and have been very
| happy with it, but the news I've heard about suddenly closed
| accounts with no recourse for recovery make me skeptic of its
| long-term viability.
| [deleted]
| moonshinefe wrote:
| Yeah it's super convenient, I do it too. But like you I'm
| growing wary of putting all my eggs in one basket especially
| with how dysfunctional these large tech companies are getting
| and all the horror stories of account lockouts.
|
| The one thing I'd miss about shifting to a local note taking
| program is just how easy it is to share / collaborate Google
| Docs with people. Click one button and there's a URL for it
| anyone can view or potentially edit, served instantly through
| their fast servers.
| leke wrote:
| I use this at work to keep my notes on our code base. There's a
| bit of a strict policy about using unapproved apps, and it makes
| me a bit nervous there is git integration. I definitely wouldn't
| want anything to get pushed someplace somehow.
| mxuribe wrote:
| I used to love zim! I used it for a few years, but when i started
| travelling for work, it became tough to keep up with notes since
| i really needed a mobile client. Nowadays, it feels like 50% of
| my notes are captured while on the go, so a mobile client is now
| by far absolutely required for my workflow. I still give zim team
| lots of love, but just doesn't fill my needs as it used to.
| eggy wrote:
| I was using TiddlyWiki, but I stopped about two years ago. I use
| OneNote for everything because I am primarily Windows based, but
| I do have an iMac and Linux machines too. I may give this a try.
| I still go back to pen and paper in bound books a lot, but for
| listing and sharing this looks good.
| brocket wrote:
| I used OneNote in school and really liked it but no native
| Linux support is a deal breaker. The web client is far too slow
| and frustrating to use on a daily basis.
| znpy wrote:
| This looks like RedNotebook... is it some kind of clone?
| hkt wrote:
| Fantastic piece of software. I wish there was an android version
| so I could sync between my desktop and phone, but it is still
| brilliant.
| suramya_tomar wrote:
| I second that... There are a lot of times when I want to make
| notes or find information that I want to add to my Wiki (hosted
| on my desktop) from my phone or just want to search for
| something and having an android app that lets me do that would
| be fantastic.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I "solve" this problem by storing my phone's notes in IMAP, and
| dumping them periodically into my main notes.
|
| That solves writing. I find it actually works because phone
| notes tend to be write only -- little snippets of information
| that record something important and never get edited again once
| they are written, to be turned into a "real" note at a later
| date, once in a system that supports "real editing".
|
| For reading notes I dump everything onto a personal website.
| stonogo wrote:
| Markor supports Zim files, as of a few versions ago
| suramya_tomar wrote:
| Thanks. This is great and works pretty well. I use SyncThing
| to sync the files between the Phone and my Desktop so all my
| changes get sync'd bidirectionally automatically.
| airstrike wrote:
| It's like you woke up and decided to post exactly the thing I've
| been looking for over the past 6-12 months
| echelon wrote:
| These are the features I'd like in a wiki / personal knowledge
| engine:
|
| - Not a service. This has to be durable and portable.
|
| - Backed primarily by git and plaintext files, not a database.
| Explorable and manageable on the filesystem.
|
| - Markdown
|
| - Hyperlinks to articles that show up red if the page doesn't
| exist (yet). If a page is renamed, all hyperlinks to it must
| automatically update.
|
| - Multiple tags / categories can be added to any page. Bonus if
| it supports hierarchical categories. These get indexed and can be
| bulk managed. When pages are updated and their tags change, the
| system automatically handles the bookkeeping.
|
| - Indexed fuzzy search better than grep
|
| - Server + browser interface (mobile friendly). It should also
| support editing from the browser and saving back to git.
|
| - Native desktop app. Less important, but also enforces that git,
| files, and a simple set of indices are the core data model.
|
| - Sync over git / github with easy diff fixing
|
| - Publish to a public or private website. Bonus if statically
| rendered snapshots are supported.
|
| - Despite all of the ancillary indices and support mechanisms, it
| must remain CLI/vim editing friendly. Indexes and links should
| update as a post commit hook or async job
|
| - Images and media can be uploaded to a secondary service that
| handles indexing, hosting, backups, and thumbnail generation.
| This is a whole set of concerns all on its own.
|
| tl;dr: git + markdown data model with a bunch of bookkeeping,
| indexing, and tooling on the side
|
| I haven't found a good fit yet, but I haven't explored the entire
| space. I might just write it one of these days.
|
| Definitely looking for recommendations!
|
| Edit: thanks for the suggestions! :)
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| It only fits about half your criteria, but I'm liking the
| vscode extension FOAM. https://foambubble.github.io/foam/
|
| it's basically a clone of Roam Resarch as a vscode extension
| that uses Markdown.
|
| It's markdown, has a desktop app (vscode), since it's just
| markdown you can put it all in git with easy diffs, vscode
| allows you to search the entire project for words, it has tags.
| It even has a window to see your notes as a star map where you
| see the links between the different markdown files, but they
| also recently added tags to that starmap.
|
| You also get to use other extensions compatible with markdown
| like render inline plantuml and stuff like that, which is what
| is the nicest about it being markdown.
|
| If you're serious about making your own, I would consider
| contributing to FOAM's project instead.
| mhink wrote:
| I mentioned this in another subthread, but have you checked out
| Obsidian [1]?
|
| - It's a product, not a service (they do offer their own paid
| syncing service though)
|
| - It _is_ backed by plaintext: markdown files in folders. As
| for Git, I 'm pretty sure you could use it easily- and I
| noticed there's also a community-supported Git integration
| plugin [2].
|
| - Just tested link renaming, it's there.
|
| - It does have a tagging system. I haven't used it extensively
| enough to see if the rest of your requirements are met, but it
| seems very thorough.
|
| - The desktop and mobile clients do support full-text search.
| Not sure how it's indexed but it is quite fast.
|
| - Server + browser interface: unfortunately, it doesn't look
| like this is the case out of the box, but since the files are
| Just Markdown On A Filesystem I feel like you could probably
| just have a completely unrelated server to make changes to
| them.
|
| - Native desktop app: hate to break the news, but the desktop
| app is Electron. That being said, it's extremely snappy and
| doesn't seem like a _complete_ memory hog. (A cursory check of
| Activity Monitor says it 's got four processes running, using
| 127 MB, 73 MB, 55MB, and 11.8MB.)
|
| - Sync over git/github- again, community supported, but the
| plugin [2] looks quite solid and offers plenty of the kind of
| features you might like. I would also note that because
| everything's just Markdown files, other syncing mechanisms like
| Dropbox or iCloud "just work". They have a mobile app as well,
| and seamless iCloud syncing has been the killer feature for me.
|
| - Publishing is an interesting one. They _do_ have a paid
| service which allows you to "publish" vaults, which basically
| means they do the static rendering and then host it for you. It
| looks like their static rendering gives the published version
| of a vault a "table of contents" pane and other stuff. I
| imagine it wouldn't be too tricky to do this oneself, and you
| could possibly even integrate it into the editor.
|
| - So, CLI/Vim editing works like a dream. I just edited a file
| from Vim and immediately saw it updated in the desktop and
| mobile apps. Updating backlinks works _in the app_ just fine,
| but simply moving files around in the filesystem doesn 't
| update backlinks.
|
| - Yeah, this kinda is a whole concern of its own, but for what
| it's worth: images and media are stored in the same directory
| structure as Markdown files, and can be embedded into a "note"
| via linking. (like ![[imagename.jpg]]). So I imagine you could
| keep them in a separate directory that's gitignored or
| something like that.
|
| 1: https://obsidian.md/
|
| 2: https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git
| amyjess wrote:
| Notable has most of what you want except for the git
| integration. Though the author maintains that you can just save
| your notebooks to a git repo.
| wolpoli wrote:
| I am very glad to see that Zim has gotten their Windows builds
| working again.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Amazing little app. I'm also very thankful to Zim for the fact
| that I still have the easily-searchable text files from my years
| of Zim use over a decade ago. It made it really easy to recover
| things that I wrote back then, because they were never really
| tucked away inside of a database somewhere.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| I ended up switching to FOAM (the vscode extension) for personal
| notes because it's markdown and has much better support for
| inline planuml and showing node connections as a graph, but I
| haven't actually bothered changing my work notes away from ZIM
| because once stuff is in it, it kinda just works. If you don't
| care about visualizing links between different pages, it does a
| great job at making hierarchical notes searchable. My biggest
| gripe was that inserting plantuml code was really clunky because
| it doesn't update live (you have to submit your changes before
| seeing the result) but it's still very functional.
| notdiaphone wrote:
| I can't speak to plantuml support, but Zim was--guessing here--
| one of the first to visualize links. Look at the plugin "Link
| Map." Been using it long before the current crop of markdown
| knowledge gardens came about.
| greatgib wrote:
| Zim is not very known but this tool is really awesome!
|
| I use it for a few years also.
|
| I like it because it is simple, efficient, fast. Straight to the
| point. Not like all these cloud and electron apps.
|
| And the main top feature of this tool is that data are stored as
| plain files in a simple folder structure.
| ekvintroj wrote:
| What an awesome app
| culi wrote:
| Always gonna plug Maggie Appleton's seminal work on digital
| gardening whenever conversations about personal knowledge systems
| come up. It has some great resources in there
|
| https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history
| stavros wrote:
| Another really good program (that I personally prefer) is Joplin:
| https://joplinapp.org/
| mlok wrote:
| I wanted to like it, but the iphone client was too buggy,
| unusable :(
| stavros wrote:
| Ah, that's too bad. The Android one is OK.
| COMMENT___ wrote:
| Used Zim for several years to maintain personal wiki for tech
| support tasks (mostly email drafts / canned responses on
| different topics). But I don't use it now and don't recall why I
| dropped it.
| arichard123 wrote:
| Looks good. I've been using VimWiki and really make the most of
| it's ability to link to local files and directories with file://
| . This makes for a superb way of keeping on top of various admin
| tasks, as I just write a checklist, and link directly to the
| local file or remote dir and I'm away. I would like it even more
| if I could link to specific emails with email:// . There was a
| thunderbird plugin, called thunderlink, where I did get this
| working, but then thunderbird stopped finding the emails, so I
| lost faith in it.
| incanus77 wrote:
| There's been a great app for the Mac like this for years and
| years:
|
| https://www.voodoopad.com
| pants-no-pants wrote:
| Another thumbs up for VoodooPad. I've run it for years without
| a glitch. And it serves pages to my local net, navigation links
| and all.
| Tarkus69 wrote:
| THE GUIDE it's just much much better!
| ibnishak wrote:
| It is time to give a shout out to my favorite note taking app:
| Trilium https://github.com/zadam/trilium
|
| Pros: 1. Data is saved in SQlite. I am at 33k
| notes and it springs open instantaneously. 2. Notes can
| be arranged into arbitrarily deep tree. Single note can be placed
| into multiple places in the tree. (Think soft-links)
| 3. WYSIWYG support (CKEditor) 4. Tags, advanced
| scripting features 5. Other ususal wiki stuff like
| backlinks, note-map etc
|
| Cons: 1. Electron. 2. Data is saved in
| SQlite, not plain text.
| bwat48 wrote:
| I love this program, I've used it every day at work for years
| for my personal knowledgebase
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Having a proper database for note systems isn't necessarily a
| bad idea. For large knowledge bases, it lets you do arbitrary
| queries at least somewhat efficiently. Many apps just limit the
| kinds of searches/queries you can do, but eventually you end up
| needing to have an ad hoc query optimizer and planner or for
| users to have control over query evaluation so they can do the
| optimization themselves.
|
| However, you could probably still use sqlite for analytic
| queries by just creating an in-memory or temporary database at
| startup then watching for file changes to keep the database
| consistent. Creating this database probably won't take that
| long unless you are trying to store all of Wikipedia in your
| knowledge base.
| gunshai wrote:
| That looks freakin awesome!
| vymague wrote:
| It's silly. But I want these features in my offline personal
| wiki:
|
| - sortable table like wikipedia's
|
| - sortable list and other list manipulation tools from
| dynalist/worflowy's
|
| - automatically adding titles when you copy links of
| articles/videos/etc.
|
| I'd like to think I'm not the only one who mostly uses lists and
| tables to organize information and notes. Quick googling says
| org-mode can do the first 2. I tried spacemacs and it was just
| confusing. One day.
| rodelrod wrote:
| Org-mode can do number 3 as well: https://github.com/rexim/org-
| cliplink
|
| Can't argue with it being confusing. It takes some effort in
| the beginning until one day you realize that your mind blended
| with the machine.
| ron9 wrote:
| Not long ago, I ran through a bunch of wiki programs and
| eventually landed on Zim as my comfort zone. It's very light,
| looks pretty good, and just works! The syntax is a bit weird, and
| as someone mentioned, it doesn't handle code very well. Still
| really great and an easy recommend, though.
|
| https://ronitray.xyz/personal-wiki/
| eatmygodetia wrote:
| is your wiki still public? the link at the end of the article
| didn't work for me.
| ron9 wrote:
| I should probably update that post. I took it down because of
| some issues with my hosting and then never really got around
| to bringing it back up. at the time, it only had about 20-30
| items though.
|
| I can tell you the export to HTML functionality is solid, but
| for something like a wiki you really need searchability which
| as far as I know zim templates do not provide. The available
| templates are also not responsive other than maybe the eight-
| five-zero theme that i modified for my site.
| stn8188 wrote:
| I did nearly the same thing trying to get a knowledge base
| started for high speed digital circuit board design. I don't
| have much time to work on it these days though, so it's still
| light on content. I love how simple Zim is to work with and
| export to a static site but eventually it would be ideal to
| allow anyone to edit like a typical wiki.
|
| https://wiki.shielddigitaldesign.com/
| TYMorningCoffee wrote:
| I've been using Zim for daily journalling.
| roycoding wrote:
| I've been using Zim for at least 10 years for notes, todo's, etc.
|
| Recently I updated my setup to use syncthing for syncing between
| my desktop, laptop, and my Android phone. On my phone I use
| Markor, an open source app that supports the Zim markup format
| (along with Markdown and some others). I've been pretty happy
| with this setup.
| brnt wrote:
| Wow, I left Zim for a Markdown based setup because I wanted to
| have an Android client. Settled on Markor, and I never knew it
| actually supported the Zim syntax. I'll be converting back
| asap!
| therealmarv wrote:
| ha, that's interesting to know. Actually not being able to see
| or edit my notes on a phone was the dealbreaker for me and the
| biggest reason I stopped using ZIM and only using a bunch of
| markdown files nowadays.
|
| How happy are you with Markor on the phone? Is it good enough
| to edit your Zim files on the go or are there any bigger down
| sites?
| jrm4 wrote:
| Let me add something here; Zim feels the most _personally
| extensible_ (except for, of course, org-mode, I must admit)
|
| I see a bunch of people here with laundry lists of requirements,
| and when I see them, I'm like -- yes, a lot of those seem
| reasonable, but I've also had the same, and I've just built them
| myself, with some _very_ hacky Bash. But _any language_ will
| work.
|
| Examples..lets see. I add todo items from _anywhere_ (including
| phone) with email. I use Blitzmail on the phone and an IMAP
| script on the computer to send myself a tagged email, then I have
| another script to check and parse and add them to Zims "Journal"
|
| My personal website is in Zim. I have a short one-liner to update
| it to my server; but I also teach at a college. I learned just
| enough of the Canvas API to _also_ update certain pages of it to
| my class webpages. Also another one to update the Slides I make
| in Zim as well.
|
| Etc.
| flarg wrote:
| 12 years and counting - home, work and business notes - I've
| tried lots of others but this is still the best notetaking tool
| out there
|
| * It never changes - the same user-inter face,the same muscle
| memory, for over a decade * Pages are stored as plain text files
| and sub pages in sub folders - which means attachments are also
| in subfolders * The index and todo list can be re-created from
| the files at any time * Pages are saved as you type them * As
| well as full text search, you get the ability to instantly search
| for page names
| Naac wrote:
| Once again I'm going to recommend tiddlywiki[0].
|
| It has the hackability of emacs but can run anywhere a browser
| can ( both online and offline ). And of course, an active
| community and ecosystem built around it.
|
| [0] https://tiddlywiki.com/
| jcelerier wrote:
| > It has the hackability of emacs but can run anywhere a
| browser can
|
| Needing a browser is definitely not a positive. The website
| taking two seconds to load even when in cache while zim is
| absolutely instant even on potato PC neither.
| Naac wrote:
| I think being able to view your wiki from any browser is a
| positive. I don't need a separate app for my phone, I just
| access my wiki website and everything works the same.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Tiddlywiki is neat technology, but the fact that you have to
| choose a method of saving and are presented with ~13 different
| options just gives me decision fatigue.
|
| I don't care to evaluate which plugin will actually _save_ my
| data. That's a pretty fundamental operation in my opinion, and
| the fact that I have to evaluate and choose from one of 13
| options does not instill a lot of faith that my data will not
| be lost.
| Tomte wrote:
| I never get past the saving problem.
|
| Last time (a few weeks ago) I tried rclone with WebDAV. I do
| what the instructions say, I get a local web site where I can
| open the empty.hmtl, I do the basic setup, write a tiddler, it
| says "Saved" and the empty.html is still pristine and never
| gets written.
|
| The times before that I tried several other ways documented on
| their web site, but failed with all of them. git? Only GitHub
| (and GitLab) seem to be supported, not my own git repo. Or
| SourceHut.
|
| Cloud connectors? Which of the three? I've tried at least one
| of them, didn't work.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I wrote this[1] because I wanted something that didn't
| require any setup and I didn't want all kinds of features
| getting in my way. Just run the server and have it save the
| wiki to my hard drive. I guess you do have to install a D
| compiler in order to compile it, which might be classified as
| setup.
|
| https://github.com/bachmeil/tiddlyd
| Tomte wrote:
| Bookmarked! I won't try it soon, but I will. Compiling a D
| program doesn't seem to be difficult.
| Naac wrote:
| I just run tiddlywiki on the node js server[0] and haven't
| had any problems.
|
| [0] https://tiddlywiki.com/static/Installing%2520TiddlyWiki%2
| 520...
| rpdillon wrote:
| I had the some problem, and several months ago (8?) I put
| together a small python script that I run that handles saving
| for me seamlessly. It also keeps around a handful of backups
| for each wiki, and provides an index page so I can swap
| between different wikis as I need to. I'm now all-in on
| TiddlyWiki and I've never been happier. I manage about a
| dozen or so wikis this way.
|
| I haven't yet gotten around to properly hosting the source
| code publicly, but it's just a single python file that I run
| locally. To actually replicate the wikis between my devices,
| I use Syncthing. I'll be happy to put the source code up if
| folks are interested...it'll probably take only an hour or
| so.
| cmitsakis wrote:
| I don't use tiddlywiki but I have tried widdler
| https://github.com/qbit/widdler it's a WebDAV server that
| handles saving.
| hencq wrote:
| I just tiddlywiki with the --listen flag on a Raspberry Pi. I
| also expose it to the outside world by running it behind
| Traefik.
|
| Also see https://tiddlywiki.com/#WebServer and
| https://www.npmjs.com/package/tiddlywiki
| natovan wrote:
| This is actually what I was looking for some time ago. Thanks
| skinkestek wrote:
| Good memories from Zim.
|
| I used OneNote 2016 after Zim in a period where I was stuck on
| Windows anyway but modern OneNote broke so much that I don't use
| OneNote anyway even if it is now cross platform.
|
| The last year I have used Joplin which is awesome.
|
| Lately though I have used Logseq for no other reason than that it
| feels even more awesome.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Not to be confused with Zim [0], a zsh configuration framework
| that's generally faster than oh-my-zsh [1].
|
| [0] https://github.com/zimfw/zimfw
|
| [1] https://ohmyz.sh/
| dylan-m wrote:
| Or Zim [0], the file format for giant offline-readable
| Wikipedia archives.
|
| [0] https://wiki.openzim.org/wiki/OpenZIM
| qpiox wrote:
| Using ZIM on a daily basis for more than 10 years. I use some of
| it's features more often than others:
|
| - check lists as todo lists
|
| - daily log
|
| - drafting slides for presentations (using export to Presentation
| option and S5 option)
|
| Primary way of syncing to other devices - shared nextcloud
| folder.
|
| Pro: plain text files - can be edited by any available text
| editor in case I want to edit notes on an unsupported devices.
|
| Cons: I don't like when it automatically creates notes for all
| phrases written in CamelCase. It is a wiki, but i don't use it as
| a true wiki, but as a bunch of notes.
| heldergg wrote:
| > Cons: I don't like when it automatically creates notes for
| all phrases written in CamelCase. It is a wiki, but i don't use
| it as a true wiki, but as a bunch of notes.
|
| There's a preference to ignore CamelCase:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/88SZTY9.png
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Zim should be a Vim clone written in Zig.
|
| This looks like a lightweight improvement on my current one-text-
| file workflow. Might be worth trying out.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| Zim is a fantastic tool, the best in its class. So far - 2628
| notes and counting.
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(page generated 2022-01-26 23:00 UTC)