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Zettlr: Note-Taking and Publishing with Markdown
- thenegation 2y agoOut of curiosity: Is there a way to interact with Zettlr data using command line tools? Like searching notes, editing notes with neovim/emacs etc? Trying to understand the extend of "lock-in" to Zettlr.
- jen729w 2y agoLooks like it’s just files on disk, so you can do whatever you like. https://docs.zettlr.com/en/core/files/ https://docs.zettlr.com/en/core/files/
- thenegation 2y agoThanks a ton!
- gnabgib 2y agoDiscussion 1 month ago (129 points, 24 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41023319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41023319 Big in 2020 (675 points, 262 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723775 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723775
- dSebastien 2y agoI haven't tried Zettlr, so I can't compare, and I'm not here to criticize, but what I miss in many tools in this Market is the ability to install and create extensions. That's why I'm a huge fan of Obsidian [0]. I publish my notes [1] using Obsidian Publish [2], and find the experience really good. I'm able to customize almost every aspect I need to. There's also Quartz [3] that is a good compatible alternative to Obsidian Publish. [0]: https://notes.dsebastien.net/30+Areas/33+Permanent+notes/33.02+Content/Benefits+of+Obsidian https://notes.dsebastien.net/30+Areas/33+Permanent+notes/33.... [1]: https://notes.dsebastien.net/ https://notes.dsebastien.net/ [2]: https://obsidian.md/publish https://obsidian.md/publish [3]: https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/ https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/
- dleeftink 2y agoI also enjoy a similar workflow, but am increasingly running into the editor experience being a little janky: list items jump around when wrapping onto a new line, live mode not being truly wysiwyg, pdf styling being different from the reading view, etc. This can all be worked around, but it makes for a less polished editing experience than some other offerings. We're also at a point where some major plugin functionality should rather be part of the main app, as it's becoming exceedingly difficult to maintain plugin CSS styles and async functionality without interfering with other plugins. That said, I'm still a fan.
- Brajeshwar 2y agoThe way I do these days, is to have a minimal setting with the minimal plugins. Now, have that working `.obsidian` folder as a backup or a Starter Kit. Whenever Obsidian starts acting up, it is likely that I have a new plugin or there are too many; I just remove and get back my working Starter Kit `.obsidian` and I'm as fresh as New. Also, try not to have many non-text (or Markdown) files as much as possible in the Vaults.
- ternaryoperator 2y ago> I'm able to customize almost every aspect I need to. Are you, though? I've not seen a single site that I know to be published with Obsidian Publish that does not have the content graph. And when I checked out Publish, I found no way to get rid of it and use that real estate for content of greater value to the reader. Has that changed?
- zareith 2y agoZettlr is quite nice. The UI has a few quirks and sometimes does not follow conventions set by other applications, but the wysiwyg interface for markdown offers a great editing experience. And because it is all just markdown files in local disk there is no vendor lockin. I am not the primary intended audience, but I wrote my last sci-fi novel (The Grandmaster's Gamble) entirely using Zettlr and pandoc. The built-in languagetool integration was a big help.
- emrah 2y agoHot take: Markdown was nice back in the day when in-browser editors sucked for the most part and we just wanted to get things done and didn't mind the little bit of noise it adds to content. It was an act of satisfysing. In 2024 though, there is no need to have to deal with markdown. There are decent editors that are far nicer to use which support rich text without the need to see past the markdown noise. Any company serious enough with their app should invest in creating/using a rich text editor
- Kichererbsen 2y agoExcept a lot of people (like myself) really dislike rich text as a format. Doesn't really play nicely with git. When was the last time you wrote rich text by hand?
- emrah 2y agoYes i suspect as much, especially on here but it is a biased sample here :-)
- jillesvangurp 2y agoDepends. Most developers tend to prefer markup over rich editors. Any application aimed at developers should probably be markdown first.
- kilolima 2y agoDo you have use the mouse to use rich text? If so then no thanks.
- burrish 2y agoWell most rich-text have the common shortcuts tho, like ctrl + b to put text in bold.
- beardedwizard 2y agoBut the way that is represented in the file format isn't standard, which means it may not be interoperable.
- refset 2y agoThe motivations behind the project are quite interesting and well argued: "Developing Open Source is a Political Act" https://www.zettlr.com/post/release-developing-open-source-political-act https://www.zettlr.com/post/release-developing-open-source-p...
- poszlem 2y agoNot that interesting of a take, especially coming for a political scientist (which the author is). "When all you've got is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail." Feels like it's straight out of that "everything is political" phase we are hopefully leaving behind, usually meaning - "I will try to problematise it to make it political".
- refset 2y agoI actually don't think the headline captures the point succinctly, because the definition of 'political' being used is obscure and quite specific: > "Political activity is whatever shifts a body from the place assigned to it or changes a place's destination." (Rancière 1999, S. 30) > What Rancière means by that is that politics occurs whenever a thing is not in its assigned place. This is perfectly valid for software: As soon as a person diverts from what is expected from them, software aborts with an error or "corrects" the "wrong" statement automatically. So at least from the view of Jacques Rancière, software is utterly political. It has a significant impact on our daily lives and we cannot do anything against this. And this is a problem that especially corporate software shows.
- samatman 2y agoThat isn't what 'political', or 'political activity', means, though. Publishing a paper, or citing it, doesn't confer the status to change the definition of words.
- refset 2y agoI agree, fwiw. It is better to introduce new words than to risk being so provocative. Still though I think Zettlr is founded on sensible ideals.
- majoe 2y agoI've been using Zettlr for some time. Here are some things I like about it: - Latex support - Your notes are just plain text files and you can easily sync them with nextcloud or syncthing - Linking of notes by an id for using them in a zettelkasten - You can use your citation library from Zotero to add citations to your notes What I don't like is that the performance is quite bad, especially when there are many equations in a note. I also had no good experience, when trying to publish presentations, I'm now using Quarto in vscode for that. All in all I think it is a really good tool for scientific note taking or as a Zettelkasten, although I'm using it less these days since I quit my PhD.
- samuell 2y ago> What I don't like is that the performance is quite bad, especially when there are many equations in a note. Installed it now on Linux Mint 21.1. Takes a full 13 seconds to just start(!) Otherwise, looks quite pretty.
- rubymamis 2y agoYou might want to try my Qt C++ app[1], which is very performant, has a block-based editor, and simple to use. Currently, no Latext support, but it's in the bucket list. [1] https://get-plume.com/ https://get-plume.com/
- coldblues 2y agoI would recommend https://logseq.com/ https://logseq.com/ As an outliner, and being block-based, I think it's more suitable for Zettelkasten and generally atomic notes. Progress on the `master` branch is a bit slow because there's a transition towards using a database instead of the filesystem https://github.com/logseq/logseq/tree/feat/db https://github.com/logseq/logseq/tree/feat/db https://discuss.logseq.com/t/why-the-database-version-and-how-its-going/26744 https://discuss.logseq.com/t/why-the-database-version-and-ho...
- mikae1 2y ago> there's a transition towards using a database instead of the filesystem Looks like it won't transition away from using the filesystem though: > […] we’ll continue to support both file-based and database-based graphs, with a long-term goal of achieving seamless two-way sync between the database and markdown files. This will allow you to leverage the benefits of the database version while still being able to use other tools.[1] [1] https://discuss.logseq.com/t/why-the-database-version-and-how-its-going/26744/1 https://discuss.logseq.com/t/why-the-database-version-and-ho...
- innocenat 2y agoI used logseq for about a year and I so hate the block-based editor (the same reason I stopped using Notion). I went back to using flat-file for a while until I find Zettlr.
- bachmeier 2y agoAn important warning. Logseq is very nice for some things...until it loses your data. You know you put something into Logseq, but it's not there, so you question if you're losing your mind. That's one reason they're switching to a database. I'm also hesitant to rely on Logseq for another reason. They've taken a lot of funding and now they're in the monetization phase. When I asked about the status of the open source project on Github, the response was crickets.
- uselpa 2y agoFull. agree on the data loss issue. I have experienced it myself, and their forum and issue tracker also show this. Its not a « trusted system » at all.
- rcarmo 2y agoI just use Foam - https://github.com/foambubble/foam https://github.com/foambubble/foam As a Visual Studio Code extension, it runs everywhere (except some mobile setups), is very fast, and provides me with the ability to tack on more features via other extensions. I set up a “Notes” profile with everything I need, and switch to that for a couple of workspaces.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fastasucan 2y agoThis looks great. My issue with obsidian is that I do not want anything else than vscode or my terminal. Will check out this.
- vertis 2y agoI'm a big Obsidian user and (small) plugin author, but I'd move to something Obsidian like that was open source because there is a chance of enshittification, looking at this though I can't find any reference to any capability for adding plugins. They can compare themselves to Obsidian however you like in the features table, but the strength of Obsidian is not in the vanilla experience but in the plugins.
- wvh 2y agoAfter having been around these note-taking apps for years, I'm still stuck with a directory of text and Markdown files. It's an obvious benefit not to be tied to one application developer's opinion of how to structure a note-taking application, and you can use any editor, Markdown viewer or static site generators to deal with input and output. Also, notes are just files, so there are lots of simple ways to synchronise them between systems (ssh, rsync, syncthing, even imap) and anything can edit a text file. While some wiki functionality across notes would be nice sometimes, I still am not convinced to give up on the "raw data and bring your own tools" approach yet. Nowadays, most IDEs have across-file functionality anyway and there's a lot more choice and no lock-in going that way.
- elric 2y agoZettlr is pretty much a text editor on top of a directory with Markdown files. With a bit of extra sauce to make navigation and editing easier. I migrated all my Zettlr notes to Obsidian, and it took zero effort because it's all just Markdown files.
- wvh 2y agoGood to know. But as a text editor, does it compete with your favourite editor or IDE?
- cholantesh 2y agoWhat do you use to read your notes on a phone?
- ParetoOptimal 2y agoI find something like org-roam or denote to be the best trade-off. Roam: Plain text, sqlite database you can delete/generate whenever, simple small codebase. Denote: Based on grep, no database, simple filename based system, can use any filetype.
- complaintdept 2y agoThis. Use it with vim and spend a day mapping any repetitive tasks to streamline things. It's magic. You could also use a bash script for creating backlinks, and it probably wouldn't be difficult to make a graph of all the connections using `dot` (graphviz).
- hollerith 2y agoOpen source, based on Electron.
- mitchitized 2y agoLongtime Joplin [1] user here, how does the most recent version of Zettlr compare? I have grown really comfortable with the simple interface of Joplin, plus using S3 for sync makes life easy for me as I'm living on my own infrastructure. [1] https://joplinapp.org/ https://joplinapp.org/
- mitchitized 2y agoAlso forgot to mention if it wasn't obvious - I'm not a STEM researcher and don't have aspirations to use a notes app beyond notes, but I am curious about efficiency, simplicity and workflow.
- lormayna 2y agohttps://silverbullet.md/ https://silverbullet.md/ it's a nice alternative. It's web based and with a lot of interesting features.
- bravetraveler 2y agoI take notes with the script below, publishing to Git lol. My window manager (Sway) runs it in a terminal on-login Respecting "$EDITOR", opens 'this week' and 'last week' in tabs: #!/bin/bash SCRIPT_NAME=$(basename "$0") if pgrep -f "$SHELL.*$SCRIPT_NAME" | grep -v $$ > /dev/null; then echo "The notes are already being edited elsewhere." exit 1 fi NOTE_DIR="${NOTE_DIR:-${HOME}/notes}" CURRENT_NOTE=$(date +%Y-week%V) LAST_WEEK_NAME=$(date -d '7 days ago' +%Y-week%V) NOTE_PATHS=("$NOTE_DIR/$CURRENT_NOTE" "$NOTE_DIR/$LAST_WEEK_NAME") EDITOR="${EDITOR:-vim}" if [[ $EDITOR == *vim* ]]; then # Run the vim-like editor with tabs $EDITOR -c ':tab all' "${NOTE_PATHS[@]}" else # Run the editor without vim tab arg; assume array is fine $EDITOR "${NOTE_PATHS[@]}" fi Can choose where the notes go with "$NOTE_DIR"
- krick 2y agoThe main reason why this is completely irrelevant to me is that there's no Android app. Honestly, I don't even know what's the point of having a note taking app that doesn't have an Android version. On the PC you can just use vim. The whole point is having the same representation and conventions on PC and on the phone. So, yeah, like everyone else I'm still using Obsidian. I hate it, Obsidian is poison and shouldn't be used, because it's completely ridiculous to trust a non open source app with your personal notes, and in my world there's no reason whatsoever for a non open source note taking app to even exist, because it should be pretty trivial thing after all. But unfortunately I am guilty of doing this ridiculous thing myself, because Obsidian has: - an Android app, that is virtually identical to the PC one - good search capabilities - obsidian-flavoured markdown, which is the only kind of markdown that really has all necessary markup for making personal notes, including mathjax, simple graphs and callouts - daily notes Honestly, I don't even need anything else, as most plugins actually hurt productivity and are a kind of vendor lock-in anyway, while the whole point of storing data in markdown is simplicity and timelessness of your media. But however simple it's supposed to be, I don't know of any other app so far that would completely clone obsidian in this regard. And, honestly, that's exactly what I want: a perfect open-source clone of obsidian, an exact copy.