
Foam – A Roam Research alternative with VSCode, Markdown and GitHub - DaniAkash
https://github.com/foambubble/foam
======
yewenjie
A lot of comments in this thread makes me wonder if Roam has successfully
become an actual cult. Personal opinion, but it seems like Roam's core
features are hard-to-invent (though all of those existed in different apps in
different contexts) but easy-to-implement. Many early adopters are very
unhappy seeing multiple alternatives pop up (some arguably offering better
features) which subverts the 'my-notetaking-app-is-unique-and-better-than-
yours' sense of superiority. I'm seeing people defending every aspect of Roam
at a level that usually comes from cognitive dissonances.

~~~
iancrasta
Could you name a few better alternatives? I've been fishing..

~~~
sourcex
Obsidian - [https://obsidian.md](https://obsidian.md) 2\. Stroll - Open source
-
[https://giffmex.org/experiments/strol...]https://giffmex.org...](https://giffmex.org/experiments/strol...\]https://giffmex.org/experiments/stroll.experiment.html)
3\. RemNote -
[https://www.remnote.io/homepage](https://www.remnote.io/homepage) 4\.
Amplenote - [https://www.amplenote.com/](https://www.amplenote.com/)

~~~
nscmnto
None of these alternatives (or others, AFAIK) have automatic references, which
for me is the biggest Roam feature.

~~~
yewenjie
By automatic referencing do you mean backlinking?

~~~
bernatfp
I think the parent is referring to unlinked references:
[https://www.roamtips.com/home/roam-unlinked-
references](https://www.roamtips.com/home/roam-unlinked-references)

~~~
nscmnto
Yup, that’s it :)

~~~
yewenjie
Org-roam supports unlinked references. In any case, that's super easy to
implement (it's just plain search for the current document title in all other
titles) and I expect others to soon offer this feature.

------
ghego1
As a researcher I always appreciate to see new opportunities to organize my
work and improve my routines. This system does seem interesting.

To this day though I've found that Zotero is unbeaten to keep everything
organized. I collect all my notes and documents in the Zotero library, and I
sync it on multiple devices by placing the Zotero files in a Dropbox folder.

In this way I can use whatever app I want to write the actual notes (MD, txt,
docx, whatever). I organize the notes in Zotero "folders" and the documents of
each note are stored in "sub-folders". The best thing is that these are not
actual folders, so the same document, if relevant for multiple researches, can
be placed in two or more folders/sub-folders etc.

This setup has worked for me for nearly 8 years, with over 50 publications and
over 5000 documents in my Zotero library. And best of all, the only thing I'm
actually paying for is Dropbox, which I would anyway and, IMHO, is totally
worth it. But that's another story. And more importantly, to get things
started one can rely on the free tier of Dropbox, so even that's free.

So as a researcher (which translates to little money to spare and high volumes
of documents to manage), I find that to this date I still have to find a
solution that beats my configuration. I would love though to discover new
opportunities!

~~~
WJW
Dropbox (or any of the other syncing apps) as a syncing mechanism for other
stuff is underrated IMO. I personally have notes, password manager database
and a budget app database synced between devices and the amount of value I've
derived from having everything automatically sync between devices is huge.

I wish more apps would take the wide availability of "magic syncing folders"
into account when designing their data storage. (I know many VC funded apps
would prefer to keep the data in house so it can be monetized, but there is
less excuse for open source tools)

~~~
auxym
I agree but there's no great cross-platform syncing solution yet, to my
knowledge. Dropbox dropped all linux support except ext4, which is limiting.
GDrive and OneDrive don't have a Linux Client. Nextcloud is neat, but still
not very well supported (eg, by android apps).

The result is I'm using a mishmash of all those, and keep forgetting what is
synced where.

~~~
LoveMortuus
For Google Drive there is a solution for Linux [0]. I actually really like it,
it's not automatic, but that's not really a problem, because you can make it
automatic with some bash and crontab.

[0] [https://github.com/odeke-em/drive](https://github.com/odeke-em/drive)

------
jyriand
Little bit off topic, but I generated a zettelkasten from C2 Wiki. There is a
zip file that you can download that has all the wiki entries from 2015[0] in
html format. Used pandoc to convert to markdown and then did some sed
scripting to fix the links and remove some boilerplate. I can open it on
Obsidian and see that OnceAndOnlyOnce wiki entry has 1,470 backlinks. It's
little bit slow and I can't open the Graph view, but otherwise it usable.
Tried to open the folder with VSCode and then expanded backlinks sidebar. It
resulted in "EMFILE: Too many open files". Is Foam using some custom logic for
linking files together. I saw in inbox.md some auto-generated text for dealing
with markdown links.

What I learned is that one folder with 36000 files is not a good idea.

0 - [https://archive.org/details/c2.com-
wiki_201501](https://archive.org/details/c2.com-wiki_201501)

~~~
nautist
I use zimwriterfs to pack offline wiki into single file. Works great, thanks
for the hint

------
TheMatten
One more interesting tool for managing Zettlekasten-like notes is Neuron
([https://github.com/srid/neuron](https://github.com/srid/neuron)). Static
websites it generates show relations between viewed notes (scroll to top of
[https://neuron.zettel.page/2011506.html](https://neuron.zettel.page/2011506.html)),
support both "branching" and "non-branching" links, where the former provide
structure for auto-generated index of zettels
([https://neuron.zettel.page/2011504.html](https://neuron.zettel.page/2011504.html)),
plus they have integrated search and the whole app is pretty easy to set up
using Nix. I really like the nicely polished interface and fact that it tries
to have minimal effect on note format.

~~~
TheMatten
This page
([https://neuron.zettel.page/6f0f0bcc.html](https://neuron.zettel.page/6f0f0bcc.html))
seems to sum up it's goals.

------
namuol
What do Mind-mapping, Zettelkasten, Bullet Journaling, Getting Things Done,
etc. all have in common?

They impose a taxonomy on thought and rely heavily on "best practices".

Even the simplest organizational schemes require a great deal of _discipline_
to be successful with, and nothing is a "one size fits all" solution.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can dump interesting thoughts (or links
to articles, videos, whatever) into a "knowledge base" and it finds
connections and labels things for me while I sleep.

Who's building _this_?

~~~
moriturius
The key thing is not discipline. It's to make it yours. It's easy to make a
software that would link your thoughts or weblinks together one way or
another, but it's impossible to make it just like you would.

There is no software that would piece different ideas together to come up with
a new one. That is called AI and we are not there yet.

What you want is get the results without doing any actual work yourself. This
is not a problem that any software could fix.

~~~
TrainedMonkey
Concur, to rephrase it, it's not the software that must make connections while
you sleep, but rather you must make connections and then transfer them to
software. From there you can do spaced repetition or whatever to map those
connections to a mental model. There are two friction points here: realizing
what connections are made and then externally documenting the connections.

~~~
elbear
Why do you need to document the connections externally? Isn't it enough to
reference one node from another and provide some context?

------
m0zg
I always feel like "creating relationships" in a tool misses the point in a
way. Those relationships need to be _in your head_ in order to be useful, not
in some tool, or else you're spending too much time and energy on maintaining
the graph, and derive little to no value from having it.

~~~
chadcmulligan
Things can have a lot of relationships - databases for instance, it's good to
have something remember it for you, and to show other people.

~~~
m0zg
Databases operate at a much lower semantic level though, so it's not a good
analogy IMO.

~~~
chadcmulligan
There are many examples:

Biochemical pathways:
[https://www.roche.com/sustainability/philanthropy/science_ed...](https://www.roche.com/sustainability/philanthropy/science_education/pathways.htm)

Financial market trades

Suppliers for the parts of a car

Electrical networks

Data networks

Neural networks

Metabolic networks
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_network)

Electronic components

Fields of mathematics

History of mathematics / politics

etc

------
rcarmo
The trouble I see with this sort of approach (not Foam itself, but a general
take on Obsidian, Zettelkasten, etc.) is that you quickly end up with a single
folder with thousands of files, which makes it hard to manage, share, etc.
Especially if you have diagrams or media associated with your entries.

It’s the same issue with static sites: you get a posts folder, dump everything
in it, and then you dump all the images in an images folder and lose
association between them.

I would much prefer if these tools took front matter metadata (or a pathname)
to link to each other and had a note-per-folder approach (my own site does
that, and I store images for each post in the same folder as “index.md”—the
pathname becomes the final URL).

~~~
jevakallio
Foam author here! I am very open to all suggestions in this area. Foam is a
new project I built solely to my own requirements, but I'm actively seeking
feedback on how to make it more broadly applicable as per our principles:
[https://foambubble.github.io/foam/principles](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/principles)

FWIW, subdirectory linking support is not far away. Work is being tracked on
GitHub at the issue below, and I already have a WIP PR in the works:
[https://github.com/foambubble/foam-
vscode/issues/8](https://github.com/foambubble/foam-vscode/issues/8)

If you have any more suggestions and ideas on how to improve Foam, feel free
to open issues on GitHub!

~~~
DaniAkash
So far I'm loving your project. Will be closely following it as I move my
notes into foam bubbles

~~~
jevakallio
Amazing! Please let me know in GitHub issues or Twitter DMs how you get along.
This is a very early alpha release, keen to hear feedback at all levels!

------
cosmojg
This really feels like an overcomplicated step in the wrong direction compared
to VimWiki:
[https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki)

~~~
dageshi
Does vimwiki support the graph? That's the secret sauce really, I found
[https://obsidian.md](https://obsidian.md) a few days ago and have been
obsessed with graph based knowledge storage since.

~~~
jkkkk11
I'm looking for a graph based solution, too. For my master thesis I used
diagrams.net, but it's not a long term solution. I need something with
markdown support, git, offline mode and hopefully for free.

~~~
unsungNovelty
Obsidian has a graph view, yes. But Zettlr is a much more stable note taking
app than Obsidian. Zettlr is also open source. I would recommend you checkout
Zettlr.com if possible. It has great set of tools and is stable unlike
Obsidian (beta) which is proprietary.

Currently Zettlr doesn't have graph view, But the PR for a graph view is up
and soon will come (power of open source?). If cool with it, I would recommend
Open Source Software like Zettlr. :)

PR for graph view in Zettlr -
[https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/pull/921](https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/pull/921)

~~~
raun1
You keep saying Zettlr is stable, unlike Obsidian? Why? Obsidian is quite
stable in my experience, despite being in beta. Do you simply mean the feature
set is built out and mostly solidified? Otherwise, I don't see the rationale
behind your comment.

------
baylessj
Glad to see that this exists and is under such promising development -- the
tool looks like a perfect fit for my needs! I like working in the VSCode
environment and I've been looking for the right tool for my Zettelkasten. Will
definitely give this a shot once the subfolder linking gets added, that's a
must for me given the structure of my Zettelkasten.

------
sepeth
I tried this with VSCodium, but it doesn't work. The recommended extensions
are not in open-vsx marketplace. I installed the foam extension from the VSIX
file, and it asks to reload VSCodium but I don't see it in my installed
extensions after.

I would love to help to get it working for VSCodium if it doesn't depend on
anything VSCode specific.

~~~
jevakallio
Foam author here! I'm not personally familiar with VSCodium, but contributions
in this area would be extremely welcome as long as they don't prevent any of
our Roadmap features working on VS Code!

Check out the contribution guide here:
[https://foambubble.github.io/foam/contribution-
guide](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/contribution-guide)

------
bmaupin
I'm in the slow process of migrating my personal wiki from Google Sites to
Markdown + Jekyll/GitHub Pages. I love that everything is in plain text and
version controlled and I feel like I can organize it however I like. I also
use VSCode to edit and create the Markdown files but without any special
plugins.

------
euler_angles
Can I use this without a Github account? Specifically, I wonder if I can't
transfer this over to a machine that never touches the internet and have it
still be useful.

~~~
ryonez
You certainly don't have to use git, though I'd at least get the template to
start with. Git is just the sync method being used by default.

~~~
euler_angles
I want to use Git, I have that on my offline machine. But offline means github
isn't an option. However, this indirectly answers my question, so thanks.

------
gexla
The title is click bait. It seems all note taking applications now need to be
Roam Research alternatives. And then you get the entourage of other mentions
(Hi, Obsidian.)

The Readme for the linked repo mentions this note taking system was inspired
by Roam Research. That doesn't mean it's a Roam Research alternative.

Personally, I like VSC but I find it quickly gets cluttered and I'm trying to
pare back the things I use it for.

I also often find myself struggling with the VSC UI for file handling. I don't
know why. I often find myself opening another editor / file manager to use
along with VSC. It seems error prone to me.

~~~
theon144
It implements Roam-style syntax, backlinks and graph view, in what way is it
not a Roam alternative?

~~~
gexla
* Quick entry in a workflowy-like interface (blocks) * Bidirectional links * Block linking * No need for file creation / management

Roam is just getting started with a dedicated team and a sustainable business
model. At this point, I'm guessing they have built a lot of runway for
development even if they lose a lot of users from their pricing.

Development with a dedicated team will move quicker than open source efforts.
In this context, we're talking about a "Roam alternative" because the
alternative is implementing ideas from Roam. Unless the team is all out of
ideas, the future of alternatives will be to continue copying Roam.

The graph seems to be one of the least useful features. It doesn't take long
before it becomes useless.

~~~
immy
And the competition will check the pricing. Roam is the only block game in
town, for now.

------
abrowne
I don't think or note about anything important or complicated enough to need a
tool like this, but I love this approach for those who want it.

Notes are really just text to edit, so why not use a text editor for notes,
especially if it's something you already have open?

For my much more simple notes, mostly lists for things like todos and music to
check out, I switched to using a folder of text files in a separate VS Code
window, and I couldn't be happier. I used to use Notational Velocity on Mac
and then Zim on Linux, but I realized I might as well have a full editor for
things like sorting, (un)capitalizing and block selections. I find rich text
features and even markdown distracting for my notes, but I could use the
latter if I ever wanted. Line folding is great for decluttering, and it lets
me stick to under ten topical files. I thought I wanted wiki linking, but
really just clickable web links plus multi-file search. Finally, autosave of
existing _and new, unnamed files_ is what let me to ditch a notes-specific
app.

~~~
Heliosmaster
Org mode in emacs seems to fit your description pretty well (for Emacs users,
at least)

~~~
abrowne
I've thought about it, but it seems overkill for what I'd really use, and I
have Mac/Gnome keybindings burned into my fingers, so Emacs feels really
alien. (I know about CUA-mode and other options, but it feels like fighting
against the current to change _everything_ from Emacs defaults style keys.)

~~~
Heliosmaster
I use Mac and emacs keybinding all the time. C-a, C-e, C-k, C-y.. not sure
what you mean.

~~~
abrowne
To choose one of your examples, when I want to paste, my fingers know
C{md/trl}-v, so C-y is not familiar. But it's not just copy and paste, I want
keys for things like find, find again and replace to work about the same in
all the apps I use, notably browsers, where I spend more than half of my time.
Keys like these are used by most Mac, Linux and cross-platform apps. I know
the Emacs commands aren't exactly the same — they're often more powerful, with
more options for different types of find — but editors like VS Code and
Sublime Text also have more powerful find than a browser, for example, but
their keybindings are much more similar.

------
sherlock_h
Seems like a lot of people are unhappy with their new pricing model!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RoamResearch/comments/hf2fiq/i_love...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RoamResearch/comments/hf2fiq/i_love_roam_but_15_is_simply_too_much_for_me_on_a/)

~~~
gexla
What model? A monthly fee?

As opposed to what? Free? Getting investors who will pay for development while
the service monetizes the users? It's unfortunate that this is what users have
come to expect. That we feel should be getting free usage of a service when
the developers have bills to pay just like everyone else, in addition to the
cloud usage costs.

The people complaining about monthly fee in that three are target users for
nobody but Facebook, Twitter, etc.

~~~
input_sh
I'm all for a premium, but $15/month is a bit too much. Almost all their
competitors are half the price. Here's the pricing of their competitors I can
think of on top of my head:

Evernote: €7/month

Notion: $4/month

Ulysses: $5.49/month

Standard Notes: $9.99/month

OneNote (+ the entire Office 365): $9.99/month

Inkdrop: $4.99/month

Bear: $1.49/month ($14.99 per year!)

~~~
criddell
You're not the type of user they want:

> We don't want fuckin tire kickers who don't take thinking tools seriously.

> You don't think it's worth the money, that's cool - gtfo.

> You're actually poor -- we'll help you out.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/RoamResearch/comments/ep2vy6/how_mu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RoamResearch/comments/ep2vy6/how_much_will_roam_cost/fowvc8f/)

That thread on Reddit really soured me on Roam. I'm glad to see alternatives
like Foam pop up because there are some interesting ideas there.

~~~
zomglings
Their big mistake was so abrasively describing their product development
strategy.

Their core strategy is sound - to develop, at an early stage, for a passionate
group of users (even if the group is small).

------
ege_erdogan
There will be many people migrating to other services once Roam stops being
free. This seems like a promising alternative.

~~~
gexla
It has already stopped being free.

If there really were alternatives to Roam then why would we even be talking
about Roam? Why aren't we talking about Notepad? Nobody talks about Notepad
because it's not interesting. It's not interesting because there's nothing
special about it.

There's loads of projects on Github we could propose as alternatives to Roam.
If they are really alternatives, then (again) why are we talking about Roam?
Why is Roam in the title?

Why aren't you talking about Foam, which is the subject of this HN entry? Why
does the title name Roam and "A Roam Research alternative."

Let's all repeat together.

Room: The editor has a name. The editor's name is Foam.

A bicycle isn't an alternative to a car. A bicycle might be another viable
option for transportation, but it's not a car alternative. If you believe a
bicycle is an alternative to a car then you're simply not using (or have no
feed) of the benefits a car can provide over a bicycle.

There is no alternative to Roam (unless you're trying to sell something,
apparently.) Once people stop talking about Roam, then there will be an
alternative, because it's no longer interesting.

So, have you tried Notepad?

~~~
elcomet
I'm not sure what your point is. Your comment is overly complicated. Are you
saying notepad is a good alternative to roam?

~~~
gexla
If you only need the features that Notepad provides, then it's an alternative
to Roam. That's what these "Roam Research alternative" discussions sound like
to me anyways.

Foam isn't an alternative to Roam unless you don't need key characteristics
which differentiate the two services.

I also feel that Roam is being used as click-bait to attract eyeballs to other
note taking apps.

This reminds me of the "I can't believe it's not butter!" marketing campaign.
Logically, you could apply that tagline to any product. I can't believe this
celery isn't butter! No, margarine isn't butter. They are using butter to sell
their own products.

Just the same, any note taking app could be an alternative to Roam. I would
bet this discussion thread wouldn't have been this long if Roam wasn't in the
title.

~~~
notkaiho
So, for you, an "alternative" would have to be a 1:1 replacement offering?

I'm glad that's not the common understanding of the word.

~~~
gexla
Not 1:1 but it wouldn't be an alternative if it isn't offering the same key
characteristics which make the service unique.

------
aftergibson
Seems nice but a bit fiddly and lacking backlinks, after trying numerous
clones of Roam Research this finally convinced me to just commit to Roam and
stop trying these things out, maybe one of these solutions will eventually be
just frictionless enough to work for me but not at the moment.

I'm glad Roam offers decent exporting though.

~~~
elbear
What kind of friction do you encounter when using Roam? I'm asking, because
I'm interested in this kind of tools in general and I might offer a general
solution based on Tiddlywiki.

~~~
aftergibson
No, that's the thing Roam is pretty frictionless. It's web-based, no setup
needed and isn't Roam-lite, or Roam-ish with some caveats around UI or
functionality.

~~~
elbear
Oh, ok.

------
Southland
All of the links in square brackets for recommended extensions, recipes, etc,
404 when you click from the README.

~~~
jevakallio
Hi! Foam author here. We generate markdown references to bridge [[wiki-link]]s
to work with Markdown tools. For the time being this is optimised for a) the
editing experience in VS Code and b) the GitHub pages publishing pipeline, so
it's more convenient to generate markdown links without the `.md` suffix.

See bottom of the file here for example:
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/foambubble/foam/master/rea...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/foambubble/foam/master/readme.md)

This means that for the time being links are broken in the GitHub markdown
preview.

I'll look into getting this fixed, but not sure what the best way forward is.

~~~
erezsh
I think the problem is that you're including these links in the README. New
visitors expect all the links there to work, but they are broken.

If the README only included basic information and a link to the github pages,
it would be easier to follow.

P.S. since I'm already typing, have you considered supporting semantic links,
in addition to the regular ones? It will make the relationships between the
pages clearer at a glance, and allow for better automation in the future. It
might also help in visualization, for example you could toggle only specific
relationships, to get a simpler graph of the information you care about.

------
paulkre
Love the idea, but I don't like the dependency on jekyll. Would love to see a
clean Gatsby plugin that does the same thing. You could even generate the
note-links graph for the static page that way.

~~~
jevakallio
Foam author here! I also don't like dependency on Jekyll, and over time I want
to build a bespoke static site generator for Foam (possibly based on Gatsby)
that's able to create a richer browsing experience.

Thanks for the idea! I have quite a few on the Roadmap already, and would love
to hear more in GitHub issues

[https://foambubble.github.io/foam/roadmap](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/roadmap)

------
siegecraft
Super excited to try this out since it maps strongly to my existing notetaking
workflow (markdown, vscode, custom extensions, and so on). I hope the author
(or a contributor) can come up with a clever way to input drafts via a mobile
device. I've considered and rejected many workflows and continue to use a
gesture on my phone mapped to the "create a new card" action in trello and
manually move it over later.

------
crucialfelix
I'm definitely interested in a few Roam features in my VSCode (for note while
working)

Foam Back links aren't working. That's one of the essential features of Roam.

I think that's a feature that any of the Markdown Link packages could offer.
But then again I would keep the link graph in a separate data store and just
show back links in a separate panel—not by editing the document itself.

------
stevetodd
Is there a simple file-system-like project out there that has git-like
capabilities but basically commits and pushes on any save. I’d like to just
keep notes in markdown and sync notes among my devices. I don’t even mind
dealing with merge conflicts. I want the git-like capabilities for file
history.

~~~
igg
You could use a cronjob to add and commit all files at midnight.

~~~
M2Ys4U
That assumes you're using a device that is powered on at midnight, or at any
particular time of day really.

------
tunesmith
For those of you who have done this for a while, with links and backlinks,
don't you just end up with a big snarl? It seems that unless other controls
are introduced, every arrow/edge just means "A reminds of B somehow", no
matter how tangentially.

------
roter
On the naming. There is a popular Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package
called OpenFOAM [0]. It was originally called FOAM.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFOAM](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFOAM)

------
olah_1
Backlinks aren’t enough. They don’t actually tell you anything.

We need to be able to define relationships between data. There needs to be a
piece of metadata that describes the type of link like “influenced_by” or
“influenced” or “evolved_from” etc.

~~~
olav
In Knowfox, I associate a type with bidirectional links, e.g.
[https://www.evernote.com/l/AAEeqhDgvTZLrozLtt0zMg1JvLol4xRmD...](https://www.evernote.com/l/AAEeqhDgvTZLrozLtt0zMg1JvLol4xRmDKQ)

~~~
olah_1
It looks awesome, thanks!

Bad thing is that the website has almost nothing on it. I don't know if it's a
service, a downloadable app, a self-hosted web app, or anything.

And the text on the website is light grey on a white background so it's very
difficult to read.

I found more information on the github, but it still needs screenshots and
information on how to actually use it (download? self-host on server?)

[https://github.com/oschettler/knowfox](https://github.com/oschettler/knowfox)

------
slifin
I think roams queries will be the last feature most clones won't have

------
discreteevent
Mind maps are still quite good for this kind of thing. Quicker than a wiki.
WYSIWYG. Use two dimensions of the screen. Very quick to refactor structure.
But they are a bit 90s I suppose.

~~~
theon144
I mean, outliners are literally 60s/70s tech and they're just now getting
their heyday (in the form of Roam and others). Give mindmaps time :)

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p0nce
I will keep using a single text file with little structure thanks.

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the-peter
Can Foam store the data in files in a local folder using a file sharing tool
like Dropbox, SyncThing or Resilien? I don't want private notes going on
Github.

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jevakallio
Foam author here. Yes it can. GitHub support is purely optional. I've improved
the Getting Started guide to reflect this.

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rgrs
How is different from normal note taking apps? I see a relation graph and back
links. Are these two the only difference?

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dcre
Yes, that’s about it. Also the infinite nesting best exemplified in Workflowy.
People who are into Roam seem to believe that once you start building a graph
of these relationships that you can quickly click through, the result is
surprisingly useful.

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lqs
Roam/Foam is way different with Zotero.

More competition is always good to see.

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ijustwanttovote
This is cool. Going to start playing with it.

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flarg
Seriously this has to stop, all you need is Zotero, Zim and Freemind. Formal
research, desktop note taking and file organisation, mind mapping. These tools
are reputable, well supported, play well with any file sync service and will
be around for many years. They are the desktop productivity tools of choice.
Don't waste time on cloud services that will shut down or be acquired, taking
your data with them.

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trenchgun
Freemind seems to be a dead project.

