
Athens an open source Roam alternative - harporoeder
https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
======
hardwaregeek
If I had a dollar for every damn note taking app (2 for open source note
taking app), I'd be set on rent money for a few months. What about note taking
makes people want to invent their own app? Is it just bikeshedding? Spending
hours writing a note taking app sounds like a perfect way to not end up taking
notes and to not use said notes to accomplish much.

~~~
jrm4
Because this particular task really feels like the killer app that we should
already have -- frictionless, non-heirarchical notes that you can just dump
into the system and then retrieve based on a few relatively simple axes, date,
keywords, a little semantic analysis, etc.

Where I think people are going off the rails is thinking that this can work as
a business. I'm hugely skeptical that there's a market here; businesses rely
on some measure of "if you don't pay you can't have this part of the thing."
\-- and even if a startup is able to make this work, it's likely that the
"value-add" will be easily replicable into something free (as in freedom)
owing to the nature of this being a "power-user" thing.

For example, none of these things promise too much more than, e.g. Zim-wiki
(longtime user here) -- which itself is extensible either as FOSS, or simply
owing to the fact that it saves in Markdown-ish, immediately MAKING it
extensible anyway.

~~~
benrbray
Exactly my thoughts. Note-taking should be a solved problem, but for some
reason it isn't, yet. I'm loving this note-taking app renaissance, because in
a few years we'll converge to something stable.

It's quite similar to the proliferation of code editors from 2005-2015ish. For
a while, practically every language had its own IDE (for me, I remember using
HaXe and FlashDevelop). Then, editors like Atom and Sublime came along,
raising the bar. For the past five years or so, seems to be the default. The
excellent extension system allows people to worry about features, rather than
re-creating the IDE.

When it comes to note-taking, I expect the same thing to happen--we just need
a good, open-source foundation. I fully expect that the winner will be a
wrapper around ProseMirror [1]. See also ReMirror [2]

[1] [https://prosemirror.net/](https://prosemirror.net/) [2]
[https://remirror.io/](https://remirror.io/)

~~~
tennineeight
Language specific IDEs are less because Language Server Protocol solved this
real problem. We converged on a good enough solution.

But unlike IDEs and programming language support, note-taking is inherently
personal. There is no one-size fits all. I am more disorganized than
otherwise, but I prefer separate tools for separate occasions. I like pen and
paper for quick jot-downs and napkin math, notepad++/Sublime for quick copy-
pastes, OneNote for $DAYJOB and org-mode for long term knowledge base and
blogging.

I am sure real people exist who prefer one over the other on more than one
occasion.

~~~
Kinrany
The same could be said about IDEs before the LSP came around, no?

------
Barrin92
This doesn't seem ready for use yet. Another Roam alternative I've been using
that seems pretty much complete and has the benefit of letting the user host
the data is

[https://obsidian.md/](https://obsidian.md/)

~~~
benrbray
I would love to see Obsidian add WYSIWYG support, especially since my
documents contain a ton of math that is otherwise unreadable at a glance. I'm
normally writing and reading my documents at the same time, so when I use a
split-pane editor like Obsidian/VS Code/foambubble most of the time I end up
staring at the source pane the whole time.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
I'm not fully convinced about WYSIWYG since it can be difficult to debug weird
formatting. I wish more tools would investigate the WYSIWYM (what you see is
what you mean) space, the only one I'm aware of is
[https://www.lyx.org/](https://www.lyx.org/)

~~~
benrbray
ProseMirror [1] has (mostly) solved that problem in the browser with an
excellent transaction-based wrapper around contenteditable! I highly recommend
checking it out. I'm also the author of a WYSIWYG math plugin for ProseMirror
[2].

For me, WYSIWYG is essential, since my notes contain a lot of math, and I
don't want to stare at LaTeX source all day. For that reason, stopped using
Overleaf in favor of Typora [1] for a while, but grew out of it as my note-
base became large enough to need a good wikilink system.

Quarantine gave me enough free time to build my own note-taking app [3]. So,
these days, when I get frustrated with my note-taking app, I have only myself
to blame :)

[1] [https://prosemirror.net/](https://prosemirror.net/) [2]
[https://github.com/benrbray/prosemirror-
math](https://github.com/benrbray/prosemirror-math) [3]
[https://noteworthy.ink/](https://noteworthy.ink/)

------
anoffvu
Athens is pretty far behind most alternatives. I use logseq.com and it is
miles ahead of Athens and even edges out Roam in a lot of aspects. i.e. it’s
based in md and org-mode and all data is stored locally and synced with
GitHub. The team is great and super responsive (minutes from message to new
deploy) and are open sourcing after beta. They took all the best features of
all the trendy note taking apps and put it into one beautiful piece of clojure
web app. Super recommend!

------
feralimal
It seems to me that the reason note taking is complex, and so fractured, is
because of lack of label support in OS's. Data is mismanaged at the data
level, and we are looking for solutions to that problem with applications
rather than at the OS level where it belongs.

The file tree idea, where a file exists in only one place in the hierarchy is
wrong. I'd rather all my notes/files were in one big bucket, but that I could
label each, and then sort by labels.

I may want to label a file as 'software', 'tech-architecture' and 'finance' \-
all of them. When I look up any one of those labels, I want to get all the
related content. I shouldn't need to guess which bucket I put a note into. So,
I say labels should be data associated to files like modified date, or author.

To fix the problem of 'no label' as part of the data, I try to use a note
taking that applies labels for me. But then an app developer is going to want
to do all sorts of extra stuff.

I understand that having tons of label data on the file could become
ridiculous though. Perhaps the real answer would be to have a hidden metadata
file associated with the data itself (eg 'mytext.txt.meta') - labels and any
other metadata would go in here, separate to the note 'mytext.txt' itself.

So, I think OS's enforce a data organisational structure on us that is
unnatural to the way we think and work. And we seek to fix it with apps. And
we will never get satisfaction that way :(

------
cadbox1
I think graph/network based notes are really interesting and I'm keen to see
how Athens develops.

I've created my own open source approach called Very Nested [1] that uses
GitHub repos for storage. It also supports files and images.

So far, I've enjoyed organising my recipes [2] with it.

Feedback welcome, it's new.

[1] [https://verynested.cadell.dev/](https://verynested.cadell.dev/)

[2] [https://cooking.cadell.dev/](https://cooking.cadell.dev/)

------
Lazare
[https://joplinapp.org/](https://joplinapp.org/) is a very nice tool in this
space as well. Open source, lots of features.

~~~
Yuioup
You obviously know what "Athens" and "Roam" are. Care to explain it to us
Plebs?

~~~
Lazare
Joplin is an open source note taking tool. You can make notebooks, full of
notes. It supports markdown, has a decent UI, supports a bunch of nifty
markdown plugins, has search, and is just generally decent. Notably it has
native (and good) apps for major desktop and mobile OSes. It also handles sync
via your choice of clouds, lets you encrypt your data, and is open source.
Also has browser plugins for capturing notes from a webpage.

There's a lot to like. True, like a lot of small open source projects, there
are some rough edges, and progress is slow, but I believe they welcome new
volunteers.

There are, however, a TON of note taking apps floating around at the moment.
One is Roam. Roam is very expensive ($15/month; a premium price point in a
space that's mostly free or a couple of dollars at most), and has a bit of
a...well, almost cult-like atmosphere around it. People that like Roam seem to
_love_ it, for some reason. On the other hand, development is fast, and they
support TONS of features. Backlinks seems to be a big one. Notably I think
Roam is more focused around "blocks" of content than around freeform markdown.

Other options include Notion, Bear, Obsidian, Tiddlywiki, Evernote, Quiver,
Dynalist, Workflowy, Standard Notes and many, many, many others. All are
excellent options in this space. And now, Athens, which I suppose is trying to
be a better, open source Roam?

Honestly, if you care a lot about note taking apps you should dig into it,
there's a ton of options and interesting tradeoffs. And if you don't,
then....eh, probably doesn't matter much.

------
xmprt
I've recently picked up Notion and I like it a lot. I looked into Roam but for
$15 per month and with a lot of performance issues, I think I'll pass for now.
I'm hoping they work out the quirks because the idea of being able to quickly
link different concepts together is pretty neat. Fortunately Notion has
backlinks which work for most of my needs and the blocks look nicer.

~~~
Lazare
I used Notion for a while, but found the UI just a little tpp sluggish. And I
personally value native apps for tools like this, and Notion's Electron based
apps were _quite_ large and slow, sadly.

I love what they're doing, I understand why they picked the tech stack and
architecture they did, and they have some really awesome features! ....but
it's just too slow for me. (Then again, I'm picky.)

~~~
jotson
Same experience... There's a lot to like about notion and I chose it over
everything else and am using it professionally and personally. But the
sluggishness is really starting to bother me

------
piokoch
I've tested a lot of those note taking app, Athens does not seem to be
particularly better than the rest.

My the most favorite app is [https://www.zettlr.com](https://www.zettlr.com).
It has a simple concept that I really like: this is just markdown files viewer
that has ability to: (1) edit (2) search(also by tags) and (3) link files. And
that's all.

Files are stored on a local disc in any folder structure someone wants, can be
sync using whatever someone wants - Google Drive, Dropbox, Synology NAS, etc.

There is zero vendor lock-in, as it works on plain MD files without any custom
elements.

This is one more Electron app, however in that case it is not especially
annoying, there are some lags, but acceptable.

~~~
feralimal
This is exactly what I want too - it looks really good - simple, tags, etc.

Except that it doesn't seem to have a way to integrate notes on different
devices... Or do you have a way around that?

------
Sophistifunk
Did I miss a paragraph or does that not at all explain WTF either Athens or
Rome are?

~~~
brunoqc
Roam is a trendy kinda wiki/note taking tool with backlinks.
[https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/)

We see a clone every other day. I'm glad in part since Roam is too expensive.

~~~
errantspark
I wouldn't care about the expense if they made a good product. The problem is
when it comes to my notes if I don't control where the data is then it can't
possibly be a good product.

------
depthfirst
I have recently started using Fsnotes [1]. Its based on nvAlt [2]. If we are
focusing on networked notes, fsnotes supports it out of the box and best part,
it is offline; stores files as markdown on my local machine, which I really
want. Not sure if Roam or Athens are offline apps, didn't dig too much into
them.

[1] [https://fsnot.es/](https://fsnot.es/) [2]
[https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/](https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/)

------
neolog
Foam is another
[https://foambubble.github.io/foam/](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/)

~~~
clubdorothe
Foam is built as a vscode plugin - what's not great when you are on mobile and
what to write on the go

------
clubdorothe
Athens story is quite compelling : [https://www.notion.so/MVP-Update-Funding-
and-Why-I-Started-A...](https://www.notion.so/MVP-Update-Funding-and-Why-I-
Started-Athens-e68822f0c3654660ae621cdcbf932bc4)

------
spankalee
What is it? I can't find a description.

~~~
singlow
I read three levels deep into everything in their readme and still have no
idea what it is. I found out it's _like_ a lot of other things that have no
description.

~~~
Lopalis
It's weird. They've obviously written a bunch, but there's no clear "this is
what this is and what we want it to be and this is where we're going". It's
all very ... academic and "meta" in a very vague way.

[https://github.com/athensresearch/athens/blob/master/VISION....](https://github.com/athensresearch/athens/blob/master/VISION.md)

------
kelsolaar
Tried most of them, Bear, DEVONThink, Foam, Quiver, Notion, Obsidian, Org-
Mode, Roam, Workflowy, and Zettlr to name a few. The feature I found to be the
best is the "outliner with zoom" from Roam and Workflowy. With that in mind,
Dynalist ([https://dynalist.io/](https://dynalist.io/)) is what I'm currently
using.

------
CGamesPlay
I'm super excited to see an open source approach to these! Frankly I probably
won't use it because I like the plain-text-files approach to note-taking, but
when I evaluate new options, being open source and self-hosted are very
important factors for me (specifically in the personal knowledge management
space).

------
hijklmno
Check out [https://obsidian.md](https://obsidian.md)

