
Show HN: Gingko, a tree-document editor - adriano_f
https://gingkoapp.com/p/future-of-text
======
Matti
Far from identical, but along similar lines:
[http://treesheets.com/](http://treesheets.com/)

"It's like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for
complex data because it's hierarchical. It's like a mind mapper, but more
organized and compact. It's like an outliner, but in more than one dimension.
It's like a text editor, but with structure. "

You can nest spreadsheet-like cells within cells within cells within cells..
and zoom in and out between the various levels of nesting.

For Windows and Ubuntu, with a beta for Mac OS X available.

~~~
sweetdreamerit
seems nice, but I have a question: can it import - export to other formats?
Latex, markdown, csv ....

~~~
Matti
You can export/import views as XML or CSV. The generated XML is UTF-8 encoded
and it only has three element types in total for the cells and rows so the
structure of the file isn't complicated at all.

~~~
ptrotter
Treesheets is an awesome way of structuring ideas and materials. As Matti
said, the XML output from TreeSheets is easy to parse and convert for other
uses. Basic HTML export is also provided as a simple means of sharing sheet
data. Since TreeSheets is an open source project - it is possible to extend
these areas of functionality to meet your own workflow needs and the code is
easy to follow and fun to work with.

------
mgualt
I'm certainly drawn to the idea and am inclined positively towards it. I'm
even willing to overlook the ridiculous hubris of "This new medium will be the
way most text is read and written in the future."

However, there are many confusing things to me as a person who arrived at the
site through HN. Since one of the developers is promoting the "app" here, it
might be useful to hear from him on these points:

1\. Is this an input format or is it a publication format, or is it a viewer?
Does it rely on a time-tested plaintext markup format like LaTeX or markdown?
Perhaps it is a HTML viewer for a LaTeX markup document with special
structure, rather than an actual typset web publication format.

2\. What is the conceptual structure of the document system? Giving me a
screenshot does not show me anything about the way you are conceptualizing
your document. Is there a separation of content and output, output and viewer?

3\. Is any part of this open source? Are you incorporating any other major
technologies which have already been developed?

I apologize if any of the above seems harsh, but this is an important topic
and I have become slightly tired of seeing flashy presentations about poorly-
thought out "revolutionary" new document formats/tools/whatnot.

~~~
adriano_f
The hubris of the statement is not lost on me, but what should a founder be
but delusional and optimistic :)

1\. It's both a viewer and a word processor. It relies on Markdown (and LaTeX
through extensions). We export to Md, but will be adding more import/export
options in the future. We hope to create a publication standard for it.

2\. The structure of the document is an "outline of index cards". Each card
can have one or more children. Source content (in markdown) is edited by
toggling edit mode on that card.

3\. Yes, we are extracting parts of this as open-source. The rest remains
proprietary (for now, at least).

> I apologize if any of the above seems harsh

No need to apologize. Thoughtful criticism is what we need.

Thanks!

~~~
IanCal
> It relies on Markdown (and LaTeX through extensions). We export to Md, but
> will be adding more import/export options in the future. We hope to create a
> publication standard for it.

Do we need a new standard for structured documents? Would a <section> not be
sufficient?

~~~
adriano_f
For three levels deep, no we don't need a new standard. Larger trees, linked
together will probably need something new.

~~~
zachrose
Why does it matter how many levels there are?

~~~
woah
He's probably talking about many-to-many relationships that he has planned.

------
IanCal
Hopefully this criticism is helpful.

I find this really hard to read, sorry.

I can't just scroll through or scan read, and I'm met with a variety of
different things all at once. Everything's always visible, so I don't know
what I'm looking at. I've scrolled down on the lowest level, and read a bit
but have no understanding of the context. Clicking on it makes me realise
where I am but I've skipped over a load of stuff in the middle so I'm
scrolling back up that to find where I left off... I think this is a visual
thing though rather than a major issue with the _idea_. Fiddling a bit I've
only just found that not every node has children, but this this is only
indicated by nothing happening (which is identical to something that should
happen but doesn't)

This is really a different formatter for the same structure of text we've
already been using, so the hyperbole is a bit of a turnoff for me.

    
    
        \section{some title}
        
        Explanatory text
        
        \subsection{subsection title}
    
        Sub text
    

etc.

Or

    
    
        <section>
            <h1>heading</h1>
            <p>Text</p>
            <section>
                <h2>heading 2
    
    

Why do we need something new? What's being added? What couldn't I do before
that's now possible? These are the things I want to know when you tell me
you've got a new hierarchical document. Can I already read these well with a
screen-reader? The ordering in the source would (I think) read each column
individually, which wouldn't make sense. Try loading your viewer without CSS.
Imagine a screenreader hitting the massive block of JSON at the bottom of the
page. Why is that in the body?

~~~
adriano_f
I agree, the UI needs improvement. No one feels the gaps more than I do. But
they say, "launch before you're ready!" ;)

For one thing, scrolling on its own (with mouse scroll), doesn't automatically
highlight whichever card is now centered. So it breaks the flow. Clicking, or
scrolling with keyboard are the only way right now to keep the context clear.

> the hyperbole is a bit of a turnoff for me.

I know, it's a big claim, and I don't expect anyone else to believe it. I
thought about not including it, but it's honestly what I believe. Delusional
founder? Check.

> This is really a different formatter for the same structure of text we've
> already been using

That's true, more or less. Table of contents, chapter & subsection breaks,
etc, are all attempts to make the structure clearer.

However, once we go beyond 3 levels deep, this has significant advantages.

One can get an overview of a text by reading column 1, but can drill deeper
and deeper into specific sections, and even into other trees that are embedded
(or "transcluded") into this one. We could have all of physics, or comp-sci,
in one tree, and the reader will always be able to drill in for more, or zoom
out for overview.

> Why do we need something new? What's being added? What couldn't I do before
> that's now possible?

There are great benefits for _writing_ this way, for one. Rearranging entire
sections or subsections is just a drag and drop. Working collaboratively is
also easier, because each person can focus on their particular strengths

> Hopefully this criticism is helpful.

It is, thank you. All criticism forces us to reevaluate our approach, again
and again.

~~~
IanCal
> agree, the UI needs improvement. No one feels the gaps more than I do. But
> they say, "launch before you're ready!" ;)

Oh I fully agree, I'm also sure that things I don't like are points of joy for
others :) Launching like this is important, it helps you focus on things that
people find rather than things you _think_ they'll find.

> For one thing, scrolling on its own (with mouse scroll), doesn't
> automatically highlight whichever card is now centered. So it breaks the
> flow.

Yeah, I was going to try and suggest something but I'm not sure what'd be
better (I make terrible UIs). The problem is the alternative is while you're
scrolling automatically making other columns move which could be jarring. Your
approach might be better and I might be 'using it wrong' because I'm trying to
read it like a normal doc.

> That's true, more or less. Table of contents, chapter & subsection breaks,
> etc, are all attempts to make the structure clearer.

But you have the same structure, internally. That was rather my point. It's an
editor and a viewer, not a new structure, which is why I would heavily suggest
you use standards rather than writing your own.

The structure is this

    
    
        Section := Title, Content | Title, Content, [Section]
    

This is covered by already existing standards, which will play nice with
accessibility devices too. If I was a company, I could be held liable if I
release something which is unusable to the blind because of the way I'd mixed
the content.

> We could have all of physics, or comp-sci, in one tree, and the reader will
> always be able to drill in for more, or zoom out for overview.

I hate to be a downer on this, but a tree won't describe these things well,
there isn't an exact hierarchy. So you improve it incrementally like so:

* Make it a DAG

* Realise there can be cyclic references, make it a graph

* See that the graph looks like trees with links but with links in between them

* Represent it as a series of distinct trees with links and anchor points

* Make it lazy loading

* Define a way of allowing people to link between different trees stored anywhere

* Realise that's the internet

While that's a bit of an annoying thing to say, it's actually nice :) Lots of
stuff that'd be a great boon _already exists_. If you can use existing HTML
standards then you get lots of functionality for free.

> Working collaboratively is also easier, because each person can focus on
> their particular strengths

Yes, it will really help this, having embeddable nested trees works
wonderfully, it's why latex is nice for collaborative work. Although I'd like
the nesting to be arbitrary (maybe there's a way of doing this, but I don't
think so). It's also why the web works so well.

What I'd suggest is this:

* Use HTML sections.

* Write a bit of js to load in specific nodes from other documents lazily. The semantics for linking already exist.

* Keep the sexy visuals :)

You'll have properly marked up, parseable documents. They'll link together or
be embeddable (depending only on the renderer, the semantics are the same) and
you can represent any graph with it, but still have a focus on trees, and
render graphs as trees. You'll get more and have to build less yourself.

~~~
IanCal
I'm not sure why, but I can't edit this reply, but here's a link to a simple
gist that shows a simple inclusion technique that keeps the semantics and
degrades nicely if you don't have JS (you're left with anchored links).

[https://gist.github.com/IanCal/6398286](https://gist.github.com/IanCal/6398286)

------
3rd3
First of all, congratulation for pulling off a new and experimental user
interface!

However, I believe, the idea that tree- or graph-like structuring of text is
beneficial for reading and writing text in general, comes close to the
graphical programming fallacy. Eventually, the spatial make-up fails because
of the following three reasons:

(1) The manual difficulty of navigation and the count of subconscious visual
cues necessary for retrieving a passage increase exponentionally as the
content grows, (2) altough thoughts do seem to come in hierarchical
structures, we usually don’t think of text, code, stories, memories nor
knowledge as visual graphs and (3) textual hints for emphasizing and linking
text are more efficient and flexible than visual hints.

At first glance, Wikipedia seems like an affirmative example for graph-like
structured text, but that structure is usually not used for primarily intended
navigation. The articles are actually expected to be self-contained for
readers with only a fair amount of prior knowledge.

------
Noxchi
Scrivener has the same "mission" as this. To make text writing into chunks
that you can rearrange.

It's more fully baked and I think has a better UI that Ginko (writing a book
or long piece with 3 relatively small columns isn't ideal).

Unfortunately it is marketed poorly, so not a lot of people know about it, but
I have found it very useful when doing writing for longer pieces.

------
Sprint
Dear authors, my screen has hundreds of pixels vertically, I would like to be
able to read more than 15 lines at once. The font size is insanely huge. It
made me close the tab.

~~~
adamwong246
Just how tall is your screen? Also, [http://www.wikihow.com/Zoom-With-a-Web-
Browser](http://www.wikihow.com/Zoom-With-a-Web-Browser)

~~~
Sprint
~550px on ~15cm I'd guess. With a sane text size as on HN for example I get
about 30 lines of text on it.

Browser sadly zoom the whole page nowadays, not just the text. So that is not
a good solution.

------
heurist
I like this a lot!

The research manuscript example is exciting. It would be great if authors
could link directly to the part of a paper that they are citing and be able to
open that up if you want to dive deeper. Linking methods to results to
discussion for specific experiments would make reading through dense papers a
lot easier, and maybe have a notation/jargon definition section open at the
same time. It's almost like a tiling window manager for reading.

I'm a little bit concerned about how it looks on smaller screens. It looks
fine on my work monitor but I only have a netbook at home right now and a lot
of websites have overlapping elements that keep me from reading articles. I
haven't looked at this from that computer yet though. Maybe it would help to
have collapsible columns if there are issues.

Good luck, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!

~~~
adriano_f
Thanks for your feedback!

Yes, the idea of simply embedding parts of other people's papers right there,
instead of citations, is something I'm excited about.

Literature review is such a pain, and could be a lot better.

As for smaller screens, we have plans for allowing this to be read on mobile,
by collapsing columns and letting you scroll left-right to navigate the tree.

------
GhotiFish
Gingko is intimidating. It looks like a neat way to work

but when I see a big button called "try it now" (red flag), with testimonials
(big red flag), no download (small red flag), and no mention of licensing,
privacy, or cost (edit: it was just hidden), or... anything (big red flag). My
experience tells me to avoid it, and to council everyone else to avoid it as
well.

I don't want to be gouged, aggregated, or advertised to. I would love to use
your tool. I just can't be sure you wont use that desire against me. I can't
find anything on your site that will assure me that wont happen.

edit: AHA. I did find your pricing.

[https://gingkoapp.com/p/pricing/](https://gingkoapp.com/p/pricing/)

So at least you're mechanism of monetization is there.

------
ivan_ah
I like the use case for reading movie scripts, it could help to keep all
levels of the story in mind:

[https://gingkoapp.com/Alien-1979](https://gingkoapp.com/Alien-1979)

~~~
adriano_f
Thanks!

Screenwriting was one of the initial inspirations for the UI, because
screenplays are naturally hierarchical (logline > Acts > Sequences > Scenes >
Beats).

~~~
anigbrowl
Questionable. I work in the film trade, and while people may consider a
logline or a one-sheet, when some reads a script they sit down and read it
start to finish, like a book. It's going to play in linear form on the screen,
so it has to be read that way as well.

What authors usually do is is knock out a freeform treatment where the story
is described in prose, which is then broken down into scenes. It is helpful to
have the overview in mind during the writing process, but existing tools such
as Final Draft provide a plethora of writing aids for that, from virtual index
cards to graphical character timelines.

Bear in mind that when you work with finished scripts like the _Alien_
example, you've got a survivor bias problem, because almost any story that
makes it through the screen has been through multiple drafts and hundreds or
thousands of mini-edits. So while it seems very natural to lay that out in a
neat hierarchy, that doesn't really reflect the writing environment, which is
a lot more messy.

As for keeping track of story context, this is job one for the writer - you
can beef up the dialog or whatever later, but writers, directors and other
keys need to be able to keep the entire story in their head at once and know
what the inputs and and outputs of any given scene are, not least because
99.9% of films are shot out of chronological sequence and so being able to
keep a handle on that story context is essential for guiding the actors.
Obviously you don't try to remember every last little thing at once, that's
why we use storyboards and breakdown sheets, but you do need to be able to
articulate the whole story off the cuff at the drop of a hat.

I do think this would very useful for film students doing analysis, but I
can't really see myself writing a script in it, although I'll try doing some
treatments with it.

BTW I also feel that if you offer people the opportunity to try it, you should
let them try it, not switch to asking for a signup. That really annoyed me.

~~~
adriano_f
It's great to have a film insider's take on this.

The screenplay examples do only go up to the "scene card" level, but we plan
to have more columns so you could add the script there as well. That way you
could go start-to-finish, or have overviews as well.

> I do think this would very useful for film students doing analysis.

Interesting, thanks.

A question: would this be useful for _pitching_ a film? Say if there were
concept art sections, character descriptions, and additional notes, _as well
as_ the script itself (from logline down to linear form) ??

> BTW I also feel that if you offer people the opportunity to try it, you
> should let them try it

Again, sorry about this. It's what we've got, and we're trying to make the
best of it.

~~~
anigbrowl
Somewhat. A fully developed proposal will have a book with all that stuff, but
OTOH it's a fact of life in Hollywood that you shouldn't spend too much money
on that stuff before you go into production, for 2 reasons. One, it's a fast
way to go broke. Two, you wouldn't have all that stuff to hand if you were
trying to turn your friend onto a great film that you had seen and thought
your friend should watch _right now_. Studio execs don't want to be distracted
by eye candy or character sheets, they want to hear something that fires
_their_ imagination.

~~~
adriano_f
I see. Again, thanks for the insider info.

I didn't consider that presenting __too much __concept art & story details
might detract from the experience of letting the concept blossom in the studio
exec's own mind.

I'll have to sit down with some screenwriters again, and see if Gingko is
something that they'd be able to use or not.

------
swift
This is a good concept but the execution needs some work. I'm confused that
everything is visible all the time - if that's the case, why am I clicking on
things? But clicking on things seems to be necessary to 'focus' on a given
subject; otherwise, as you scroll, the columns get out of sync and seem to
bear little relationship to each other.

I envisioned something very different from the screenshots. I expected you to
be able to expand and collapse nodes, with the collapsed nodes existing only
to provide a summary of the surrounding information. I can see the appeal of
having everything visible so that you can just scroll through the document as
you would now, but in that case the scroll positions of the columns need to be
dynamically linked and there needs to be more feedback about which nodes serve
as a summary or context for which other nodes.

In general, I think the process of reading a Gingko document is not clear to a
first-time reader. Fixing this will require changes to both functionality and
design.

------
dscrd
Reminds me of Ted Nelson's Zigzag, only he had N dimensions and a cell
structure. [http://xanadu.com/zigzag/](http://xanadu.com/zigzag/)

~~~
adriano_f
Yes, Ted Nelson has some similar work in this line. But I think he went too
far with the N dimensions... Text is linear, Gingko text is 2-dimensional.

With it, we can represent more than two dimensions, by simply "slicing" along
any two we choose (e.g. text & comments)... not sure I'm explaining this
properly :-/

~~~
AYBABTME
I think Nelson's use of a more general graph has some value. I could see an
encyclopedia or a program being edited/viewed in Gingko with circular
references. With some tweaks on the UI (being able to put more emphasis on the
card currently viewed, maybe by partially sliding out of view the parent cards
or shrinking them when they're not focused).

I think this project is pretty cool and the idea is awesome. It would make a
lot of sense on a tablet/phone and as a generalized editor.

------
Roritharr
Does this really need to be a web-app? Storing my Documents in the Cloud is
not possible and not even desireable in most of my work environments. Even in
my private life i like to be offline to work on the kind of tasks that Gingko
would help me with. Just charge me a one-time fee for an Windows App (Win8 Guy
here, Mac Apps would be reasonable aswell) and let me handle my data my way.

I've thought about building something like Gingko for a long time, so thanks
for providing an alternative option!

------
damaru
would love to see a self hosted ginko. It used to be that there was a lot of
self hosted project, now everyone wants to keep you data... I wonder if the
trend will change again.

~~~
victorf
I'd like to try it, but I'm also not going to sign up for an online
note/research app to use seriously. I want assurances that my notes are on my
devices, read only by me, and, after a shitty experience with Notes.app this
week, I'm going to be refusing any app that silos data and/or uses an
unpublished nonstandard format.

~~~
adriano_f
Understood. We're planning on adding offline support, and a "Chrome Packaged
App" version, so you could use Gingko offline entirely, and our servers will
never touch your data.

As for the format, we simply export to flat Markdown. We will be supporting
other formats (including XML, and the OPML standard for hierarchical/outline
text).

Thanks for your feedback!

~~~
sid___
How about putting the code on github and let users run their own version of
gingko on their own servers? i would like to see that..

------
jholman
I want the tool you're building! It's got huge overlap with a project I was
just in the planning phase of, a cloud-ified FreeMind.

However! There's one fatal-for-me flaw in your current implementation: only
three layers deep. Deal-breaker. I'd love to hear about it if/when you change
that behavior, so that I can start trying this seriously.

I saw your comment about future possible options to self-host, or offline
mode, or something like that. That's definitely interesting to me. Self-
hosting would be ideal, really. But I also very much like having the option to
use your servers.

When you mentioned exporting to Markdown, you mentioned breadth-first. I'm not
at all sure that you want breadth-first. The documents I'm imagining writing
will make more sense exported depth-first.

I think it would benefit from a little visual cue to see where one card ends
and the next begins, even for cards not currently selected. My first attempt
would be to let the grey background show through the white cards, but
whatever.

I agree that the default text size is a bit too big. Maybe some scaling could
be added as an option when configuring a tree.

~~~
adriano_f
Thanks for the feedback!

Yes, more than three layers deep is our highest priority, along with offline
mode.

And you are right, I meant "depth-first"; makes more sense.

------
gizmogwai
I'm sorry if I'm rude, but the more I think of if it, the less I see the
point.

The initial described problem (organising ideas in a hierarchical way) has
already been solved efficiently years ago with visual mind maps. They have
been used successfully to not only create the hierarchy, but also to realise
that sometimes, the tree is more like a graph.

As a reader, it's infuriating to have to click all the time (or use keyboard)
and have this page scrolling all around. I just want to READ, not being
distracted by some kind of useless parallax effect.

As a writer, moving ideas around to get them properly organised is really
painful. There is no distraction-free interface neither.

If you really want to make tool for writers, I would strongly suggest you that
you take a look at tools like Ulysses or Scrivener and try to understand the
rationale behind the UI choice they made.

~~~
adriano_f
> _that sometimes, the tree is more like a graph_

I agree, but I think it's better to start with a tree, and then add graph-like
features, than to start with a graph and try to make a tree out of it. Mostly
because I believe hierarchy is a more natural structure for our brains.

For reading non-fiction, yes the parallax can be distracting. But I think A)
the interface can be improved. B) For non-fiction, it's outweighed by the
benefit of having context & details available.

We do have plans for a distraction free mode, similar to "Zen mode" on Github.
But offline & deeper trees are a priority for now.

I have studied Scrivener, but didn't know about Ulysses. Thanks for pointing
it out.

------
Serow225
Neat. A couple thoughts: 1) it took me some time to figure out that I could
scroll a given column when the mouse is over it... Also when the mouse is over
a non-column area (background on far right/left) it would be useful if
scrolling did a global scroll of all columns at the same time.

2) It could be nice if the sections M+1/M-1 (above/below) the selected section
in column N were given a subtle distinct color, and then the appropriate
sections in column N+1 that are nested in M+1/M-1 were given the same color.
Does that make any sense? It would give a visual indication of which sections
in column N+1 lie within sections M+1 and M-1, and also help to emphasize the
tree nature of the layout. A different color could be chosen for M+/-2, +/-3,
etc.

Good job! :)

~~~
adriano_f
We explored having different color scheme to denote the node distance between
two cards.

Unfortunately, it got too messy, and neither of us are designers, so we had to
shelve it for now.

As for scrolling, and want the mouse scrolling to work just like keyboard
(selects the card at center, reorders other columns appropriately). Haven't
gotten around to it yet.

Thanks for your feedback!

~~~
Serow225
Thanks for the reply & good luck!

------
tluyben2
I like it and have worked more or less like this for structuring documents all
my life (but manually, in text files, making trees and creating documents from
those trees with a small Python script). However, I really would like this to
be a desktop application; all that online stuff is not very helpful for
productivity software, for me at least. I live in the mountains, I don't have
internet in a lot of places. When I travel I don't have (stable) internet
either.

I like stuff going to the web, but until that works fully offline after
installation (so being able to make new projects, save them, change them, do
everything except the stuff which really requires internet), I don't really
have much use for productivity apps like this.

~~~
adriano_f
Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you like it.

My cofounder is working on full offline support right now, as it's been a much
requested feature.

------
andrewfong
Nice. The inadvertent jump to another branch can be disorienting though.

Suppose my tree structure is as so:

    
    
      * a
      ** b
      *** c
      * d
      ** e
      *** f
      *** g
      *** h
    

Gingko lays it out like this:

    
    
      a b c
      d e f
          g
          h
    

If I'm in the far right column, let's say I've highlighted item g and go up to
item f. However, I hold the arrow key down a little too long and overshoot to
item c. This causes everything to the left to suddenly jump around and
disorient me.

A related issue, the layout suggests that c-f-g-h is an intended list when it
isn't. It can cause readers to become confused if they're reading normally in
one column and don't fully realize they've jumped to a different branch in
between c and f.

~~~
adriano_f
Yes we could definitely improve the way you interact with the tree.

For one thing, the looping back when holding the arrow key is annoying to me
too, and a simple fix we will get to.

As for the branch jumping, we tried other approaches, but haven't found one
that works well in all cases.

The core of Gingko, navigating tree structures, is something we are constantly
trying to improve.

Thanks for your feedback!

------
k_bx
This reminded me to (at last) master emacs org-mode.

------
Stratoscope
I'm a bit confused by the keyboard navigation. I open the sample document and
hit the down arrow. It scrolls. I hit the down arrow again and the background
color changes and it scrolls in the opposite direction. If I keep hitting the
down arrow it scrolls up and down and up and down with a color change each
time. And of course if I hold down the down arrow it starts flickering as it
jumps back and forth between the two directions and colors.

Is that a bug or is that how it's supposed to work? I often scroll to the end
of a short document by holding down the down arrow until things stop moving.

------
colemanfoley
I like how it organizes information spatially, like WorkFlowy. I much prefer
this visual organization to tags, for example. That said, I found it hard to
understand what it was, even though I'm a long-time WorkFlowy user and am very
interested in this kind of thing. I wrote a post where I talked about
organizing information visually in more depth here:
[http://colemanfoley.quora.com/Mind-Mapping-with-
WorkFlowy](http://colemanfoley.quora.com/Mind-Mapping-with-WorkFlowy)
(Registration NOT required to read).

~~~
defilade
I'm a big user of Workflowy and I felt the same about Gingko at first. The
keyboard shortcuts help a lot though because I can get my thoughts down on
paper much more quickly.

------
irickt
Worth comparing: [https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-
Wiki](https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki)

------
tuananh
I have always felt PDF is outdated for research papers. We need some kind of
interactive paper format; yet universal, open specs, look the same and usable
across platforms.

~~~
gjuggler
Have you seen eLife's Lens reader? Example article is at
[http://lens.elifesciences.org/#00772](http://lens.elifesciences.org/#00772)

They took a fresh, web-centric look at how to interactively display research
papers. It's being used — right now — to display all of the new articles from
a major biology journal.

I think it's quite nice.

~~~
adriano_f
Cool, I hadn't seen that.

Personally, I think that things like this Lens reader are evolutionary
advances, but science communication needs a revolutionary change.

I don't expect actual journals to be using Gingko any time soon, but there are
already grad students collaborating on research papers right now :)

------
dan-g
Have you thought about allowing for the creation of arbitrarily deep trees?
That's one of the features I like most about workflowy. This looks really
cool, though!

~~~
adriano_f
Yes, we're definitely working on adding arbirary depth. We are starting with
three because it's enough to realize the benefits.

Infinite depth is coming (as well as other exciting features).

~~~
JeremyBanks
Do you have a newsletter or other way I could sign up to be notified of
updates?

This hits a lot of points that I've been looking for in an app/service. So
much so that I was ready to sign up for the paid plan after trying this out
for a couples minute, because I'm sure I'd use it enough to be worth it. But I
didn't realize the three-levels limitation, and that prevents this from being
useful enough to me to start using it.

I'd love to check it out again when you do add infinite nesting.

~~~
adriano_f
> This hits a lot of points that I've been looking for in an app/service.

Glad to hear that, Jeremy.

I've tagged you with "infinite-columns" in Intercom, so I can update you when
we add that feature.

> That prevents this from being useful enough to me to start using it.

I agree, I struggle with this limit too, and it's my #1 most desired feature
too... we're working on it!

Let me know if you have any other questions or comments.

------
fspeech
Ontology/taxonomy/classification are seriously difficult things. If not
semantic web would have ruled the world by now.

Structural hierarchies (chapter/section etc) may be easy to get for everyone
but a navigation side panel would work too. If you build a semantic hierarchy,
new users may not know how to find things; yet repeat users may be frustrated
by having to go through the layers to access the items they are looking for.

~~~
adriano_f
True, hierarchy is not a panacea. But I argue that it's better for new comers
to have context & overview, and hierarchy helps with that.

------
susi22
I don't want to have to think when I read a book. The author has to lead me
through and follow a path. The auther has to make sure I get a decent
introduction and he should make every sentence count.

This is nice to play. And maybe even has it's applications such as
documentation where quick browsing helps. But if I had to read a thesis/book
like this I'd be a very unhappy person.

~~~
pjscott
The same criticism applies to wikis and their nonlinear way of presenting
information. Despite that, people find wikis tremendously valuable, and a big
part of it is the ability to jump around, following your own path through the
information.

This thing is confusing at first, but it looks like it could be pretty darn
slick after spending a few minutes getting used to it.

------
marcamillion
This looks awesome, but the elephant in the room is how does the document look
offline?

Can it be exported to PDF or be printed or something?

When you print it, how does it look?

~~~
adriano_f
With better support mobile devices (including eReaders and whatever comes
after them), we hope it'll be less of an issue as time goes on.

Right now, we simply export the Markdown to flat text (breadth-first). But we
will be adding PDF export options, for exporting the whole document, or one
column.

That way, you can still end up with a traditional document at the end, if you
want.

Any other ideas?

~~~
marcamillion
I think you may be overthinking it.

If you just created a document with each hierarchy organized properly, I think
you should be fine.

E.g. you create say 3 heading sizes in Word. 24px, 20px, 16px.

Then for the main point, i.e. the content in the left-most column, you put
those under a heading that is under the 24px - then any sub content from the
2nd column would go under a 20px heading that is under the first 24px heading
and so on.

So there is a chronological order of the content.

I think that's all you need. Proper placement of the content under the right
headings, make the headings different sizes and you make sure it flows like
the author intended (which I think you can ensure by using the order they
setup on your site).

That's just my $0.02.

~~~
adriano_f
I love overthinking things!

It's true that if every card had a title, then import and export while
maintaining the tree structure would be easy.

But as it stands, if you have the following cards:

    
    
        A  A.1
           A.2
        B
    

this approach wouldn't be able to maintain the structure if the cards didn't
have titles (it would just list all these as A, A.1, A.2, B).

It's for this reason alone that we've considered making titles required for at
least the first card in a group.

Or am I overthinking again... ?

~~~
marcamillion
You could enforce it like that - i.e. require all cards to have titles.

But I don't think you NEED to.

I would assume that the way you know the order of the cards, is that you have
some unique ID on the flow of the cards, no?

E.g. You know that A is first, then A.1, then A.2, then B.

So all you do is when you are exporting to PDF, you put the sections/cards in
that order.

I think that should suffice, or am I missing something?

------
jstsch
I think this is quite a nice experiment in UI. However too small and simple to
start charging for (but please proof me wrong!).

1) What I miss is the possibility to attach files. This would be essential in
typical collaborative environments. 2) I don't want to give you my data. So
localstorage or export/import is essential.

~~~
adriano_f
We attach files using dropbox links. It's a workaround, but it's been useful
so far.

Offline & import/export are features in the pipeline.

------
tommi
Reminds me of [https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/)

~~~
adriano_f
Yes, it has similarities to WorkFlowy. We sometimes say "Evernote + Workflowy
= Gingko" :)

------
Kiro
I really like this. My nested lists in Evernote always get out of hand as soon
as a node needs more than one line.

I've tried WorkFlowy but I didn't like the presentation. I prefer cards and in
Gingko's case you get the added benefit of having a great overview.

~~~
adriano_f
Thanks Kiro!

I should have used "Evernote + Workflowy" in the title, since that seems to be
what people immediately understand about Gingko.

Get in touch if you ever have any thoughts or questions.

------
mbreese
What happened to the app shown in the linked Science without borders talk?
That looks more useful to me, if only because it fits with the typical science
paper writing workflow. How did the document editor migrate to this 2D editor?

~~~
adriano_f
That app still exists, and it's being worked on by my friend Ivan Savov, one
of the original founders.

You can check it out at
[http://papers.mcgillweb.com](http://papers.mcgillweb.com)

------
bachback
Interesting. This is actually close to the original idea of hypertext (Ted
Nelson's vision: "documents - side by side"). I would really turn down the
tone. Let the reader decide how important he thinks the idea is.

~~~
adriano_f
Most of the site is much more toned down, but I thought I'd share what I
believe about Gingko's potential.

I respect Nelson, but his intensity is off-putting... don't want to make the
same mistake.

------
zerni
What a great tool! I will definitly use this to structure my lecture notes!
(Topic > Sub-Topic > Definition/List)

Improvement: Allow to filter and color cards. So you can walk through all
cards of a given type.

~~~
adriano_f
Great, thanks for the feedback Zemi.

We have the ability to filter, using the Search feature. You can just type
@tags, and searching them will hide all cards that don't containt that text.

Let me know if you have any other questions or suggestions.

~~~
zerni
Well that's a workaround for now but it could be a little more user friendly
(like showing all tags on the top)

Another point: Make cards collapsible/expandable to get a quicker overview
about topics. (It is also an aid to the process of memorizing cards)

~~~
adriano_f
Cool, hadn't considered having a tag list at top. Thanks.

Collapsing to "header only" is something we might have to add, after we
implement infinite columns (so we can get a quicker overview of large trees).

Thanks for the feedback.

------
codezero
Is anyone else seeing "undefined is editing" and subsequently a bunch of text
you didn't write appears?

I'm worried that what I am typing into this might show up in someone else's
tree.

~~~
adriano_f
That's a bug that someone's reported before (through Twitter). Working on
fixing it.

No one can see your trees. The "bunch of text" bug has never happened before,
will try to track it down.

Probably due to the flood of traffic from HN!

UPDATE from my cofounder:

"fyi: I fixed that bug weird one" \- Aleksey Kulikov

~~~
codezero
by "bunch of text" I mean several list items. I took screenshots if there is
an email I can send them to (assuming that's helpful, I understand if it's
not) let me know.

~~~
adriano_f
Thanks. You can contact me through main menu in app (gear at top right).

UPDATE: My cofounder has just found the bug and deployed a fix. Refresh and it
shouldn't happen again.

~~~
codezero
Thanks!

------
defilade
Interesting idea. Can you make it so that when I click in the card it
automatically goes into edit mode? Having to click an "edit" button really
slows things down.

~~~
adriano_f
You can double-click the card to go into edit mode.

Single click would be easier, but since we have drag-and-drop, and sometimes
use clicking just for navigation, we have to use double-click to edit.

(unless you have a better approach in mind?)

PS: Also, once you get used to them, the keyboard shortcuts lets you navigate
& edit pretty quickly.

~~~
defilade
Thanks.

Also, just now I was seeing other people's cards showing up in my tree. When I
switched trees, it corrected itself.

------
alextingle
For what platforms is it available? (There's no way I'm going to the trouble
of signing up, only to be told "uh oh, not on your platform".)

~~~
adriano_f
Works on all modern browsers. Soon, will work on mobile as well.

I've even been testing it on my Kindle this morning, and was surprised to see
it (almost) works there too!

------
derekchiang
I love the tool, though it'd be great if the editing windows support full-
screen mode. Writing in a small grid is a pain.

~~~
adriano_f
Yes, that's a feature we have planned. Similar to the "Zen mode" in github.

That will let you write a group of cards as one flow, and it'll split it into
individual cards once you leave fullscreen.

------
mrcharles
All that text, and no mention of what platforms are supported (or will be
supported in the future).

------
gojomo
Miller columns for text with a natural outline structure! I like.

------
talhof8
This is great. Very useful and well implemented. Goodluck!

------
WayneDB
Web: Try It Now!

Me: Cool, a demo! [click]

Web: But first, you must Sign Up...[trollface]

Me: Nope nope nope...

~~~
adriano_f
We considered adding "lazy registration", but we're a team of just two, and
decided to focus on improving the product and helping our users.

Might do in the future, but for now, that's what we have.

~~~
lucb1e
At least make bugmenot able to locate the login form :/

------
unnuun
If anyone thinks serious academics will adopt something stupid and flashy like
this in place of "old-fashioned, dry PDFs" when it isn't even free or publicly
specified, they're seriously deluded.

Fuck start-ups and capitalism.

~~~
veidr
> _Fuck start-ups and capitalism._

Did you perchance take a wrong turn on the interweb tubes, and arrive at this
website by mistake?

You are right, though; nothing proprietary and costly is ever going to 'change
the world' of something so basic as reading and writing...

~~~
unnuun
That said, my being in the wrong place doesn't change the fact that startups
and capitalism are both lame and evil and retarded.

I think you should still consider and perhaps respond to the point instead of
just discounting it because its out of place.

~~~
veidr
Well, I thought I did, but I interpreted your point more narrowly: that no
proprietary app from some startup would ever be able to revolutionize
authoring and reading works, replacing PDFs and their ilk for academics and
research. I agreed.

If your point is the much broader contention that capitalism is lame and evil
and retarded in general, that's a little beyond the scope of what can be
resolved on HN.

