7 ms·

Org-roam: Emacs org file based personal knowledge base system

179 points by matthberg 6y ago

rcgorton 6y ago
Emacs is a disease comparable to Chicken-Pox. Stamp it out
mkl 6y ago
Well that's a trademark infringement lawsuit waiting to happen! Might want to rename it.
- jyriand 6y ago
  I would say it’s pretty good marketing for Roam research. I only learned about roam research because of org-roam and I’m paying customer now.
- Halian 6y ago
  I'm not familiar?
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    https://roamresearch.com/ https://roamresearch.com/
    - mkl 6y ago
      And from the GitHub repo [1]: "Org-roam is a Roam replica" [1] https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam
      - mthoms 6y ago
        There's nothing wrong with saying something like that. Trademark is more concerned with brand names, logos and slogans. The purpose of which is prevent consumer confusion about the source of a product.
- seds 6y ago
  Why is this a trademark infringement?! Because of the name?
- mimischi 6y ago
  There has been some discussion on org-roams Discourse about this [1]. [1] https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/project-name-change/154 https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/project-name-change/154
- kinghajj 6y ago
  Do trademarks protections apply against noncommercial works, too?
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    Yes. You can’t produce a non-profit Coca-Cola.
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Dunno, it seems pretty clear that it is not Roam Research, but a clone for org mode, but the lawsuit might still be pretty expensive to win.
hanklazard 6y ago
All the the recent Org Mode content on HN has really gotten me interested. I feel like I’ve tried so many systems over the years (including just using one big text file in Joplin currently) ... this one seems to be very well-liked, but the learning curve, at least for someone who is new to emacs, seems steep. I’ve started by just installing Doom on my clients and am slowly learning my way around. Two questions for those with more experience: 1. Do you think this is a good system for someone NOT actually working in emacs all day long (I’m not a programmer)? 2. I see some mobile apps out there that claim to allow Org Mode use on phones ... is this system of note-taking / task mgmt actually usable on a mobile device?
- yewenjie 6y ago
  1. Yes, definitely. People do all sorts of stuff with org-mode that has nothing to do with programming, from todos to publishing. Check out the org manual for use cases. 2. You can't use org-roam on mobile but there's Orgzly for generic org-mode viewing and editing. You need to go through some steps to ensure non-conflicting syncing though.
  - zikzak 6y ago
    I keep a small folder with files I want Orgzly to pay attention to below my main "org-roam" folder (mostly scheduled stuff - like Calendar.org and Todo.org). I treat them as "read only" on my phone except for "PhoneInbox.org". That is where I add items on the go with Orgzly. At some point I move these out into other org folders (inbox processing). This makes capture into Orgzly very, very fast and using Git keeps it all synched up without issues of file conflicts, etc. Workflow is something like: 1. Sit down at desk, save all agenda files, and do a commit/push (Emacs/Magit) - this is the entire repo including the sub dir with my Orgzly files 2. On phone (Mgit Android app) do a commit/pull 3. Pull down to desk 4. Resolve conflicts (usually none) 5. Do whatever inbox processing on PhoneInbox 6. Redo the commit/push and pull changes to phone. This keeps an entire repo of my org files on the phone for reference but minimizes the number of files Orgzly has to deal with and also reduces conflicts from editing a file in Orgzly and on phone. Sounds onerous but I might do this a few times a week, possibly daily if I am having a busy week.
ipnon 6y ago
Michel Foucault had this to say to contemporary critics of Hegel: "We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us." It seems any investigation of prior art regarding knowledge base systems comes back to Emacs, where the solution to all problems of note taking and memory retention is patiently waiting for everyone to finally learn Elisp. But Emacs is for dinosaurs, we repeat for the 100th time ...
- bjoli 6y ago
  I have come to the point where I don't think 100% of what shows up in modern editors is a re-inventing the wheel. Multiple cursors, for one, was actually a decent replacement for short-and-not-too-many-lines macros. Roam seems ok if used with discipline. All the new things do however prove the Emacs model at least partially right: most things can become well integrated into Emacs. Multiple cursors and editable fired (file manager) buffers? Worked from day one!
lvh 6y ago
I'd be particularly interested if anyone has tried both org-roam and zetteldeft and can compare the two.
- elliottwilliams 6y ago
  I've used both. The problem I had with ZD is that it uses a non-standard "ligature" (not sure what the non-coding term is) to identify zettels. This means lock in not just to emacs, but to a specific package. Org-roam OTOH uses standard org-mode notation, which means I can freely mix deft with org-roam or any other package that plays nice with org-mode.
vedtopkar 6y ago
Since these systems have been coming up so much on HN, I have to ask: are there any such softwares that play nicely with images, PDFs, and Word/Excel docs? I've been trying out Devon think and it's pretty good, but I'd prefer to support a FOSS option.
- lvh 6y ago
  I've used org-noter to annotate PDFs in line, so I'd expect org-roam + links wouldn't hurt. Org will display images inline. I don't have a great answer for links into Excel. Do you need the data to "come back out", or just reference capability?
  - vedtopkar 6y ago
    This is very interesting, will check it out. I really just need a reference capability.
  - dangirsh 6y ago
    I can confirm org-roam links + org-noter works well for linking ideas between PDFs. I haven't found anything better, and regularly demo this to friends. Related video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy9WvF5gWYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy9WvF5gWYg
  - pwillia7 6y ago
    Org export to CSV/TSV
- znpy 6y ago
  I recently starte using MediaWiki as a personal kB. It works well with image, not sure about word/excel. Definitely a richer ecosystem though.
- focus2020 6y ago
  Emacs pdf-tools mode is very much underrated. Checkout the list of org-roam ecosystem emacs packages. I don't know if Emacs supports excel or word.
lvh 6y ago
Does anyone have any research or experience with using "personal" systems like these as a team? I've always seen them described as having a single user, but many of the links seem like they'd be just as powerful for a (maybe small, maybe tightly-knit) team.
- soraminazuki 6y ago
  org-roam is great for personal use, but it’s not quite yet ready for team use. It kind of breaks when synced across multiple computers likely because it stores absolute paths in a sqlite database.
  - jethroksy 6y ago
    Author here. You can move the sqlite database to a separate location by setting a variable, and that should resolve the syncing issues. I do this and have the files synced via Dropbox across my different machines.
    - drewr 6y ago
      I tried storing the db in a shared Syncthing directory, but I had to make sure I only had one copy of Emacs running on any given machine. I of course couldn't do that so I would get conflicts with the db file and have to manually clean it up. Did I miss something?
    - lvh 6y ago
      IIUC, the SQLite database is just an index, and can be rebuilt from the underlying data which makes this approach possible. Is that right?
      - jethroksy 6y ago
        Yep, that's right!
    - soraminazuki 6y ago
      Thanks, this is exactly what I needed.
frankie_t 6y ago
I see a screenshot there defines an anki card? Couldn't find any mention about anki in docs or on the github (I only skimmed though). Would be interesting to see if there is a possible interplay. I myself use vanilla org mode for this purpose (spaced repetition). My workflow is the following: 1. Create a hierarchical structure with leaves representing bits of knowledge. For example postgres/indexes{btree, GIN, ...} 2. Have a study session with materials (books, video, etc). 3. Try to recreate a concise version of each subject and place it under leaves, so put text in btree, GIN, etc. If I cannot do something I skip it and fill as much as possible. 4. Verify written, fix if necessary. Then, the document will sit there for a while and when I feel that I need to review a certain subject I would open a tree node and try to recall the child nodes, or sometimes go directly to leaf nodes and try to explain each. Then verify with the data there, maybe do additional research if something isn't clear. I initially wanted to make anki cards for every piece of information that goes to leaf nodes, but it seemed that hierarchical organization suits me better. It would be interesting to try an automatic card system that would keep track of when I reviewed the concepts and remind me to do so.
- dsissitka 6y ago
  > I see a screenshot there defines an anki card? Couldn't find any mention about anki in docs or on the github (I only skimmed though). Would be interesting to see if there is a possible interplay. I saw that too! I love the idea of using Git and an editor to manage my Anki cards. It looks like it might be anki-mode: https://github.com/davidshepherd7/anki-mode https://github.com/davidshepherd7/anki-mode
- temo4ka 6y ago
  Well, maybe try org-drill: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html The repository: https://gitlab.com/phillord/org-drill/ https://gitlab.com/phillord/org-drill/
  - frankie_t 6y ago
    Wow, that resembles something I wanted to implement myself. It's crazy how most of the things you think of doing are already done. I think I will migrate to it eventually, thank you.
cachestash 6y ago
This is going to be unpopular, but clunky, ugly and antiquated all come to mind when I look at emacs.
- eddiegroves 6y ago
  Yes, a common reaction, until newbies (like myself) find configurations like Doom Emacs and Spacemacs and come to realize the opposite. For myself it's only missing a slightly better "rending experience" like VSCode.
  - giancarlostoro 6y ago
    I love Spacemacs but due to varying configurations per build on different OS' Emacs either doesnt work at all OOTB with Spacemacs for me, or it works just enough to show up broken. Without cross-platform consistency I'm better off using Neovim + Spacevim which sometimes fails on me due to fonts, but its less broken.
  - cachestash 6y ago
    I tried both of them and just gave up. Emacs for me has nothing on a modern IDE and a light weight vim config for file editing. When it comes to reading email, browsers are far better option.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Emacs is definitely ugly and antiquated. It has terrible curb appeal. But unlike any "pretty" software I've ever used, if one sticks with Emacs long enough, sweating bullets to learn its odd ways of doing things and customizing it, there comes a point where you suddenly realize it's reading your mind. After that, it's impossible to imagine getting work done on computers without Emacs.
abecode 6y ago
Question for anyone who's tried this: Do you use your normal org file directory for org-roam or is it better to start from a fresh directory?
- s0l1dsnak3123 6y ago
  I use a specific org-roam directory. From my Emacs config: https://gist.github.com/johnhamelink/5e03fc71f820131f187b7b7be868380a https://gist.github.com/johnhamelink/5e03fc71f820131f187b7b7...
- darau1 6y ago
  I recently started using both org-mode and org-roam, but I keep my notes/bookmarks/journals/etc in a notes folder, with a timestamp. So far a combination of aliases, and tags help me find what I'm looking for pretty easily.
- mmmcurry 6y ago
  I've seen people do both successfully. It plays fine alongside existing non-linked org files. I personally have ~/org with my preexisting files, todos, etc at the top level and (setq org-roam-directory "~/org/roam") as its own thing to try to make it easier to clean up if I decide I don't like it after all. Having a good time so far though.
gandalfgeek 6y ago
I do like org-roam, but wonder if it's over-engineered. The main thing you need is backlinks, and you can get that without all the complexity of an additional package and sqlite dbs. (defun buffer-backlinks () (interactive) (rg (buffer-name) "*.org" org-directory)) (add-to-list 'org-mode-hook 'buffer-backlinks) Net effect of that tiny elisp snippet is what when I open an org file, I get a buffer beside it (powered by ripgrep/rg) with names + context snippets of all the other files in my org dir that link to it.
1MachineElf 6y ago
After seeing the "Zettlekasten" concept trending on HN, I've been wondering when someone might bring up Emacs org-mode, because the promises of both technologies seem to overlap. This seems like a step in that direction.

179 points by matthberg 6y ago

rcgorton 6y ago

Emacs is a disease comparable to Chicken-Pox. Stamp it out

mkl 6y ago

Well that's a trademark infringement lawsuit waiting to happen! Might want to rename it.

jyriand 6y ago
I would say it’s pretty good marketing for Roam research. I only learned about roam research because of org-roam and I’m paying customer now.
Halian 6y ago
I'm not familiar?
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  https://roamresearch.com/ https://roamresearch.com/
  - mkl 6y ago
    And from the GitHub repo [1]: "Org-roam is a Roam replica" [1] https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam
    - mthoms 6y ago
      There's nothing wrong with saying something like that. Trademark is more concerned with brand names, logos and slogans. The purpose of which is prevent consumer confusion about the source of a product.
seds 6y ago
Why is this a trademark infringement?! Because of the name?
mimischi 6y ago
There has been some discussion on org-roams Discourse about this [1]. [1] https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/project-name-change/154 https://org-roam.discourse.group/t/project-name-change/154
kinghajj 6y ago
Do trademarks protections apply against noncommercial works, too?
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  Yes. You can’t produce a non-profit Coca-Cola.
tomjen3 6y ago
Dunno, it seems pretty clear that it is not Roam Research, but a clone for org mode, but the lawsuit might still be pretty expensive to win.

hanklazard 6y ago

All the the recent Org Mode content on HN has really gotten me interested. I feel like I’ve tried so many systems over the years (including just using one big text file in Joplin currently) ... this one seems to be very well-liked, but the learning curve, at least for someone who is new to emacs, seems steep. I’ve started by just installing Doom on my clients and am slowly learning my way around. Two questions for those with more experience: 1. Do you think this is a good system for someone NOT actually working in emacs all day long (I’m not a programmer)? 2. I see some mobile apps out there that claim to allow Org Mode use on phones ... is this system of note-taking / task mgmt actually usable on a mobile device?

yewenjie 6y ago
1. Yes, definitely. People do all sorts of stuff with org-mode that has nothing to do with programming, from todos to publishing. Check out the org manual for use cases. 2. You can't use org-roam on mobile but there's Orgzly for generic org-mode viewing and editing. You need to go through some steps to ensure non-conflicting syncing though.
- zikzak 6y ago
  I keep a small folder with files I want Orgzly to pay attention to below my main "org-roam" folder (mostly scheduled stuff - like Calendar.org and Todo.org). I treat them as "read only" on my phone except for "PhoneInbox.org". That is where I add items on the go with Orgzly. At some point I move these out into other org folders (inbox processing). This makes capture into Orgzly very, very fast and using Git keeps it all synched up without issues of file conflicts, etc. Workflow is something like: 1. Sit down at desk, save all agenda files, and do a commit/push (Emacs/Magit) - this is the entire repo including the sub dir with my Orgzly files 2. On phone (Mgit Android app) do a commit/pull 3. Pull down to desk 4. Resolve conflicts (usually none) 5. Do whatever inbox processing on PhoneInbox 6. Redo the commit/push and pull changes to phone. This keeps an entire repo of my org files on the phone for reference but minimizes the number of files Orgzly has to deal with and also reduces conflicts from editing a file in Orgzly and on phone. Sounds onerous but I might do this a few times a week, possibly daily if I am having a busy week.

ipnon 6y ago

Michel Foucault had this to say to contemporary critics of Hegel: "We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us." It seems any investigation of prior art regarding knowledge base systems comes back to Emacs, where the solution to all problems of note taking and memory retention is patiently waiting for everyone to finally learn Elisp. But Emacs is for dinosaurs, we repeat for the 100th time ...

bjoli 6y ago
I have come to the point where I don't think 100% of what shows up in modern editors is a re-inventing the wheel. Multiple cursors, for one, was actually a decent replacement for short-and-not-too-many-lines macros. Roam seems ok if used with discipline. All the new things do however prove the Emacs model at least partially right: most things can become well integrated into Emacs. Multiple cursors and editable fired (file manager) buffers? Worked from day one!

lvh 6y ago

I'd be particularly interested if anyone has tried both org-roam and zetteldeft and can compare the two.

elliottwilliams 6y ago
I've used both. The problem I had with ZD is that it uses a non-standard "ligature" (not sure what the non-coding term is) to identify zettels. This means lock in not just to emacs, but to a specific package. Org-roam OTOH uses standard org-mode notation, which means I can freely mix deft with org-roam or any other package that plays nice with org-mode.

vedtopkar 6y ago

Since these systems have been coming up so much on HN, I have to ask: are there any such softwares that play nicely with images, PDFs, and Word/Excel docs? I've been trying out Devon think and it's pretty good, but I'd prefer to support a FOSS option.

lvh 6y ago
I've used org-noter to annotate PDFs in line, so I'd expect org-roam + links wouldn't hurt. Org will display images inline. I don't have a great answer for links into Excel. Do you need the data to "come back out", or just reference capability?
- vedtopkar 6y ago
  This is very interesting, will check it out. I really just need a reference capability.
- dangirsh 6y ago
  I can confirm org-roam links + org-noter works well for linking ideas between PDFs. I haven't found anything better, and regularly demo this to friends. Related video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy9WvF5gWYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy9WvF5gWYg
- pwillia7 6y ago
  Org export to CSV/TSV
znpy 6y ago
I recently starte using MediaWiki as a personal kB. It works well with image, not sure about word/excel. Definitely a richer ecosystem though.
focus2020 6y ago
Emacs pdf-tools mode is very much underrated. Checkout the list of org-roam ecosystem emacs packages. I don't know if Emacs supports excel or word.

lvh 6y ago

Does anyone have any research or experience with using "personal" systems like these as a team? I've always seen them described as having a single user, but many of the links seem like they'd be just as powerful for a (maybe small, maybe tightly-knit) team.

soraminazuki 6y ago
org-roam is great for personal use, but it’s not quite yet ready for team use. It kind of breaks when synced across multiple computers likely because it stores absolute paths in a sqlite database.
- jethroksy 6y ago
  Author here. You can move the sqlite database to a separate location by setting a variable, and that should resolve the syncing issues. I do this and have the files synced via Dropbox across my different machines.
  - drewr 6y ago
    I tried storing the db in a shared Syncthing directory, but I had to make sure I only had one copy of Emacs running on any given machine. I of course couldn't do that so I would get conflicts with the db file and have to manually clean it up. Did I miss something?
  - lvh 6y ago
    IIUC, the SQLite database is just an index, and can be rebuilt from the underlying data which makes this approach possible. Is that right?
    - jethroksy 6y ago
      Yep, that's right!
  - soraminazuki 6y ago
    Thanks, this is exactly what I needed.

frankie_t 6y ago

I see a screenshot there defines an anki card? Couldn't find any mention about anki in docs or on the github (I only skimmed though). Would be interesting to see if there is a possible interplay. I myself use vanilla org mode for this purpose (spaced repetition). My workflow is the following: 1. Create a hierarchical structure with leaves representing bits of knowledge. For example postgres/indexes{btree, GIN, ...} 2. Have a study session with materials (books, video, etc). 3. Try to recreate a concise version of each subject and place it under leaves, so put text in btree, GIN, etc. If I cannot do something I skip it and fill as much as possible. 4. Verify written, fix if necessary. Then, the document will sit there for a while and when I feel that I need to review a certain subject I would open a tree node and try to recall the child nodes, or sometimes go directly to leaf nodes and try to explain each. Then verify with the data there, maybe do additional research if something isn't clear. I initially wanted to make anki cards for every piece of information that goes to leaf nodes, but it seemed that hierarchical organization suits me better. It would be interesting to try an automatic card system that would keep track of when I reviewed the concepts and remind me to do so.

dsissitka 6y ago
> I see a screenshot there defines an anki card? Couldn't find any mention about anki in docs or on the github (I only skimmed though). Would be interesting to see if there is a possible interplay. I saw that too! I love the idea of using Git and an editor to manage my Anki cards. It looks like it might be anki-mode: https://github.com/davidshepherd7/anki-mode https://github.com/davidshepherd7/anki-mode
temo4ka 6y ago
Well, maybe try org-drill: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html The repository: https://gitlab.com/phillord/org-drill/ https://gitlab.com/phillord/org-drill/
- frankie_t 6y ago
  Wow, that resembles something I wanted to implement myself. It's crazy how most of the things you think of doing are already done. I think I will migrate to it eventually, thank you.

cachestash 6y ago

This is going to be unpopular, but clunky, ugly and antiquated all come to mind when I look at emacs.

eddiegroves 6y ago
Yes, a common reaction, until newbies (like myself) find configurations like Doom Emacs and Spacemacs and come to realize the opposite. For myself it's only missing a slightly better "rending experience" like VSCode.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  I love Spacemacs but due to varying configurations per build on different OS' Emacs either doesnt work at all OOTB with Spacemacs for me, or it works just enough to show up broken. Without cross-platform consistency I'm better off using Neovim + Spacevim which sometimes fails on me due to fonts, but its less broken.
- cachestash 6y ago
  I tried both of them and just gave up. Emacs for me has nothing on a modern IDE and a light weight vim config for file editing. When it comes to reading email, browsers are far better option.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Emacs is definitely ugly and antiquated. It has terrible curb appeal. But unlike any "pretty" software I've ever used, if one sticks with Emacs long enough, sweating bullets to learn its odd ways of doing things and customizing it, there comes a point where you suddenly realize it's reading your mind. After that, it's impossible to imagine getting work done on computers without Emacs.

abecode 6y ago

Question for anyone who's tried this: Do you use your normal org file directory for org-roam or is it better to start from a fresh directory?

s0l1dsnak3123 6y ago
I use a specific org-roam directory. From my Emacs config: https://gist.github.com/johnhamelink/5e03fc71f820131f187b7b7be868380a https://gist.github.com/johnhamelink/5e03fc71f820131f187b7b7...
darau1 6y ago
I recently started using both org-mode and org-roam, but I keep my notes/bookmarks/journals/etc in a notes folder, with a timestamp. So far a combination of aliases, and tags help me find what I'm looking for pretty easily.
mmmcurry 6y ago
I've seen people do both successfully. It plays fine alongside existing non-linked org files. I personally have ~/org with my preexisting files, todos, etc at the top level and (setq org-roam-directory "~/org/roam") as its own thing to try to make it easier to clean up if I decide I don't like it after all. Having a good time so far though.

gandalfgeek 6y ago

I do like org-roam, but wonder if it's over-engineered. The main thing you need is backlinks, and you can get that without all the complexity of an additional package and sqlite dbs. (defun buffer-backlinks () (interactive) (rg (buffer-name) "*.org" org-directory)) (add-to-list 'org-mode-hook 'buffer-backlinks) Net effect of that tiny elisp snippet is what when I open an org file, I get a buffer beside it (powered by ripgrep/rg) with names + context snippets of all the other files in my org dir that link to it.

1MachineElf 6y ago

After seeing the "Zettlekasten" concept trending on HN, I've been wondering when someone might bring up Emacs org-mode, because the promises of both technologies seem to overlap. This seems like a step in that direction.