
Zettlr – FOSS markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing - DerWOK
https://www.zettlr.com/
======
bloopernova
I'm really happy that the "knowledge base management" type of tools are
getting a lot more attention these days. In my opinion, the more brains that
look at this area, the better the whole ecosystem will get.

I'll have to download this and give it a try, and compare it to my current
workflow.

(I use org-roam on Emacs. I'm not sure if people are sick of org-mode and
Emacs being mentioned on HN? I worry about becoming the stereotype of "how do
you tell if someone is a Vegan (or uses Emacs)?" "Don't worry, they'll tell
you". I don't want to derail any discussion though!)

For those of you wondering about Zettelkasten and knowledge management, I
suggest you start by reading "How to Take Smart Notes" by Sönke Ahrens:
[https://takesmartnotes.com/](https://takesmartnotes.com/) and
[https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34507927-how-to-
take-...](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34507927-how-to-take-smart-
notes)

~~~
esperent
I do think that the area of knowledge management is very interesting and
worthy of discussion. When it comes to tooling though, I've tried out a couple
and I don't find anything superior to a folder full of markdown files + your
favorite text editor (I use VSCode, but I don't think that's especially
important).

Systems like Zettelkasten are interesting to read about, but again, everyone's
brain is different and for me a bunch of folder categories and one misc/daily
folder is just as good.

On a purely personal level, any tooling or system more complex than what I
already use is unnecessary.

~~~
lioeters
I'm in the same camp, all my notes are in Markdown files, organized as a tree
of folders. Some folders are prefixed with YYYY or YYYY-MM, when needed.

My text editor, also VS Code, has extensions for Markdown live preview, to-do
lists, and other conveniences - everything I need to manage the "knowledge
database".

In the terminal, `find` and `grep` are perfect for searching notes. I have a
few aliases defined for quickly adding new single-line notes, current
date/time, paste a link and title, etc.

As a higher-level interface, I wrote a little React app / Node.js server that
renders the Markdown files, with hot reload on changes. Not necessary, but I
like having a "personal dashboard" of sorts, with calendar and whatever
feature/widgets I want to add.

I also join the chorus, that we ought to welcome more exploration in the area
of knowledge management. I love seeing new systems, open-source projects,
applications, SaaS (though not as much) taking on this problem space.

Since the days of index cards, through Vannevar Bush's Memex, Ted Nelson's
Xanadu, Englebart's mother of all demos, HyperCard.. In some ways I think the
past decade took a step forward and a couple steps back. The personal
computer, as an augmentation of the human intellect, has creative potential
yet to be explored.

\---

Edit: A recent one I found delightful is the Johnny Decimal System.

[https://johnnydecimal.com/](https://johnnydecimal.com/)

~~~
zikani_03
I also rely on Markdown files and typically write very short content in each
file, especially to help with my memory. I tried Google Keep, Evernote and at
some point pain-stakingly migrated all the notes I had to Notion, but they are
missing "something" I don't know yet so I regressed back to markdown files in
a directory.

I created a tool to automatically structure files into a directory tree based
on file dates because of this: github.com/zikani03/groupby

It is really great to see more attention given to this space. That and
personal relationship management tools (e.g. Monica)

~~~
logicuce
This is exactly me!

I think the _something_ missing in Notion is keyboard shortcuts and overall
feeling that it does not feel fast enough. For example navigating to a page
and then jumping between pages requires more steps than I am comfortable.

~~~
input_sh
Ctrl + P followed by first few letters of a page you're jumping to.

------
lifeisstillgood
I think this trend of better knowledge tools is missing two very important
pieces of human nature

1\. If we have time to enter something into a knowledge base of any kind -
then we have time to just jot it on a piece of paper.

2\. If we dont have time (or think it is important _at that moment_ ) then
what solves the problem for us is not a knowledge base, but _search_.

You see the thing about Google and Facebook etc, is that if they were
collecting all this information about me, and it was treated like _medical
information about me_ it would be far more useful to me (and far less useful
to Advertisers).

I want a web browser that remembers every single page I have visited (#) and
then lets me search them. Then someone could write a spaced reminder thingy
for me - spent more than 5 minutes on a web page did he - he will want to
refresh that page in 2 weeks and then 4 months.

Yes, knowledge bases are excellent for clearly defined study efforts - like
y'know, university, but for the rest of life, explicit note taking is a cost
that we need some activation energy barrier for.

Put it this way, once upon a time I had a study book for a new programming
language, and i took notes of interesting examples on a ring binder. But the
last time I learnt a new language I just relied on Google finding me the
relevant StackOverflow pages - my cost/benefit line had changed.

(And notes just got dumped into a text file.)

(#) Ok maybe not _those_ pages

~~~
bachmeier
> what solves the problem for us is not a knowledge base, but search

There are problems with search: you have to know to search for something, and
you have to know how to search for it. In some cases this is an issue, in some
it isn't. I have had many times over the years where I reviewed my notes and
reminded myself of things I had completely forgotten. Search is useless in
that case.

But in any event, there's no conflict between a knowledge base and search.
They are different things and you can search a knowledge base.

~~~
focus2020
Search can not be avoided. The alternative to search is to go through
everything that has been read which is not feasible. Tagging is the only
solution. The user has to remember the tags which is referred to as context in
zettlekeaten method. I could not see any workaround to this problem

------
unsungNovelty
If anybody is sad about Zettlr not having the graph view of like the one in
Obsidian or RoamResearch, please be patient. A PR is already open for it. ->
[https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/pull/921](https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/pull/921)

OpenSource powaaaaa! :)

~~~
grok22
Does anybody find that graph view (like in Obsidian) useful? I play around
with it for a while, but I don't really find it useful for any particular
thing. Also overtime that graph grows too big to be visually easy to see
patterns etc.

~~~
ziftface
Sometimes it's an alternative to search. If you don't know exactly what to
search for but remember generally what it's related to, you can zoom in to
nodes you know are somewhat related and find something you're looking for that
way. I can't say it's something I do every day but it's come in handy.

------
dmytton
Note-taking seems to be a hot topic lately. I used Apple Notes for a long time
because it was very lightweight and minimalist, but recent releases of macOS
have been very buggy, so I decided to review all the options. I wrote this up
at [https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for-
mac-m...](https://davidmytton.blog/the-best-note-taking-apps-for-mac-markdown-
open-format-cross-platform/) which has become one of the most trafficked post
on my blog in the last few months!

The key for me is a) plain text files I can manage myself i.e. no database or
mandatory custom sync; b) markdown.

Apps will come and go. You might decide to switch platforms and maybe a new
editor will come along sometime. This means you want a format that can be
opened by anything (plain text) but with lightweight markup that the editor
can parse to make it look nice, but you can also parse with your eyes and get
a reasonable sense of the document structure (markdown).

Then it's all about search. There's no point making notes if you can't find
them. This is where something more than Markdown - that allows you to link
notes - is handy. It's what is appearing more and more in the likes of Roam,
Obsidian, etc.

I ultimately chose iA Writer on macOS because it is lightweight and really
nicely designed, plus has good native support for Markdown. I sync using
OneDrive but you can use anything because they're all individual files. iA
Writer is also native, and I find most Electron apps to be slow and/or buggy.
There are exceptions e.g. VS Code, but I prefer native where possible.

~~~
tweetle_beetle
Seeing as your list is pretty comprehensive, it might be worth having a look
at Writemonkey. It's been in development since 2006 - so long before the
markdown editor trend in recent years, and probably even pre-dating the
distraction-free trend about a decade ago.

The most recent incarnation (v3) fits your two criteria well and its plugin
system is very versatile. Sadly cross platform supports only came with version
3 and that means saying goodbye to the small Windows native downloads, but
it's not an Electron monstrosity.

Just a long time fan and always feel a bit disappointed that it never comes up
in these kind of discussions :)

[http://www.writemonkey.com/wm3/](http://www.writemonkey.com/wm3/)

(And in a pinch, away from my own machine, StackEdit is great.)

~~~
miles
> Sadly cross platform supports only came with version 3 and that means saying
> goodbye to the small Windows native downloads, but it's not an Electron
> monstrosity.

Yes, it's NW.js instead of Electron, but that's still an almost 100MB
framework (and the >50MB sounds directory doesn't help much either). It's also
closed source, though the documentation is hosted at GitHub:
[https://github.com/writemonkey/wm3/wiki/Documentation](https://github.com/writemonkey/wm3/wiki/Documentation)
.

~~~
tweetle_beetle
I wish it was native too, but I just meant it's not as bad as it could be on
that front - 200ish MB RAM compared to some of the famous Electron examples.

The sounds are from the zen/focus software trend days, when you have minimal
distractions from the interface and background noise loops built in.

------
wooptoo
I can recommend Zim wiki which is a GTK+ desktop app that works as a personal
wiki / notebook. Has a WYSIWYG editor and can export to different formats, it
can even render the wiki as html and serve it. Also supports plugins for extra
things like tables and charts if you wish. You can have separate notebooks for
each project like home/work/etc. You can commit to git from the UI, have git
hooks set to automatically push to a remote on every commit. Not fancy but
very functional and pleasant to use. [https://zim-wiki.org/](https://zim-
wiki.org/)

~~~
hysan
Really love Zim wiki and have been using it for over a decade. Sadly, the move
to py3 and gtk3 broke it for non-linux platforms. macOS how has a huge wealth
of [reported] bugs that break common keyboard shortcuts at the OS level and
introduced a lot of performance problems. This isn't the fault of Zim as these
are all bugs from gtk3 where it seems like the priority for non-linux bugs is
0. Meanwhile, Windows no longer has a prepackaged installer as the maintainer
stopped doing that post transition.

I've tried hacking my way around this but to no avail. It's gotten to the
point that I've finally started seriously looking and testing alternatives.
Nothing has come close to replicating the feature set and UI workflow.

~~~
heldergg
There is a new installer for windows for the latest Zim version, it was
announced last Tuesday, you can get it on the Zim wiki download page:
[https://zim-wiki.org/downloads/](https://zim-wiki.org/downloads/)

~~~
hysan
That is awesome! Glad to see that this was finally addressed. That still
leaves the macOS issues which I'll keep my fingers crossed for.

(I do realize that I'm an odd niche use case where I use all 3 platforms
regularly (Linux, Apple, Windows) and it why it's been difficult to find a
suitable replacement.)

------
codr7
Two words, Org mode:

[https://orgmode.org/](https://orgmode.org/)

Add Magit and you're good to go:

[https://github.com/magit/magit](https://github.com/magit/magit)

Emacs is a quirky beast, but these two packages alone make it worth the effort
to learn.

~~~
ralls_ebfe
Switched to emacs(spacemacs) from vim last year, because I wanted to know what
the craze with org-mode is all about. Am using mu4e, elfeed, rcirc, magit,
org-mode and started using org-roam this week. I still suck at elisp, but
emacs with org-mode really is a blast. I love my agenda: whenever I get
confused what I was about to do, it is only some keystrokes away. I feel
insanely organized while forgetting everything all the time.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
Did you find mu4e difficult to set up? That's something I started
investigating lately but the things I've seen all feel somewhat more involved
than anything else I've done with emacs.

~~~
ralls_ebfe
That one is a bit confusing, yes. I had to read some manuals and exaaples, but
now it is working fine with mbsync. The arch linux wiki was helpful i think.

------
sanchitnevgi
I've been using Obsidian ([https://obsidian.md/](https://obsidian.md/)) for
the past few weeks and it has been really great.

~~~
DerWOK
Yes, I also looked into Obsidian. And I really liked it. But their license
scheme would have forced me to buy a subscription to also use it in work
environment.

So I switched to Zettlr and never looked back.

Would they have allowed the personal one-time bought license to use in
professional working, I would have sticked.

~~~
cgriswald
They've changed their licensing since it was first announced on HN. They're
still pretty murky. For instance, the personal license excludes certain types
of work (but the phrasing is unclear); but the commercial license states it's
only required for businesses of two or more people.

The personal license is no longer a subscription (if it was ever, I don't
really remember), but the commercial license still is, even for non-
Enterprise.

------
darkstarsys
Not a popular opinion I'm sure, but I'm all-in on OneNote. Works everywhere
(at least basically) and it is just so rich. Full pen support for drawing
(vital for me), tables, equations (sort of), multiple text blocks on a page
(also key!), internal & external links, fast search (as of last year). Search
is good enough that I rarely use tags anymore.

Yes, it's totally vendor locked in and I do hate that. And no syntax
highlighting for code is annoying. Lack of markdown is a pain. And it's bug-
ridden and closed source.

But I've been using it for my work daily journal and knowledge capture for a
few years now, and it's so fluid and easy to jot down or scribble a quick note
and find it later that it's hard for me to imagine going back to a basic
Markdown editor. It's the closest thing I've found to a searchable paper lab
notebook.

And btw I'm a hardcore Emacs user for the last 40 years. Org mode is great,
but for me, OneNote kills it in expressiveness and fluidity of idea capture
and recall.

If someone makes a Markdown editor that supports pen/tablet ink drawing and
multiple text blocks on a page, I'd be interested.

~~~
smilekzs
Long-time OneNote user chiming in. I've briefly switched to Evernote but due
to their frequent screw-ups I switched back to OneNote. Stylus input is a big
part for my dev logs, and one good thing about OneNote is that it accepts both
handwriting and text without prejudice.

Also, pages in OneNote are allowed to have 2 levels of indent. More than that
you can organize with traditional folder structures. The difference is that a
less indented "parent" page can still have content; a folder does not contain
content on its own.

I would strongly recommend OneTastic as it adds quite a few missing features
from stock OneNote (crop image, calendar view, etc.)

------
black_puppydog
I can't believe nobody bothered to link TiddlyWiki [1] here... Especially
since this crowd here should be able to run it directly from npm, which makes
it much easier (conceptually, for me) than "a self-modifying html file". :P

For Zettelkasten (and research more generally) Stroll [2] is a flavour of
TiddlyWiki that has many of the features you'd like, including (most crucially
for me) backlinks.

Edit: the reason I brought up TiddlyWiki here is because I tried Zettlr and
while I see how some people would like it, I certainly didn't.

[1]: [https://tiddlywiki.com/](https://tiddlywiki.com/)

[2]:
[https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html](https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html)

~~~
lstmemery
I spent about an hour trying to set up a TiddlyWiki for a Zettelkasten, but
couldn't get it working. I was overwhelmed by the number of editors available.
I now use Zettlr.

Is there a tutorial you used to help your set up?

~~~
kseistrup
All you need to do is to drag the orange “pill” found under “Updating Stroll”
on
[https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html](https://giffmex.org/stroll/stroll.html)
onto a tiddlywiki instance, then click the “import” and “reload” buttons and
you're all set.

------
douglaswlance
There is nothing that compares to using your preferred text editor to write
personal knowledge documents like this. I swapped over to
[Foam]([https://foambubble.github.io/foam/](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/))
in VSCode recently when it was released, and it's like a breath of fresh air.
I can use my keyboard shortcuts, extensions, and snippets. Nothing else can
compare.

~~~
stevesimmons
In the last week, I've started using Foam too.

It hits the sweet spot for me:

\- Plain Markdown files stored in git; exactly what I am used to for code.

\- Editor is VisualStudioCode, which I always have open, and can configure
however I like.

\- No vendor lock-in.

~~~
input_sh
You have to do the sync via GitHub, which is in and of itself a vendor lock-in
in my opinion.

I really don't get why I can't just point to any Git repo for syncing
purposes.

~~~
mrkwse
I only started using it today so may be missing something, but how/why is it
locked into GitHub? I can’t see anything specific to GitHub (and I used the
full recommended extension set).

Not only that but I can’t see anything to stop you setting it up in a more
typical cloud file syncing service (e.g. Dropbox) directory and having
everything happen effortlessly in the background?

------
jtanderson
I've been a heavy Standard Notes user for a couple years now, and the added
function of Zettlr looks extremely appealing to me (images, linking, much
nicer rendering, etc.). However, to really give this a test drive to see if
it's a suitable replacement, I downloaded all my Standard Notes as plain text
and tried importing them. This caused a ton of bugs/errors when trying to
navigate and use the results. First, it complained about not being able to
detect the file type -- again, these are all plain text that end in .txt...
Second, it seems to have a ton of trouble with renaming folders: it works the
first time, renames it on the filesystem, but then doesn't keep the change in
the app? Then I try to reload and rename the folder back and now it throws
null variable errors left and right? Then, I try to create sub-folders to
start organizing the mess of notes I just imported and... big choke, can't
create the folder, sometimes it gives an error and other times it just does
nothing. The performance (speed opening tabs, scrolling notes) seems to
degrade quite a bit with the number of notes I have.

So... this looks like something that could be really great! But there's a lot
of friction still to having it get out of the way and let me be organized.

~~~
matthiasv
I am also a long-time SN user but I've never really liked the editor. So, I
used a bit of free time to turn a C GTK SN client PoC into a somewhat proper
Rust app
([https://github.com/matze/iridium](https://github.com/matze/iridium)) and
hope to put in more effort the next few weeks. You might like it if Linux is
your platform.

~~~
jtanderson
Whoa, this is very cool! I will definitely give it a spin on the desktop. Does
it support any of the extensions like tags/folders?

~~~
matthiasv
No unfortunately not yet but of course I need that myself sooner or later. All
my notes are tagged.

------
eblanshey
For the last half a year or so I've been using VNote:
[https://github.com/tamlok/vnote](https://github.com/tamlok/vnote)

I was really surprised when I discovered it, as I've been looking for the
"perfect" note-taking system for a while and VNote was never mentioned. It
checks all my boxes: in-place preview of markdown, is open source,
automatically copies images to your notes directory, has ability to add file
attachments, is customizable with different themes, is programmer-friendly
(has VIM-mode), and it's native (no Electron!) And it looks great with the
dark theme. It doesn't lock you in to its software as in the end, it's just
markdown files and media files.

It doesn't have Zettelkasten support, but it does do tagging and its search
capabilities are comprehensive (includes regex search.)

I am not affiliated with the project -- just a happy user :)

------
maddyboo
Neuron is a new Zettelkasten project that shows a lot of promise. The
developer is very active and responsive. I like that it is an editor-
independent cli tool, with plugins currently for Vim and Emacs.

[https://neuron.zettel.page/](https://neuron.zettel.page/)

[https://github.com/srid/neuron](https://github.com/srid/neuron)

~~~
brunoqc
Do you know if neuron will ever supports mobile?

~~~
codethief
Looks like it will:
[https://neuron.zettel.page/041726b3.html](https://neuron.zettel.page/041726b3.html)

~~~
brunoqc
Thanks!

------
tifadg1
Could someone enlighten me what is the biggest advantage or this and similar
tools over libreoffice writer? I've been using it extensively for years for
technical documentation, have hundreds of bitrot-free documents, and am
extensively using:

* tables (2 or 3 columns depending on type, often using sort by column 1 or column 1+2 to keep relevant information grouped);

* preset formatting for different styles (snippets, commands);

* navigation using ToC (on a sideway navigation pane which is always visible);

* auto-generating anki flashcards from the content with no modifications;

* inserting external media;

I've used different methods to keep a single synchronized copy depending on
work tech restrictions, i.e. nfs over ssh, sshfs, vpn via vm. Nowadays working
from home I just keep everything locally.

What are the selling points to drop all that and move to something else?

~~~
cellularmitosis
I wasn't aware you could create links from one libreoffice writer document to
another?

~~~
tifadg1
I meant navigating quickly within headers of the same document. Certainly you
can insert links to external documents, but it feels more useful theoretically
than practically, as you'd seldom open a document looking for a specific
thing, and decide to read the general supporting articles too.

------
estacado
I've tried a lot of note-taking apps, I've settled on Simplenote. It's
lightweight, syncs, and searchable. It's text-only. I find linking media and
other stuff is just cumbersome, and takes a lot of effort to organize when all
I want is a quick way to jot down notes.
[https://simplenote.com/](https://simplenote.com/)

~~~
gregwebs
I preferred InkDrop on my laptop, but I had to switch back to SimpleNote
because SimpleNote does both sync and mobile extremely well. Doing mobile well
just requires it to never take time to load. InkDrop would usually have to
refresh its contents when switching to it.

------
wenc
Folks who are familiar with Zettelkasten:

Would it be correct to say that most of these tools are identical to Wiki
software with one exception: the ability to see "what linked to this"?

~~~
scribu
It's not that. Wikipedia, for example, has a separate "pages that link to
this" view.

What makes Roam Research different is "block addressing", i.e. you can get a
reference to a single paragraph and use it in other docs (either referencing
it or embedding it).

(and of course a nice UX for editing)

~~~
wenc
I see. What else separates it from Wikis? (genuine question)

Side: I've read books and articles in an attempt to understand what sets it
apart from other techniques.

I know Niklas Luhmann used it to write tons of books and articles, while
others claim to have been able to use it as a "second brain".

But I'm still having trouble understanding how to deploy the Zettelkasten
technique effectively -- a lot has been written about the technique, but not
much has been written about actual use cases where someone has used it to
accomplish something useful, which they couldn't have as easily or at all
without Zettelkasten. Due to the lack of examples, I'm trying understand by
analogy, by comparing Zettelkästen to something familiar like Wikis.

------
DerWOK
Some admin removed the "version 1.7" from the post headline? Why that? The
news is that the version 1.7 - after 4 month of work - was just released a few
hours ago... ️

~~~
dsissitka
I imagine it's because the link points to Zettlr's home page and so the
discussion ended up being about Zettlr in general rather than the 1.7 release.

------
sradman
YAZN (Yet Another Zettelkasten Notes) system. This one is Markdown with YAML
Front Matter for metadata and an Electron based editor. Roam, Foam, Zettlr.
All of these start with the powerful principle that every document/note should
be addressable with its title-slug (wiki like linking). Good stuff.

------
I_am_tiberius
Joplin and Standard notes are great as well. I lost one week of data due to
some synchronization issue with Joplin though - but the markdown editor is
great (they even have a new WYSIWYG editor). Standard notes is good but it's
missing good file/image support which is really annoying.

~~~
electricEmu
What happened with your Joplin sync issue?

I am interested in using Joplin exclusively and use both apps currently. The
Standard Notes development team is nice but refactors happen too frequently
and estimates are rarely (never) produced, even though the product is paid
Open Source.

~~~
I_am_tiberius
It's a pity because Joplin has pretty much the perfect feature set for me. I
can't tell you much about the sync issue I had as I didn't find a solution (I
also didn't spend too much time on it). Btw. I initially migrated from zim and
the migration was super easy!!! What I can tell you is that Joplin suddenly
didn't show any notes anymore because of a sync issue. In the source folder I
saw some files still there but the notes of the previous week were all gone. I
would have appreciated to have the option to tell Joplin that I don't care
about sync and want my local Joplin files to be the primary ones - or
something like that.

I then bought a 5 year plan of Standard notes which is not as user friendly as
Joplin (in my opinion) but has some cool features (like the spreadsheet
extension which is awesome). However, as mentioned, without being able to just
paste images it's more or less useless for preparing blog posts or something
like that. You need to use "fileSafe" I guess but for this you need Dropbox
etc.. Other features missing in Standard Notes are simple drag & drop of
folders and context menu...

~~~
electricEmu
Honestly, it's good to hear I'm not alone.

Synchronization in Joplin concerned me too. E2EE is non-trivial to setup and
Joplin will upload decrypted files if E2EE is misconfigured on a device.
Encryption appears to be an afterthought in Joplin.

Standard Notes looks snazzy but too many features fail to work. I cannot get
paste to work consistently on my mobile devices, and you're right - the
editors are a an absolute mess. File Safe is only supported in unsupported
editors and the supported editors lack basic features. FYI, the spreadsheet
editor unsupported and exporting sheet data is...difficult.

I do not recommend Standard Notes anymore. Thanks for pointing out a need for
external backups in Joplin though!

------
scribu
The drawback to working directly on Markdown files is that it's hard to
synchronize your notes from/to mobile.

If I didn't care about sync, I would use org-roam or some Vim plugin,
personally.

~~~
ResidentSleeper
I've recently started using GitJournal [1] to access my notes on Android, but
I haven't used it enough to be able to say whether it's worthwhile. One
annoying drawback is that it requires a monthly subscription to get access to
all of the (convenience) features.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.gitjournal....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.gitjournal.gitjournal)

~~~
ResidentSleeper
@vhanda (unable to reply directly for some reason)

First of all, congratulations on shipping a decent, polished Android app!
These increasingly seem to be a rarity these days.

Regarding the subscription model, the monthly price quickly adds up,
especially for users outside the US. For example, one of the most common apps
in my country offers a pro subscription for a yearly price of $3, compared to
a minimum of $24 ($2 * 12) in GitJournal (and this would be on top of whatever
I'm paying for my desktop note-keeping app...). I would suggest that you
review the pricing for low income countries (especially since the regionalized
"go pro" slider UI seems glitchy, eg. I can't reselect the default price,
can't select values to the right). A lower yearly subscription or a single
purchase option would go a long way towards convincing me to upgrade.

I think not including ads was an excellent choice and I probably wouldn't have
continued using the app with them. I was going to suggest hiding the locked
pro features to make them less annoying, but upon review it's not that bad.

I'll keep using the app and leave a review on the store later when I gather
more thoughts.

~~~
vhanda
Hey Resident Sleeper

Thanks a lot for the feedback. Could you let me know what Country you are in?
I've changed the pricing of the Indian market as I understand it better, I'll
be happy to dramatically reduce the pricing for other countries where the
US/EU pricing does not work.

------
bbx
One feature I have yet to find in any Markdown editor is a simple "block"
mover, which I describe here:
[https://twitter.com/jgthms/status/1225513837379641350](https://twitter.com/jgthms/status/1225513837379641350)

Underneath, the data structure would remain straightforward Markdown. So the
data wouldn't be stored as separate blocks; the moving would act similarly to
Sublime Text's "Swap Line Up/Down".

~~~
dr_zoidberg
In VSCode anytime you have text selected you can alt+up/down to move the whole
selection (or current line if no selection) up/down one line. I assume STs
"swap line up/down" works the same.

Is that different from your "block mover" idea? I mean, if I select the
paragrap I want to move and use it it sounds similar, thought it'd happen one
line at a time, and I understand you'd mean to move it "whole blocks" at a
time.

But probably a plugin can be made to achieve that behavior.

~~~
bbx
Yes, ST works like VSCode in that regard.

It works well with paragraphs and headings because they fit on one line (so 1
line = 1 block), but I'd like to be able to move whole multiline blocks, like
lists, code blocks, and paragraphs that have line breaks.

Also, for the empty lines that separate blocks, I need to move them as well
(or select them as part of the block).

But yes, the current feature is very close to what I'd like.

The other part of my tweet though (about being able to move between 2 columns
or files) is trickier.

------
BasilPH
If you use Zettlr, or any other editor to create a linked graph of text files,
you might be interesting in vizel[0]:

It visualizes the graph and calculates some stats. I find it useful to track
the growth of my Zettelkasten, but also to find notes and components that are
unconnected to the rest of the graph.

I built it to scratch my own itch, but I'm always happy to get feedback.

[0]: [https://github.com/BasilPH/vizel](https://github.com/BasilPH/vizel)

------
rvz
> macOS: "Your system has run out of application memory"

I just looked at the apps I currently have open and it appears that I have the
following running: VSCode, Docker, Slack, Notion, WhatsApp, Discord, Riot,
Chrome (70+ Tabs), Skype, and Figma.

I wondered if my Macbook could tolerate another electron app being installed
or if I can open another one without grinding my Macbook to a halt. But again
I don't think such apps can even scale with other apps running in the
background.

------
bluenose69
I find vimwiki to be quite useful. I like that it uses plain files. It lacks a
fancy GUI interface, but I prefer a hands-on-the-keyboard approach, anyway.

------
bluenose69
zettlr does not seem to be able to import markdown files, which is a problem
for people like me who have lots of such files. Maybe there is a way around
that, but I am not motivated to spend much time seeking it, since I find
vimwiki to be sufficient for navigating through links in my files. (Also,
vimwiki makes it easy to create links, with the strike of a key.)

My scheme does not offer me a nice GUI, but I prefer to see simple text
anyway, and I like how vimwiki lets me navigate through my cross-linked notes
without my fingers leaving the home keys. Markdown permits images, etc., and
if I want to see them I can just open a terminal to a subdirectory and use
pandoc.

I don't see a way in vimwiki to get a "what links to this page" item, which I
imagine an application like zettlr would offer, but it be easy to write a
python script to do that, and to add a a line to my crontab file to update
things every so often.

The good thing about my setup is that the markdown format is not tied to any
particular application. That's important, if you want your database of notes
to last for a long time.

~~~
elric
You can just dump the markdown files in whatever directory zettlr is using,
and you're done. There's no magic required here, zettlr is just a markdown
editor.

------
fluder
I recommend [https://fsnot.es](https://fsnot.es) Native and blazing fast for
iOS and macOS.

~~~
balladeer
I have used it for a while and it's not very stable or rather say "finished"
yet (neither Mac nor iOS). But it's open source, so I'd favour it over, Bear,
given a chance, which it resembles the most. So I just keep it installed and
keep checking it once in a while.

Though I'd just be happy with something like nv (+ Simple Note + Dropbox)
which is actively developed (Simple Note just for the iOS).

------
fastball
Shameless plug: I've been building a similar tool for the past couple years,
although it is not FOSS :(

The major differentiator is that content is based around notecards rather than
documents/files, and there are multiple ways to structure these cards.

The most powerful way to organize things is with multi-parent nesting, where
you put cards inside of other cards, and each card can have any number of
parents. You can share these cards with others, and they can add their own
parents to it that don't interfere with yours, allowing you to have shared
cards that exist within entirely different hierarchies that are unique to each
individual user.

That's a feature that I think is unique in the space, but we also have the
links/backlinks and tags that you will see elsewhere (though tagging is
similarly powerful in that shared cards can have tags that are public vs tags
that are private to the user).

You can check it out here:

[https://supernotes.app](https://supernotes.app)

~~~
emptysongglass
I love the metaphor of a massively hyperlinked card. It reminds me a little of
[https://mochi.cards](https://mochi.cards), which I've enjoyed spending time
with.

But these things can only ever remain idle curiosities to me when they're
closed source. We're talking about a knowledge graph that only really flexes
itself with years of dedicated entry, roaming and combing through its
interlinks for that electric flash of idea-sex.

Why should I commit to a company's knowledge box when I can't trust your
team's bus factor? You're one human being, any number of calamities could
befall you -- I have to assume Supernotes isn't wired to an open-source dead
man's switch.

You're also an engine of capital beholden to its single truth: print more
money at all costs. We've already seen apps like Roam jack up their price. Is
there a ceiling you can guarantee me?

~~~
fastball
Absolutely – it's definitely a tough balance to find. At some point in the
future we'd like to have Supernotes be a federated solution with self-hosting
available, but that goal is quite a bit out, if it can happen at all.

In the meantime, we already have the ability to export all your cards as
markdown, and are currently trying to find ways to export your actual data
graph in a format that could _possibly_ be used elsewhere. Obviously the hard
part with this is that, as I mentioned, our structuring options are somewhat
unique, so there isn't really a way to export it in a way that could be
readily consumed by other tools.

For the last point, this would be solved by federation / self-hosting. But
again, in the meantime, we want to get closer to this goal by offering a
lifetime subscription[1] (which is cheaper than Roam's offer which lasts 5
years).

[1] [https://supernotes.app/pricing/](https://supernotes.app/pricing/)

------
kirubakaran
Please try my [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) if you don't want to
manually organize everything. Histre automatically creates a knowledge base
out of your bookmarks, notes, highlights, and optionally, your web browsing
history. It makes it trivially easy to collaborate and publish.

------
Grumbledour
I really struggle with the UI on this one. Some notes:

\- No title bar makes using the window harder than it needs to be.

\- Huge symbols I have to hover over to see what they do + a hamburger menu. A
traditional menu would be easier to use for me at least.

\- Speaking of hover, whats with the weird, animated back-button for folders
that when it appears overlaps other elements?

\- Font sizes. Really, they seem to big even for me as a visually impaired
person

\- General non-nativeness. That Options dialog as a website modal is just
weird and jumps around when switching categories.

I don't mean to be to negative here, maybe I am just getting old, but this
really seems not to be my cup of tea, though apart from the UI, I really like
the idea and the use of pandoc/latex, YAML Frontmatter, saving as just files
etc.

If this had a more traditional UI and would use less ressources it would come
pretty close to a note taking app I often thought about but was to lazy to try
my hand at myself.

------
garfieldnate
What are the open source options for storing PDF annotations? These are just
as important as free-form notes for me.

~~~
alltakendamned
Have a look at Zotero ?

~~~
garfieldnate
Interesting. This also led me to Zotfile.

------
sitkack
How do folks incorporate drawings and images into their notes? At least when I
used a wiki, I could upload photos as cumbersome as it was, as it is now, I
rarely use visual media.

I found notes on the iphone to be excellent, but the content appears to be
locked up inside of apple's swamp. The pdf exports were horrid.

------
slezyr
This page loads one CPU to 100% in Firefox

~~~
captn3m0
Its the constellations on the top.

------
dsissitka
Announcement with a brief overview of some of the changes in 1.7 here:

[https://www.zettlr.com/post/zettlr-170-released](https://www.zettlr.com/post/zettlr-170-released)

Mirror here:

[http://archive.is/usgQ5](http://archive.is/usgQ5)

------
threatofrain
I like the general look and feel but it still feels clunky to switch between
the markdown and presentation view, copy-pasting markdown (tables, etc)
doesn't work right, and more importantly, Latex is clunky.

Still waiting for something to best VSC. What do people working with a
combination of code and Latex use?

------
m_b
another Electron app, no thanks

------
627467
I started keeping a hosted tiddlywiki since this new round of zettelkasten
rebirth (also, digital garden).

Additionally I started taking notes on Left
[https://100r.co/site/left.html](https://100r.co/site/left.html)

------
bb88
Ultimately as an engineer, what I want to capture are things like schematics,
vector diagrams, equations and mechanical drawings of things I have found
interesting over my career.

When I solve a problem I want to have an open source format and viewer(s) for
whatever problem domain it's in. So for things like software, that's easy,
it's just text. For things like electrical schematics and physics
calculations, it's not so easy.

So then I go down the path of how do I get X to show Y? Like how do I get
github to show me a gerber plot from kicad? That's what's really keeping me
from using tools like this, native format viewers for the tools we're using.

------
odilontalk
I'm using Inkdrop [1] and works really great for me. Knowledge + task
management without forcing you any workflow.

[1]: [https://www.inkdrop.app/](https://www.inkdrop.app/)

------
fab1an
Interesting to see this kinds of tools get so much attention in the past
couple of months!

I have seen a lot of buzz around Roam (which is interesting given how outright
terrible the initial user experience and conversion funnel is - I did not have
the patience and unsub'd immediately..)

I ended up buying [https://zettelkasten.de/the-
archive/](https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/) Super straightforward
Zettelkasten system, and most importantly utilizing plain txt and not some
weird proprietary format.

------
steveklabnik
It’s great to see such an explosion in tooling here. It also seems really hard
to write comparisons since there’s so much development going on. I haven’t
tried Zettlr yet, but it’s on my list...

~~~
input_sh
I've tried it. I do like the built-in features, but the design makes me
despise it.

It doesn't follow any system preferences, even replacing the standard
minimize/maximize/close buttons (seriously, why?). Some of the stuff should
definitely be a plugin instead of a core feature. Don't need a pomodoro timer
/ readability feature? Tough luck, you can't even remove it from the
interface, let alone remove it completely.

There's also no plugin support, so you can't extend the features in any way.

I'm using Obsidian[0] instead. A little rough around the edges, but it doesn't
have these issues.

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

------
bubersson
I was using Zettlr for couple months, but some things were a bit clunky and it
was missing better key-bindings, etc. Most of what I need is just "show me my
folder with .md files and let me edit them nicely".

For now I ended up with Mark Text
([https://marktext.app/](https://marktext.app/)), which is open source, cross
platform, works nicely and the migration time was zero (folder with .md files
ftw).

------
crooked-v
I really wish these knowledge base-type apps that have been popping up, like
this and Obsidians would use preexisting Markdown and Multimarkdown syntax for
links and link references rather than inventing and leaning on their own bits
of syntax that aren't usable with other tooling. The whole [[double bracket
link]] thing in particular is a pain when none of the cross-referencing
supports standard Markdown links between files.

------
jeffbee
Is it the generally-accepted practice to run an app like this in a network
namespace or sandbox? How do I know it's not pilfering my research? I'd like
to use a system like this for my work but I don't see how it can be trusted. I
don't have the time to read the source. To be honest, I prefer a hosted
solution because then I get a written contract about the privacy of my data.

~~~
cellularmitosis
Not getting your data stolen vs. being able to sue after the fact are two
different concerns which are somewhat in conflict.

If you want to be able to sue, then yes go with a hosted solution with a
written contract.

But if the priority is to not have your data stolen, handing your data over to
a third party is a non-starter.

~~~
jeffbee
I don't necessarily agree. I feel like hosted solutions may have better
security than I personally have. Plus, companies like Roam are staking their
entire business on honoring their agreements.

------
ChuckMcM
Okay, I learned a new thing, the Zettelkasten. I've done half of this in my
notebooks for a long time (where each page or set of pages that are about a
particular topic are linked to the other pages in the notebook also on that
topic with a doubly linked list) but the simplicity here is pretty cool.

------
greenie_beans
I read some blog post within the past year are so, written by some young
engineer for shopify or spotify. They detailed the way they built their
zettelkasten. It was well-written and more detailed than most blog posts in
that genre. I can’t find it on HN or Google. Anybody know what I’m talking
about?

~~~
blakeburch
Was it this one? [https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-
learni...](https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-learning-
machine)

~~~
greenie_beans
Yep. Wasn't as thorough as I thought. Thanks

------
Pmop
Too bad it is electron.

------
konart
Eats up my CPU. I haven't even done any editing, just reading the tutorial and
CPU is and 120%

------
garfieldnate
I want all of the backend features as a standalone system; I just don't feel
comfortable being tied to a single editor, though this one does look pretty
great. Are there systems out there with comparable features but which are
editor-agnostic?

------
stakkur
My cross-platform, time-proof, open source 'personal knowledge management'
system:

1\. A folder of markdown and org files

2\. Emacs, gEdit

3\. A notebook

I get the urge to 'optimize' this sort of thing, but the results seem to be
nothing more than visual presentation tweaks.

------
beattheprose
I find this amazing for my schoolwork. Being able to write papers with images
in a sensible manner using Markdown syntax, all the while citing effortlessly
using Zotero, is such a game changer. Huge props.

------
diimdeep
It's really hard to beat speed, robustness and flexibility of general purpose
editors like Vim and Sublime Text, that's why I don't see myself using
something like this for markdown notes.

------
divbzero
I’m a fan of Typora [1] which also combines the simplicity of Markdown syntax
with a WYSIWYG editor.

[1]: [https://typora.io/](https://typora.io/)

------
rohithkp
I use a combination of foam, GitJournal, VSCode. Works well for me.

------
bassman9000
We're a couple years away from merging latex and wordperfect.

------
mrwesleycrusher
Outside of looking pretty, how is this better than say, Zim? Not that being
pretty doesn't have its own merit, but I just want to know what other
advantages this has :)

------
polskibus
How does Zettlr compare to
[https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/) ?

------
gorgoiler
Markdown and AsciiDoc would do well to embrace (1) hashtag syntax and (2)
modification times.

For me, that’s the key to discoverability and categorization.

------
Keyframe
So, is this like a Scrivener clone? Scrivener is awesome and one of the things
I miss when I dumped MacOS altogether.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Scrivener is not Mac-only anymore!
[https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/download](https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/download)

~~~
syncbehind
Version 3 for windows will release one day.

(Really though, it's stable enough for daily use)

------
m-p-3
Is there support for diagrams, like Mermaid? That's something I use with
Joplin for my personal knowledgebase.

~~~
DerWOK
Yes mermaid is built in. Just start a tripple apostrophe codeblock with code
style mermaid and it will render the graphics when your cursor leaves the code
block.

------
_pmf_
I'm just going to create a repo with a symlink to notepad.exe as Roam
alternative and call it a day.

------
supersrdjan
What triggered the sudden surge of interest in these knowledge management
platforms in your opinion?

~~~
rmujica
HackerNews, obviously

------
jtth
This will fall on deaf ears, but if you have to title a note, it's not a
Zettelkasten.

------
smhmd
The hero image is 3104x1876 scaled to 900x500. It's totally butchered and
illegible.

------
someusername99
“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune

------
thomasfl
«Developing Open Source Software is a Political Act.» damn sure is!

~~~
BeetleB
Anything one does can be construed as a "political act", making the whole
concept pointless.

------
lastgeniusua
Downloading page is down now, I guess?

~~~
renjith1
Downloadable from GitHub
[https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/releases/](https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/releases/)

------
captainredbeard
Reminds me of VoodooPad

------
gdevenyi
What's with all the weird communist references?

~~~
dxdm
They're in the eye of the beholder.

I'm assuming you're talking about the name of the project? To me, Zettel is a
German word, meaning a slip of paper useful for taking notes.

------
app4soft
> _Zettlr is powered by Electron,_

Uh, I would prefer _VNote_ editor + _Viki_ instead.

[0] [https://github.com/tamlok/vnote](https://github.com/tamlok/vnote)

[1] [https://github.com/tamlok/viki](https://github.com/tamlok/viki)

~~~
pjmlp
And me Markdown Monster.

[https://github.com/RickStrahl/MarkdownMonster](https://github.com/RickStrahl/MarkdownMonster)

