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Show HN: Gingko, a tree-document editor
- dscrd 13y agoReminds me of Ted Nelson's Zigzag, only he had N dimensions and a cell structure. http://xanadu.com/zigzag/ http://xanadu.com/zigzag/
- adriano_f 13y agoYes, Ted Nelson has some similar work in this line. But I think he went too far with the N dimensions... Text is linear, Gingko text is 2-dimensional. With it, we can represent more than two dimensions, by simply "slicing" along any two we choose (e.g. text & comments)... not sure I'm explaining this properly :-/
- AYBABTME 13y agoI think Nelson's use of a more general graph has some value. I could see an encyclopedia or a program being edited/viewed in Gingko with circular references. With some tweaks on the UI (being able to put more emphasis on the card currently viewed, maybe by partially sliding out of view the parent cards or shrinking them when they're not focused). I think this project is pretty cool and the idea is awesome. It would make a lot of sense on a tablet/phone and as a generalized editor.
- 6d0debc071 13y agoZig Zag was meant to represent a very general set of data structures, if you're interested in documents then you, probably, would have a more specific interest in his (very long running) Xanadu project - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu - which in some ways is very similar to OP's stuff - http://youtu.be/En_2T7KH6RA?t=3m27s http://youtu.be/En_2T7KH6RA?t=3m27s
- colemanfoley 13y agoI like how it organizes information spatially, like WorkFlowy. I much prefer this visual organization to tags, for example. That said, I found it hard to understand what it was, even though I'm a long-time WorkFlowy user and am very interested in this kind of thing. I wrote a post where I talked about organizing information visually in more depth here: http://colemanfoley.quora.com/Mind-Mapping-with-WorkFlowy http://colemanfoley.quora.com/Mind-Mapping-with-WorkFlowy (Registration NOT required to read).
- defilade 13y agoI'm a big user of Workflowy and I felt the same about Gingko at first. The keyboard shortcuts help a lot though because I can get my thoughts down on paper much more quickly.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tommi 13y agoReminds me of https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/
- adriano_f 13y agoYes, it has similarities to WorkFlowy. We sometimes say "Evernote + Workflowy = Gingko" :)
- damaru 13y agowould love to see a self hosted ginko. It used to be that there was a lot of self hosted project, now everyone wants to keep you data... I wonder if the trend will change again.
- victorf 13y agoI'd like to try it, but I'm also not going to sign up for an online note/research app to use seriously. I want assurances that my notes are on my devices, read only by me, and, after a shitty experience with Notes.app this week, I'm going to be refusing any app that silos data and/or uses an unpublished nonstandard format.
- adriano_f 13y agoUnderstood. We're planning on adding offline support, and a "Chrome Packaged App" version, so you could use Gingko offline entirely, and our servers will never touch your data. As for the format, we simply export to flat Markdown. We will be supporting other formats (including XML, and the OPML standard for hierarchical/outline text). Thanks for your feedback!
- sid___ 13y agoHow about putting the code on github and let users run their own version of gingko on their own servers? i would like to see that..
- WayneDB 13y agoWeb: Try It Now! Me: Cool, a demo! [click] Web: But first, you must Sign Up...[trollface] Me: Nope nope nope...
- btbuildem 13y agofake emails work btw
- leokun 13y agoNot worth the effort.
- lost-theory 13y agoRead-only demo: https://gingkoapp.com/hyperloop https://gingkoapp.com/hyperloop
- fspeech 13y agoJust an FYI: for me this demo only works in Google Chrome desktop. It didn't work in Chrome on Nexus 7, nor in Conkeror(Firefox) on desktop.
- adriano_f 13y agoWe considered adding "lazy registration", but we're a team of just two, and decided to focus on improving the product and helping our users. Might do in the future, but for now, that's what we have.
- lucb1e 13y agoAt least make bugmenot able to locate the login form :/
- tuananh 13y agoI have always felt PDF is outdated for research papers. We need some kind of interactive paper format; yet universal, open specs, look the same and usable across platforms.
- adriano_f 13y agoAgreed. And I think we greatly underestimate how much this is holding Science back.
- muraiki 13y agoI haven't used it myself, but would IPython work? http://ipython.org/ http://ipython.org/
- qznc 13y agoYou might have heard of this World Wide Web thing. It works pretty well at CERN. We just just have to switch the academic publishing industry to HTML now.
- gjuggler 13y agoHave you seen eLife's Lens reader? Example article is at http://lens.elifesciences.org/#00772 http://lens.elifesciences.org/#00772 They took a fresh, web-centric look at how to interactively display research papers. It's being used — right now — to display all of the new articles from a major biology journal. I think it's quite nice.
- adriano_f 13y agoCool, I hadn't seen that. Personally, I think that things like this Lens reader are evolutionary advances, but science communication needs a revolutionary change. I don't expect actual journals to be using Gingko any time soon, but there are already grad students collaborating on research papers right now :)
- vdm 13y agoWow, this is so much nicer than PDFs. Thanks for the example.
- Sprint 13y agoDear authors, my screen has hundreds of pixels vertically, I would like to be able to read more than 15 lines at once. The font size is insanely huge. It made me close the tab.
- btbuildem 13y agoCtrl -
- lucb1e 13y agoThat's a workaround rather than a solution. The font is indeed rather large. I'd guess most people on HackerNews know how zoom works.
- adamwong246 13y agoJust how tall is your screen? Also, http://www.wikihow.com/Zoom-With-a-Web-Browser http://www.wikihow.com/Zoom-With-a-Web-Browser
- Sprint 13y ago~550px on ~15cm I'd guess. With a sane text size as on HN for example I get about 30 lines of text on it. Browser sadly zoom the whole page nowadays, not just the text. So that is not a good solution.
- ivan_ah 13y agoI like the use case for reading movie scripts, it could help to keep all levels of the story in mind: https://gingkoapp.com/Alien-1979 https://gingkoapp.com/Alien-1979
- adriano_f 13y agoThanks! Screenwriting was one of the initial inspirations for the UI, because screenplays are naturally hierarchical (logline > Acts > Sequences > Scenes > Beats).
- anigbrowl 13y agoQuestionable. I work in the film trade, and while people may consider a logline or a one-sheet, when some reads a script they sit down and read it start to finish, like a book. It's going to play in linear form on the screen, so it has to be read that way as well. What authors usually do is is knock out a freeform treatment where the story is described in prose, which is then broken down into scenes. It is helpful to have the overview in mind during the writing process, but existing tools such as Final Draft provide a plethora of writing aids for that, from virtual index cards to graphical character timelines. Bear in mind that when you work with finished scripts like the Alien example, you've got a survivor bias problem, because almost any story that makes it through the screen has been through multiple drafts and hundreds or thousands of mini-edits. So while it seems very natural to lay that out in a neat hierarchy, that doesn't really reflect the writing environment, which is a lot more messy. As for keeping track of story context, this is job one for the writer - you can beef up the dialog or whatever later, but writers, directors and other keys need to be able to keep the entire story in their head at once and know what the inputs and and outputs of any given scene are, not least because 99.9% of films are shot out of chronological sequence and so being able to keep a handle on that story context is essential for guiding the actors. Obviously you don't try to remember every last little thing at once, that's why we use storyboards and breakdown sheets, but you do need to be able to articulate the whole story off the cuff at the drop of a hat. I do think this would very useful for film students doing analysis, but I can't really see myself writing a script in it, although I'll try doing some treatments with it. BTW I also feel that if you offer people the opportunity to try it, you should let them try it, not switch to asking for a signup. That really annoyed me.
- dan-g 13y agoHave you thought about allowing for the creation of arbitrarily deep trees? That's one of the features I like most about workflowy. This looks really cool, though!
- adriano_f 13y agoYes, we're definitely working on adding arbirary depth. We are starting with three because it's enough to realize the benefits. Infinite depth is coming (as well as other exciting features).
- JeremyBanks 13y agoDo you have a newsletter or other way I could sign up to be notified of updates? This hits a lot of points that I've been looking for in an app/service. So much so that I was ready to sign up for the paid plan after trying this out for a couples minute, because I'm sure I'd use it enough to be worth it. But I didn't realize the three-levels limitation, and that prevents this from being useful enough to me to start using it. I'd love to check it out again when you do add infinite nesting.
- adriano_f 13y ago> This hits a lot of points that I've been looking for in an app/service. Glad to hear that, Jeremy. I've tagged you with "infinite-columns" in Intercom, so I can update you when we add that feature. > That prevents this from being useful enough to me to start using it. I agree, I struggle with this limit too, and it's my #1 most desired feature too... we're working on it! Let me know if you have any other questions or comments.
- fspeech 13y agoOntology/taxonomy/classification are seriously difficult things. If not semantic web would have ruled the world by now. Structural hierarchies (chapter/section etc) may be easy to get for everyone but a navigation side panel would work too. If you build a semantic hierarchy, new users may not know how to find things; yet repeat users may be frustrated by having to go through the layers to access the items they are looking for.
- adriano_f 13y agoTrue, hierarchy is not a panacea. But I argue that it's better for new comers to have context & overview, and hierarchy helps with that.
- heurist 13y agoI like this a lot! The research manuscript example is exciting. It would be great if authors could link directly to the part of a paper that they are citing and be able to open that up if you want to dive deeper. Linking methods to results to discussion for specific experiments would make reading through dense papers a lot easier, and maybe have a notation/jargon definition section open at the same time. It's almost like a tiling window manager for reading. I'm a little bit concerned about how it looks on smaller screens. It looks fine on my work monitor but I only have a netbook at home right now and a lot of websites have overlapping elements that keep me from reading articles. I haven't looked at this from that computer yet though. Maybe it would help to have collapsible columns if there are issues. Good luck, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!
- adriano_f 13y agoThanks for your feedback! Yes, the idea of simply embedding parts of other people's papers right there, instead of citations, is something I'm excited about. Literature review is such a pain, and could be a lot better. As for smaller screens, we have plans for allowing this to be read on mobile, by collapsing columns and letting you scroll left-right to navigate the tree.
- mgualt 13y agoI'm certainly drawn to the idea and am inclined positively towards it. I'm even willing to overlook the ridiculous hubris of "This new medium will be the way most text is read and written in the future." However, there are many confusing things to me as a person who arrived at the site through HN. Since one of the developers is promoting the "app" here, it might be useful to hear from him on these points: 1. Is this an input format or is it a publication format, or is it a viewer? Does it rely on a time-tested plaintext markup format like LaTeX or markdown? Perhaps it is a HTML viewer for a LaTeX markup document with special structure, rather than an actual typset web publication format. 2. What is the conceptual structure of the document system? Giving me a screenshot does not show me anything about the way you are conceptualizing your document. Is there a separation of content and output, output and viewer? 3. Is any part of this open source? Are you incorporating any other major technologies which have already been developed? I apologize if any of the above seems harsh, but this is an important topic and I have become slightly tired of seeing flashy presentations about poorly-thought out "revolutionary" new document formats/tools/whatnot.
- adriano_f 13y agoThe hubris of the statement is not lost on me, but what should a founder be but delusional and optimistic :) 1. It's both a viewer and a word processor. It relies on Markdown (and LaTeX through extensions). We export to Md, but will be adding more import/export options in the future. We hope to create a publication standard for it. 2. The structure of the document is an "outline of index cards". Each card can have one or more children. Source content (in markdown) is edited by toggling edit mode on that card. 3. Yes, we are extracting parts of this as open-source. The rest remains proprietary (for now, at least). > I apologize if any of the above seems harsh No need to apologize. Thoughtful criticism is what we need. Thanks!
- IanCal 13y ago> It relies on Markdown (and LaTeX through extensions). We export to Md, but will be adding more import/export options in the future. We hope to create a publication standard for it. Do we need a new standard for structured documents? Would a <section> not be sufficient?
- Matti 13y agoFar from identical, but along similar lines: http://treesheets.com/ http://treesheets.com/ "It's like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for complex data because it's hierarchical. It's like a mind mapper, but more organized and compact. It's like an outliner, but in more than one dimension. It's like a text editor, but with structure. " You can nest spreadsheet-like cells within cells within cells within cells.. and zoom in and out between the various levels of nesting. For Windows and Ubuntu, with a beta for Mac OS X available.
- sweetdreamerit 13y agoseems nice, but I have a question: can it import - export to other formats? Latex, markdown, csv ....
- Matti 13y agoYou can export/import views as XML or CSV. The generated XML is UTF-8 encoded and it only has three element types in total for the cells and rows so the structure of the file isn't complicated at all.
- ptrotter 13y agoTreesheets is an awesome way of structuring ideas and materials. As Matti said, the XML output from TreeSheets is easy to parse and convert for other uses. Basic HTML export is also provided as a simple means of sharing sheet data. Since TreeSheets is an open source project - it is possible to extend these areas of functionality to meet your own workflow needs and the code is easy to follow and fun to work with.
- anigbrowl 13y agoInteresting. Also, great to have the screenshots up front.
- uniclaude 13y agoThat's great, definitely bookmarked. An in-browser, collaborative version would be a serious killer app.
- Kiro 13y agoI really like this. My nested lists in Evernote always get out of hand as soon as a node needs more than one line. I've tried WorkFlowy but I didn't like the presentation. I prefer cards and in Gingko's case you get the added benefit of having a great overview.
- adriano_f 13y agoThanks Kiro! I should have used "Evernote + Workflowy" in the title, since that seems to be what people immediately understand about Gingko. Get in touch if you ever have any thoughts or questions.
- alextingle 13y agoFor what platforms is it available? (There's no way I'm going to the trouble of signing up, only to be told "uh oh, not on your platform".)
- adriano_f 13y agoWorks on all modern browsers. Soon, will work on mobile as well. I've even been testing it on my Kindle this morning, and was surprised to see it (almost) works there too!
- nik61 13y agoOne of the virtues of Evernote is that you are not stuck in a hierarchy if you don't want to be. I find Clay Shirky's well-known criticisms of pervasive hierarchies to be quite persuasive. I'm looking for something that doesn't paint me into an hierarchical corner. Evernote is certainly a step in the right direction, and the IHMC concept mapping software can work very well too.
- zerni 13y agoWhat a great tool! I will definitly use this to structure my lecture notes! (Topic > Sub-Topic > Definition/List) Improvement: Allow to filter and color cards. So you can walk through all cards of a given type.
- adriano_f 13y agoGreat, thanks for the feedback Zemi. We have the ability to filter, using the Search feature. You can just type @tags, and searching them will hide all cards that don't containt that text. Let me know if you have any other questions or suggestions.
- zerni 13y agoWell that's a workaround for now but it could be a little more user friendly (like showing all tags on the top) Another point: Make cards collapsible/expandable to get a quicker overview about topics. (It is also an aid to the process of memorizing cards)
- adriano_f 13y agoCool, hadn't considered having a tag list at top. Thanks. Collapsing to "header only" is something we might have to add, after we implement infinite columns (so we can get a quicker overview of large trees). Thanks for the feedback.
- derekchiang 13y agoI love the tool, though it'd be great if the editing windows support full-screen mode. Writing in a small grid is a pain.
- adriano_f 13y agoYes, that's a feature we have planned. Similar to the "Zen mode" in github. That will let you write a group of cards as one flow, and it'll split it into individual cards once you leave fullscreen.
- defilade 13y agoInteresting idea. Can you make it so that when I click in the card it automatically goes into edit mode? Having to click an "edit" button really slows things down.
- adriano_f 13y agoYou can double-click the card to go into edit mode. Single click would be easier, but since we have drag-and-drop, and sometimes use clicking just for navigation, we have to use double-click to edit. (unless you have a better approach in mind?) PS: Also, once you get used to them, the keyboard shortcuts lets you navigate & edit pretty quickly.
- talhof8 13y agoThis is great. Very useful and well implemented. Goodluck!
- marcamillion 13y agoThis looks awesome, but the elephant in the room is how does the document look offline? Can it be exported to PDF or be printed or something? When you print it, how does it look?
- adriano_f 13y agoWith better support mobile devices (including eReaders and whatever comes after them), we hope it'll be less of an issue as time goes on. Right now, we simply export the Markdown to flat text (breadth-first). But we will be adding PDF export options, for exporting the whole document, or one column. That way, you can still end up with a traditional document at the end, if you want. Any other ideas?
- 6d0debc071 13y agoHave the breadth as a summary page perhaps? Like when you open a book and it's effectively the list of chapters. Then have the 2l tiers as your chapters and the 3l tiers as the subheadings in those chapters? Don't know whether that's what you're doing at the moment :)
- marcamillion 13y agoI think you may be overthinking it. If you just created a document with each hierarchy organized properly, I think you should be fine. E.g. you create say 3 heading sizes in Word. 24px, 20px, 16px. Then for the main point, i.e. the content in the left-most column, you put those under a heading that is under the 24px - then any sub content from the 2nd column would go under a 20px heading that is under the first 24px heading and so on. So there is a chronological order of the content. I think that's all you need. Proper placement of the content under the right headings, make the headings different sizes and you make sure it flows like the author intended (which I think you can ensure by using the order they setup on your site). That's just my $0.02.
- adriano_f 13y agoI love overthinking things! It's true that if every card had a title, then import and export while maintaining the tree structure would be easy. But as it stands, if you have the following cards: A A.1 A.2 B this approach wouldn't be able to maintain the structure if the cards didn't have titles (it would just list all these as A, A.1, A.2, B). It's for this reason alone that we've considered making titles required for at least the first card in a group. Or am I overthinking again... ?
- IanCal 13y agoHopefully this criticism is helpful. I find this really hard to read, sorry. I can't just scroll through or scan read, and I'm met with a variety of different things all at once. Everything's always visible, so I don't know what I'm looking at. I've scrolled down on the lowest level, and read a bit but have no understanding of the context. Clicking on it makes me realise where I am but I've skipped over a load of stuff in the middle so I'm scrolling back up that to find where I left off... I think this is a visual thing though rather than a major issue with the idea. Fiddling a bit I've only just found that not every node has children, but this this is only indicated by nothing happening (which is identical to something that should happen but doesn't) This is really a different formatter for the same structure of text we've already been using, so the hyperbole is a bit of a turnoff for me. \section{some title} Explanatory text \subsection{subsection title} Sub text etc. Or <section> <h1>heading</h1> <p>Text</p> <section> <h2>heading 2 Why do we need something new? What's being added? What couldn't I do before that's now possible? These are the things I want to know when you tell me you've got a new hierarchical document. Can I already read these well with a screen-reader? The ordering in the source would (I think) read each column individually, which wouldn't make sense. Try loading your viewer without CSS. Imagine a screenreader hitting the massive block of JSON at the bottom of the page. Why is that in the body?
- adriano_f 13y agoI agree, the UI needs improvement. No one feels the gaps more than I do. But they say, "launch before you're ready!" ;) For one thing, scrolling on its own (with mouse scroll), doesn't automatically highlight whichever card is now centered. So it breaks the flow. Clicking, or scrolling with keyboard are the only way right now to keep the context clear. > the hyperbole is a bit of a turnoff for me. I know, it's a big claim, and I don't expect anyone else to believe it. I thought about not including it, but it's honestly what I believe. Delusional founder? Check. > This is really a different formatter for the same structure of text we've already been using That's true, more or less. Table of contents, chapter & subsection breaks, etc, are all attempts to make the structure clearer. However, once we go beyond 3 levels deep, this has significant advantages. One can get an overview of a text by reading column 1, but can drill deeper and deeper into specific sections, and even into other trees that are embedded (or "transcluded") into this one. We could have all of physics, or comp-sci, in one tree, and the reader will always be able to drill in for more, or zoom out for overview. > Why do we need something new? What's being added? What couldn't I do before that's now possible? There are great benefits for writing this way, for one. Rearranging entire sections or subsections is just a drag and drop. Working collaboratively is also easier, because each person can focus on their particular strengths > Hopefully this criticism is helpful. It is, thank you. All criticism forces us to reevaluate our approach, again and again.
- k_bx 13y agoThis reminded me to (at last) master emacs org-mode.
- mrcharles 13y agoAll that text, and no mention of what platforms are supported (or will be supported in the future).
- Noxchi 13y agoScrivener has the same "mission" as this. To make text writing into chunks that you can rearrange. It's more fully baked and I think has a better UI that Ginko (writing a book or long piece with 3 relatively small columns isn't ideal). Unfortunately it is marketed poorly, so not a lot of people know about it, but I have found it very useful when doing writing for longer pieces.
- Serow225 13y agoNeat. A couple thoughts: 1) it took me some time to figure out that I could scroll a given column when the mouse is over it... Also when the mouse is over a non-column area (background on far right/left) it would be useful if scrolling did a global scroll of all columns at the same time. 2) It could be nice if the sections M+1/M-1 (above/below) the selected section in column N were given a subtle distinct color, and then the appropriate sections in column N+1 that are nested in M+1/M-1 were given the same color. Does that make any sense? It would give a visual indication of which sections in column N+1 lie within sections M+1 and M-1, and also help to emphasize the tree nature of the layout. A different color could be chosen for M+/-2, +/-3, etc. Good job! :)
- adriano_f 13y agoWe explored having different color scheme to denote the node distance between two cards. Unfortunately, it got too messy, and neither of us are designers, so we had to shelve it for now. As for scrolling, and want the mouse scrolling to work just like keyboard (selects the card at center, reorders other columns appropriately). Haven't gotten around to it yet. Thanks for your feedback!
- Serow225 13y agoThanks for the reply & good luck!
- swift 13y agoThis is a good concept but the execution needs some work. I'm confused that everything is visible all the time - if that's the case, why am I clicking on things? But clicking on things seems to be necessary to 'focus' on a given subject; otherwise, as you scroll, the columns get out of sync and seem to bear little relationship to each other. I envisioned something very different from the screenshots. I expected you to be able to expand and collapse nodes, with the collapsed nodes existing only to provide a summary of the surrounding information. I can see the appeal of having everything visible so that you can just scroll through the document as you would now, but in that case the scroll positions of the columns need to be dynamically linked and there needs to be more feedback about which nodes serve as a summary or context for which other nodes. In general, I think the process of reading a Gingko document is not clear to a first-time reader. Fixing this will require changes to both functionality and design.
- codezero 13y agoIs anyone else seeing "undefined is editing" and subsequently a bunch of text you didn't write appears? I'm worried that what I am typing into this might show up in someone else's tree.
- adriano_f 13y agoThat's a bug that someone's reported before (through Twitter). Working on fixing it. No one can see your trees. The "bunch of text" bug has never happened before, will try to track it down. Probably due to the flood of traffic from HN! UPDATE from my cofounder: "fyi: I fixed that bug weird one" - Aleksey Kulikov
- codezero 13y agoby "bunch of text" I mean several list items. I took screenshots if there is an email I can send them to (assuming that's helpful, I understand if it's not) let me know.
- jstsch 13y agoI think this is quite a nice experiment in UI. However too small and simple to start charging for (but please proof me wrong!). 1) What I miss is the possibility to attach files. This would be essential in typical collaborative environments. 2) I don't want to give you my data. So localstorage or export/import is essential.
- adriano_f 13y agoWe attach files using dropbox links. It's a workaround, but it's been useful so far. Offline & import/export are features in the pipeline.
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- andrewfong 13y agoNice. The inadvertent jump to another branch can be disorienting though. Suppose my tree structure is as so: * a ** b *** c * d ** e *** f *** g *** h Gingko lays it out like this: a b c d e f g h If I'm in the far right column, let's say I've highlighted item g and go up to item f. However, I hold the arrow key down a little too long and overshoot to item c. This causes everything to the left to suddenly jump around and disorient me. A related issue, the layout suggests that c-f-g-h is an intended list when it isn't. It can cause readers to become confused if they're reading normally in one column and don't fully realize they've jumped to a different branch in between c and f.
- adriano_f 13y agoYes we could definitely improve the way you interact with the tree. For one thing, the looping back when holding the arrow key is annoying to me too, and a simple fix we will get to. As for the branch jumping, we tried other approaches, but haven't found one that works well in all cases. The core of Gingko, navigating tree structures, is something we are constantly trying to improve. Thanks for your feedback!
- gojomo 13y agoMiller columns for text with a natural outline structure! I like.
- gizmogwai 13y agoI'm sorry if I'm rude, but the more I think of if it, the less I see the point. The initial described problem (organising ideas in a hierarchical way) has already been solved efficiently years ago with visual mind maps. They have been used successfully to not only create the hierarchy, but also to realise that sometimes, the tree is more like a graph. As a reader, it's infuriating to have to click all the time (or use keyboard) and have this page scrolling all around. I just want to READ, not being distracted by some kind of useless parallax effect. As a writer, moving ideas around to get them properly organised is really painful. There is no distraction-free interface neither. If you really want to make tool for writers, I would strongly suggest you that you take a look at tools like Ulysses or Scrivener and try to understand the rationale behind the UI choice they made.
- adriano_f 13y ago> that sometimes, the tree is more like a graph I agree, but I think it's better to start with a tree, and then add graph-like features, than to start with a graph and try to make a tree out of it. Mostly because I believe hierarchy is a more natural structure for our brains. For reading non-fiction, yes the parallax can be distracting. But I think A) the interface can be improved. B) For non-fiction, it's outweighed by the benefit of having context & details available. We do have plans for a distraction free mode, similar to "Zen mode" on Github. But offline & deeper trees are a priority for now. I have studied Scrivener, but didn't know about Ulysses. Thanks for pointing it out.
- Roritharr 13y agoDoes this really need to be a web-app? Storing my Documents in the Cloud is not possible and not even desireable in most of my work environments. Even in my private life i like to be offline to work on the kind of tasks that Gingko would help me with. Just charge me a one-time fee for an Windows App (Win8 Guy here, Mac Apps would be reasonable aswell) and let me handle my data my way. I've thought about building something like Gingko for a long time, so thanks for providing an alternative option!
- mbreese 13y agoWhat happened to the app shown in the linked Science without borders talk? That looks more useful to me, if only because it fits with the typical science paper writing workflow. How did the document editor migrate to this 2D editor?
- adriano_f 13y agoThat app still exists, and it's being worked on by my friend Ivan Savov, one of the original founders. You can check it out at http://papers.mcgillweb.com http://papers.mcgillweb.com
- susi22 13y agoI don't want to have to think when I read a book. The author has to lead me through and follow a path. The auther has to make sure I get a decent introduction and he should make every sentence count. This is nice to play. And maybe even has it's applications such as documentation where quick browsing helps. But if I had to read a thesis/book like this I'd be a very unhappy person.
- pjscott 13y agoThe same criticism applies to wikis and their nonlinear way of presenting information. Despite that, people find wikis tremendously valuable, and a big part of it is the ability to jump around, following your own path through the information. This thing is confusing at first, but it looks like it could be pretty darn slick after spending a few minutes getting used to it.
- bachback 13y agoInteresting. This is actually close to the original idea of hypertext (Ted Nelson's vision: "documents - side by side"). I would really turn down the tone. Let the reader decide how important he thinks the idea is.
- adriano_f 13y agoMost of the site is much more toned down, but I thought I'd share what I believe about Gingko's potential. I respect Nelson, but his intensity is off-putting... don't want to make the same mistake.
- GhotiFish 13y agoGingko is intimidating. It looks like a neat way to work but when I see a big button called "try it now" (red flag), with testimonials (big red flag), no download (small red flag), and no mention of licensing, privacy, or cost (edit: it was just hidden), or... anything (big red flag). My experience tells me to avoid it, and to council everyone else to avoid it as well. I don't want to be gouged, aggregated, or advertised to. I would love to use your tool. I just can't be sure you wont use that desire against me. I can't find anything on your site that will assure me that wont happen. edit: AHA. I did find your pricing. https://gingkoapp.com/p/pricing/ https://gingkoapp.com/p/pricing/ So at least you're mechanism of monetization is there.
- 3rd3 13y agoFirst of all, congratulation for pulling off a new and experimental user interface! However, I believe, the idea that tree- or graph-like structuring of text is beneficial for reading and writing text in general, comes close to the graphical programming fallacy. Eventually, the spatial make-up fails because of the following three reasons: (1) The manual difficulty of navigation and the count of subconscious visual cues necessary for retrieving a passage increase exponentionally as the content grows, (2) altough thoughts do seem to come in hierarchical structures, we usually don’t think of text, code, stories, memories nor knowledge as visual graphs and (3) textual hints for emphasizing and linking text are more efficient and flexible than visual hints. At first glance, Wikipedia seems like an affirmative example for graph-like structured text, but that structure is usually not used for primarily intended navigation. The articles are actually expected to be self-contained for readers with only a fair amount of prior knowledge.
- vladsanchez 13y agoFinally! Something original acking fowesome!!! =D
- vladsanchez 13y agoI never thought anyone would be solving this kind of problem. I had the same problem last night while writing a paper for an online course. I think in outline first then elaborate over several iterations. I tried using a wiki (sphinx-doc.org) but it got in my way immediately. To find this new paradigm, today, in HN, made me immensely happy and hopeful about the future. I agree, this is the way we'll read and write in the future. And the future is now! Thanks guys.
- unnuun 13y agoIf anyone thinks serious academics will adopt something stupid and flashy like this in place of "old-fashioned, dry PDFs" when it isn't even free or publicly specified, they're seriously deluded. Fuck start-ups and capitalism.
- veidr 13y ago> Fuck start-ups and capitalism. Did you perchance take a wrong turn on the interweb tubes, and arrive at this website by mistake? You are right, though; nothing proprietary and costly is ever going to 'change the world' of something so basic as reading and writing...
- unnuun 13y agoI certainly did. I started with HN when I was messed up and depressed and wanted to fill my mind with crap that was completely contrarian to everything I believe as a form of self-destruction. Every once in a while there's something important that I get from HN, which is why I've kept coming back since starting to get better. Some time ago I decided it really wasn't worth it, and I haven't yet quit because I'm just on auto-pilot and come here when I'm bored. I'll get around to quitting soon though. Thanks for the reminder.
- oscargrouch 13y ago>I'll get around to quitting soon though. dont do it, i think is healthy to any community to have people with different perspectives.. also i dont consider HN a reddit for startups.. once in a while there are something about it.. (thanks god) but are not the majority view, unlike the previous post may picture startup culture its way off its limits.. and some people should get back to sanity again.. the only people making something with this hyped culture are VC´s buying and selling things that dont even have a good business model just for the sake of its own profit.. but this look like a US zombie virus, that every 20 years start to happen all over again.. until the bubbles explode markets blows up.. and really hard working people have to pay for all the damage this greedy people creates.. sometimes i fell just like you..
- Stratoscope 13y agoI'm a bit confused by the keyboard navigation. I open the sample document and hit the down arrow. It scrolls. I hit the down arrow again and the background color changes and it scrolls in the opposite direction. If I keep hitting the down arrow it scrolls up and down and up and down with a color change each time. And of course if I hold down the down arrow it starts flickering as it jumps back and forth between the two directions and colors. Is that a bug or is that how it's supposed to work? I often scroll to the end of a short document by holding down the down arrow until things stop moving.
- jholman 13y agoI want the tool you're building! It's got huge overlap with a project I was just in the planning phase of, a cloud-ified FreeMind. However! There's one fatal-for-me flaw in your current implementation: only three layers deep. Deal-breaker. I'd love to hear about it if/when you change that behavior, so that I can start trying this seriously. I saw your comment about future possible options to self-host, or offline mode, or something like that. That's definitely interesting to me. Self-hosting would be ideal, really. But I also very much like having the option to use your servers. When you mentioned exporting to Markdown, you mentioned breadth-first. I'm not at all sure that you want breadth-first. The documents I'm imagining writing will make more sense exported depth-first. I think it would benefit from a little visual cue to see where one card ends and the next begins, even for cards not currently selected. My first attempt would be to let the grey background show through the white cards, but whatever. I agree that the default text size is a bit too big. Maybe some scaling could be added as an option when configuring a tree.
- adriano_f 13y agoThanks for the feedback! Yes, more than three layers deep is our highest priority, along with offline mode. And you are right, I meant "depth-first"; makes more sense.
- irickt 13y agoWorth comparing: https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki
- tluyben2 13y agoI like it and have worked more or less like this for structuring documents all my life (but manually, in text files, making trees and creating documents from those trees with a small Python script). However, I really would like this to be a desktop application; all that online stuff is not very helpful for productivity software, for me at least. I live in the mountains, I don't have internet in a lot of places. When I travel I don't have (stable) internet either. I like stuff going to the web, but until that works fully offline after installation (so being able to make new projects, save them, change them, do everything except the stuff which really requires internet), I don't really have much use for productivity apps like this.
- adriano_f 13y agoThanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you like it. My cofounder is working on full offline support right now, as it's been a much requested feature.