
Ask HN: Thinking of using Zettelkasten , recommend software/platform - ashleshbiradar
Hey there, I just discovered Zettelkasten , and I was hoping to give it a try, digitally. Please suggest any digital tools that would be helpful. I currently use Notion for note-taking.
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pmdulaney
Roam is the web-based app that is the coolest-looking way to do Zettelkasten.
I considered it, but decided against it for two reasons: 1) Although it is
free now, they could decide to make me pay; and 2) I prefer to run apps on my
own machine.

I ended up going with The Archive, free Mac-only software associated with
zettelkasten.de, the organization which probably more than anyone else is
promoting zettelkasten using a digital approach (as opposed to 3x5 cards).

I'm happy with The Archive, but not so much with the documentation on their
website. They spend lots of time promulgating their approach to organizing (or
not organizing!) notes, but very little describing the nuts-and-bolts basics.
I would have never figured out a workable system had I not been home from work
due to the corona virus.

~~~
ashleshbiradar
talking about Roam, that's the problem with any subscription based
service/software. It's difficult to trust, and in this case, with something so
important. Also thank you, will check out The Archive.

~~~
pmdulaney
Perhaps I can save you a _little_ pain by explaining one or two things about
The Archive. Once you download it and get it up and running, you'll want to
create your first note. The zettlekasten.de folks will repeatedly say to you,
"Don't think to hard about how to organize your material -- that will come." I
tend to differ and recommend you think a bit about what you wish to achieve.

You create a note by coming up with a title for your note, and because The
Archive is all about search, you want it to have a unique title. What better
way to have a unique string as part of your title than to use a high-precision
timetag! And so the canonical card title in The Archive contains at least the
timetag. Indeed, if you enter Cmd-N you will create a new note whose title is
just the timetag; e.g., 202004251548. Now that's great for searching, but it
isn't very helpful to you as a human. So suppose this note is about some
thoughts you've had about the difference between solitude and loneliness. A
good title would be:

202004251548-solitude-vs-loneliness

Now when you see your list of notes on the left side of the GUI you'll be able
to know what the note is about. So DON'T create a new note using Cmd-N.
Instead, click in the "Search or Create" field at the top (known in The
Archive as the Omnibar), type Cmd-u to generate a timetag, then type in the
rest of the title, then type RETURN.

Why did I put hyphens in the title? Because each note in The Archive is stored
on your computer as {title}.txt. You can change the name of a note by changing
the file name -- and having spaces in the file name will make things more
difficult.

A few words about the Omnibar. The half-grayed text in the Omnibar is correct:
Search or Create. The key thing to remember is that if you're just searching
DO NOT hit return. As you type into the Omnibar, The Archive will whittle down
the list of notes shown at the left to just those notes that match the search.
When you see the note you want, click on its title and it will be opened. If
you hit return when you're just trying to search you will create a new card
with that search target as its name!

Tags and links are almost the same as far as how they are implemented in The
Archive. Suppose (like me) you're a cyclist. You might want to type #Cycling
in all of your notes that have to do with cycling. Then if you either type
#Cycling into the Omnibar or click on #Cycling in any note so tagged you will
see just those notes tagged #Cycling and you can click on one to open it.

Links behave exactly the same way, really, but they're intended to be used
differently. Suppose you have a note called 202004251610-Mountain-Retreats and
you want to include a link to the note 202004251548-solitude-vs-loneliness. To
create a link you just copy the name of the solitude note into the Mountain
Retreats note AND enclose the title in double square brackets like this:
[[202004251548-solitude-vs-loneliness]]. Those double square brackets tell The
Archive: Search for this string in all the notes; if there is only one match,
open the note that matches. I'm not sure but I think #unique would do the same
thing if there were only one note that contained it.

As you create new notes using the standard naming convention (i.e., using
timetags at the beginning) the most recent notes will be at the top, which is
nice I think. A trick I came up with is to give custom "timetags" to notes
that I want to stay at the top. In my archive, for example, this note is
always at the top:

900000000990-HASHTAGS-LIST

It contains a list of all my hashtags so I can easily filter my notes.

