
How to Make a Memex - mapleoin
https://srconstantin.posthaven.com/how-to-make-a-memex
======
Multicomp
I just recently learned about using two square brackets in OneNote to make
arbitrary links to existing pages or instantly create a new page on demand. It
is quite similar to the linking in [[roam]] but the later offers up a drop-
down of pages with similar names to click from, while the former just does an
exact string match.

I'm not sure which I prefer, but it has helped me in my OneNote uses recently.

Having starte my personal memex journey with onenote 2010 and blending in the
likes of mempad, notewiki, and dokuwiki for specific use cases, I'm feeling
like I am close but not quite arrived at a program I can trust to feed more
than the work notes of the day.

The ideal app is a combination of Onenote, dokuwiki, and mempad, and seeing as
I've not discovered the app that has all the following features yet, I may end
up writing it for myself.

1\. Rich text support without required markup (but can convert markdown to RTF
on the fly would be a nice bonus). Links need to be drop-dead simple to
create, even two square backets feels like it could be simplified. Maybe I go
for NoteWiki stye camelCase or PascalCase words?

Winner: Onenote

Losers: Notewiki, dokuwiki

2\. Offline first saving of files to a single encryptable file. I'm thinking
if I end up writing something, it would be an scrypt encrypted sqlite database
with a different file extension. Using the sqlite format enables later mobile
apps to have a common save format.

Winner: mempad

Loser: OneNote, Dokuwiki

3\. True image / audio / table support. This program doesn't have to
necessarily support the creation of these assets out the gate, but I should be
able to copy/paste them into it and have them saved and retrieved safely. A
file picker dialog box should be something I CAN use but never should have to.

Winner: Onenote

Loser: Mempad, Dokuwiki

4\. Full export to HTML with files placed in relative directories. A Microsoft
Binder-like solution could be a bonus.

Winner: Dokuwiki?

Loser: ?

5\. Entire sqlitedb search for a given term

Winner: Onenote, Dokuwiki, Mempad

Thanks for skimming the wishlist. I've heard of notion (too online),
CherryTree (no mobile app), NoteWiki (no images), and a couple more, but if
you think you have a program that addresses most of these, I'd love to hear
it.

------
toyg
So uhm, how does Roam differ from regular wikis, beyond supposedly-better
keyboard interaction...?

The problem with any wiki-like app, in my usage, is search capabilities and
the need for constant maintenance. Stuffing stuff in is usually pretty easy;
it’s getting value out in the long term, that is the issue.

~~~
RickS
If conventional wikis are a framing hammer, roam is a nail gun. It's not just
about the outcome, but about the ergonomics of creating the outcome. Lowering
the friction of wiki creation leads to more and better wikis, even if you
change nothing else (although they do).

Roam has easy bracket syntax for turning a word into a tag, which creates a
sort of intermediate index page for that concept, linking out and showing
snippets of its usage across all other documents, and allowing you to maintain
that content in a single place. The two-way/retroactive nature of this is
really helpful compared to e.g. notion where if I reference page A on page B,
I have to manually create a link on page B to page A, creating a fragile web
of unmaintainable connections. Roam does this out of the box.

I find the graph stuff visually interesting but mostly uninteresting _for now_
, but the potential is huge. Once the graph has weighting and filtering, I
think it's going to be wildly useful.

------
mdszy
Tried Roam for a bit but an online-only option when most of my notes are work
related isn't something I can do.

I did just get an email from them about "Beautiful creations of the RoamCult"

RoamCult? Come on. Calling your users a "cult" isn't cool or edgy or endearing
in any way. It's weird. Stop.

------
joshvm
Roam looks fun, having played around with it briefly. There doesn't seem to be
a way of getting it offline though (data export is possible) which is a bit of
a killer for a note taking app, at least for me. I don't mind so much about
privacy issues, but having to be online especially to review things would be a
big problem e.g. during travel.

~~~
qubex
_Roam_ very much reminds me of Natrificial’s “Brain”, which I first installed
in mid-1999 and used extensively during my early university days.

It seems that the product is still up and running at www.thebrain.com (or at
the very least, something very similar to it)

Here is the original announcement of Natrificial’s product way back in January
1998: [https://www.wired.com/1998/11/when-your-computer-gets-a-
brai...](https://www.wired.com/1998/11/when-your-computer-gets-a-brain/)

Basically it was a kind of brainstorming/network software, but it could store
documents, notes, and URLs at nodes. This was fairly innovative (for the time)
and useful.

Crucially, it offered standalone .brn files for storage and exchange.

------
carapace
I installed a Memex-inspired extension on my browser, but I don't use it. Most
of the time I forget it's there.
[https://getmemex.com/](https://getmemex.com/)
[https://github.com/WorldBrain/Memex](https://github.com/WorldBrain/Memex)

FWIW, what I really want is a timeline that shows my browsing history.

~~~
rgrau
I attempted to bundle firefox history to memacs, and remember it used to work
ok-ish, but of course, you have to be using the whole emacs,org-mode suite.

I can't guarantee how well it works nowadays cause I forgot to add the cron
job last time I reinstalled my system. It seems there's always something you
have to remember (and I forget).

\-
[https://github.com/novoid/Memacs/blob/master/docs/memacs_fir...](https://github.com/novoid/Memacs/blob/master/docs/memacs_firefox_history.org)

------
16
I loved the concept of "automatic bi-directional tagging" so much that I
created a sorta-clone of Roam here:
[https://github.com/neutralinsomniac/exocortex](https://github.com/neutralinsomniac/exocortex)

It's still WIP, but I use it every day for my personal notes.

------
na85
Roam looks pretty nice, but TFA argues pretty effectively for a _private_
memex.

How does the author reconcile that with putting their intimate thoughts into
Roam aka someone else's computer?

------
cushychicken
I love the references to the Memex in Stross's _Laundry Files_ series.

~~~
hprotagonist
“you mean he actually _built_ one?!”

“unlike you, mr. howard, i’m concerned about Van Eck interference”

~~~
cushychicken
I love that interaction. Angleton is a prick, but also an excellent teacher.

------
fsiefken
I use TiddlyWiki on a webdav server. With syncthing I sync with android, mac,
windows and my VR headset with Firefox Reality. It also supports mindmaps.

~~~
dangoor
Someone has made a TiddyWiki extension to give it the sort of bidirectional
linking of Roam:
[https://giffmex.org/gifts/tiddlyblink.html](https://giffmex.org/gifts/tiddlyblink.html)

------
SuperPaintMan
Very cool, just started playing around with roam because of this.

There seems to be a lot of overlap with Project Xanadu and the related ideas.
I've been playing with this idea for a while and there's been a handful of
partial implementations [0]. A personal memex-style device has been a dream of
mine for a few years now allowing for composition of pages and collection of
various snippets with links back to the original sources.

The main issue with transclusion (inlining portions of versioned docs) of
documents is that the documents need to be versioned and permanently
accessible (otherwise linkrot and broken documents happen). It would be nice
to apply this to the web in general, but it goes against it's nature (and is
fundamentally incompatible with styling).

Markdown + Gitfs is the obvious choice here as it's simple, well supported and
extensible. Most importantly it's decoupled from the interface/viewer itself.
That and you get access to anything in a git repo out of the box. I've done
some basic work on this [1][2] but life got busy.

[0] [http://lain.gboards.ca/cgi-
bin/view.cgi?url=../docs/demos/do...](http://lain.gboards.ca/cgi-
bin/view.cgi?url=../docs/demos/doc.xan.org)

[1] [https://github.com/germ/XanaDown](https://github.com/germ/XanaDown)

[2] [https://github.com/germ/germ.xan](https://github.com/germ/germ.xan)

------
thanatropism
There’s an explosion in “markdown-plus” formats.

I’ve been toying with the idea of tags and internal links in my Huge Text File
but I don’t give nearly enough mind to a consistent syntax even after toying
with custom syntax coloring etc. I’m not even sure what goes in the text file
— it’s getting cluttered with longform essays when it once was basically a
phone number list before smartphones.

------
tiagotrs
maybe someone is interested in a not so well known predecessor to Bush's
Memex, Goldbergs 'Statistical Machine'
[http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/statistical.htm...](http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/statistical.html)

"Bush seems to have said little in his published work about the antecedents of
his Memex or of his microfilm rapid selector" \- Buckland wrote a nice article
summing it up:
[http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/goldbush.html](http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/goldbush.html)

Shameless plug: Goldberg's life story and his search/pattern detection machine
was the main inspiration to create Revealer -
[https://revealer.cc](https://revealer.cc)

~~~
solarkraft
The top navigation isn't shown on mobile (Firefox Preview), so I was left
wondering "ok ... so what is it actually?" for a while.

------
NoGravitas
Can't believe no one has mentioned org-mode yet.

Org-mode is a mode for marked-up plain text files in emacs that gives you note
taking, outlining, to-do lists, scheduling, project management, time tracking,
and journaling. It's really a good candidate for a private Memex, and you can
store it however you want, not just on someone else's computer. There are
mobile apps for it as well, and somewhat less-capable compatibility modes for
vim and VSCode.

The only shortcoming I see for it as a personal Memex is the weak support for
binary content (images, audio, word processing documents). It does support
binary attachments, but they're not presented very well.

~~~
chacha2
This site sometimes feels like the Truman show, where each user has to pretend
they're not just recycling the same three scripts.

~~~
throwlaplace
I've been collecting the most frequently used tropes on hn. It includes such
fan favorites

\- website caused mobile phone to implode

\- this math book has too much math

\- this math doesn't have enough math

\- cockroach db offends me in my soul

\- org-mode does my dishes and tucks me in every night

\- functional programming is the messiah

\- functional programming is the devil

\- software interviews are like being on a cattle car in Poland in the late
1930s

\- people that can't pass software interviews shouldn't be allowed to
reproduce

\- ...

Once I get enough I'll build a bot that can simulate hn for me and then I'll
never come here again

~~~
ASalazarMX
One I'm guilty of: JavaScript desktop applications are not desktop
applications.

~~~
throwlaplace
Will add to the list! Thanks!

------
kragen
It's interesting that nobody has mentioned TiddlyWiki; what does its saving
story look like in the world of the modern featurectomy-ridden browser
landscape?

~~~
procgen
I'm running [https://github.com/djmaze/tiddlywiki-
docker](https://github.com/djmaze/tiddlywiki-docker) on a Digital Ocean
instance. You can mount a volume where it will maintain all of your tiddlers
as separate files - no downloading required (and since your config options are
saved as tiddlers, those are persisted as well). For backups, I run a daily
cron job to git add/commit/push from that volume to a private repo.

------
ahpearce
Since everyone is recommending note apps, I'll throw a plug in for Bear, if
you have a MBP and an iPhone. Syncs via iCloud, and it's just simple, Markdown
oriented notes with a simple tagging system. Good enough search. Haven't
really needed anything else and it actually exports pretty nicely to various
formats (Word, pdf, html, etc.).

------
kragen
What is the user interface flow like in Roam for factoring part of a page out
into a new page, or otherwise creating a new page linked to the current one?
If a Roam screencast already exists I'm not finding it.

------
TrevorFSmith
Or, you could build an actual Memex.
[https://trevor.smith.name/memex/](https://trevor.smith.name/memex/)

