Note-taking technics often seem fantastic when presented and start to show their downsides only after some time of serious use. I would like to shortcut the experimenting phase: Does anybody have a good article, blog post etc. that also discusses the downsides and limits of the Zettelkasten system ? Or maybe a in-depth tutorial or real world usage examples regarding technical knowledge. Maybe somebody has a publicly visible Zettelkasten ? I already found the research project regarding Luhmann’s original Zettelkasten ( https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/inhaltsuebersicht ) as well as an elaborate blog post ( https://writingcooperative.com/zettelkasten-how-one-german-scholar-was-so-freakishly-productive-997e4e0ca125 ) that is unfortunately missing contra arguments.
“future-proof” would be more accurate if it was buildable on systems that don’t have nix / docker (OpenBSD, NetBSD.. etc). That said - it looks really nice!
While Nix is still the recommended way to install, we now also have auto-created Docker images for neuron.
Thanks for doing this! I attempted to try out Neuron once before, and setting up Nix under macOS on an encrypted disk turned out to be a messy and scarcely documented process that I eventually gave up on. I’m looking forward to making another attempt.
FWIW, if you tried installing Nix on Catalina before June, you may have more luck re-trying it now. There’s still one case the installer doesn’t really solve for–older pre-T2 hardware also using FileVault FDE–but if you don’t fit in that camp the experience shouldn’t be the disaster it was from October to May.
We got a tip on that case as well, but the only implementation I’m aware of yet is something in Ruby that was written for a company’s dev bootstrap scripts and we haven’t found someone with the time/interest/hardware to translate and test this yet. (TLDR; encrypting the new volume and putting the credential in the system keychain reportedly solves race-condition issues we’ve seen with the login keychain that have kept us from trying to handle that case yet).
Someone recently expressed interest in tackling it, so I’m hopeful, but until there’s a PR I’ll try to avoid suggesting it’s right around the corner :)
Oh. Also. A question mark we still have is whether anyone in this camp will object to the installer creating a new volume, generating an encryption passphrase without user input, and putting the credential into the system keychain on its own. Thoughts?
That sounds great to me, assuming the the installer asks first. I haven’t had time to follow developments this issue on GH, so thank you for the excellent summary!
Wow, who knew the note taking business would get so hot again? Been using Roam for a little while now, but I haven’t reached that breakthrough moment where I declare it a “game changer” for my personal use. Definitely giving it more time.
It integrates pretty well with my editor (vscode) and is really lightweight since all it does is really add backlinks to markdown files and converts them into a static site. so far I’ve been liking it as a pretty nice upgrade over my previous setup of just having a folder of unrelated markdown files
The problem with Foam is that it requires you to use VSCode, whereas the philosophy behind neuron is that it is not tied to any text editor. If I’m forced to use a particular text editor, it violates the future-proof property.
Neuron does have editor support, but they are decoupled from neuron itself (the editor plugins use neuron query‘s JSON output to interact with neuron), which will be perfected through Language Server Protocol. I believe decoupling is the right way, so I’ve suggested to Foam’s author to consider integrating with neuron, which would also bring the benefits of one tool to the other and vice versa.
Being editor-agnostic is a good idea but I’m using it mostly within vscode which integrates well within my workflow and doesn’t need me to have a command running in the background.
but integrating it into a lsp protocol to take care of the behind-the-scenes implementation (backlinks, autocomplete for maths, and stuff ) is a really great idea!
Interesting. I’ve been wondering if someone would do something like this. I’m currently using Obsidian, kinda. I use Vim to do the actual writing and only use Obsidian to render the markdown. I hate leaving Vim. Even when apps have Vim bindings, it’s not the same.
On the other hand, if Obsidian were just a VSCode plugin like Foam, I feel like that might limit the audience to mainly programmers.
Not gonna lie, my knee-jerk reaction to “future-proof note-taking system” was along the lines of “so it’s pen and paper?”
But this actually looks really cool!
Yay! Has a Vim plugin! Switching to this!
Note-taking technics often seem fantastic when presented and start to show their downsides only after some time of serious use. I would like to shortcut the experimenting phase: Does anybody have a good article, blog post etc. that also discusses the downsides and limits of the Zettelkasten system ? Or maybe a in-depth tutorial or real world usage examples regarding technical knowledge. Maybe somebody has a publicly visible Zettelkasten ? I already found the research project regarding Luhmann’s original Zettelkasten ( https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/inhaltsuebersicht ) as well as an elaborate blog post ( https://writingcooperative.com/zettelkasten-how-one-german-scholar-was-so-freakishly-productive-997e4e0ca125 ) that is unfortunately missing contra arguments.
This one: https://inariksit.github.io/cclaw-zettelkasten/
And more here
“future-proof” would be more accurate if it was buildable on systems that don’t have nix / docker (OpenBSD, NetBSD.. etc). That said - it looks really nice!
Any chance for a stack build recipe, alongside nix ?
Do you mean a digital ocean stack?
The haskell one: https://docs.haskellstack.org/en/stable/README/
Thanks for doing this! I attempted to try out Neuron once before, and setting up Nix under macOS on an encrypted disk turned out to be a messy and scarcely documented process that I eventually gave up on. I’m looking forward to making another attempt.
FWIW, if you tried installing Nix on Catalina before June, you may have more luck re-trying it now. There’s still one case the installer doesn’t really solve for–older pre-T2 hardware also using FileVault FDE–but if you don’t fit in that camp the experience shouldn’t be the disaster it was from October to May.
I unfortunately am in that camp, but thank you for reminding me of exactly what the problematic case is. I may get my hands on a newer Mac soon.
We got a tip on that case as well, but the only implementation I’m aware of yet is something in Ruby that was written for a company’s dev bootstrap scripts and we haven’t found someone with the time/interest/hardware to translate and test this yet. (TLDR; encrypting the new volume and putting the credential in the system keychain reportedly solves race-condition issues we’ve seen with the login keychain that have kept us from trying to handle that case yet).
Someone recently expressed interest in tackling it, so I’m hopeful, but until there’s a PR I’ll try to avoid suggesting it’s right around the corner :)
Oh. Also. A question mark we still have is whether anyone in this camp will object to the installer creating a new volume, generating an encryption passphrase without user input, and putting the credential into the system keychain on its own. Thoughts?
That sounds great to me, assuming the the installer asks first. I haven’t had time to follow developments this issue on GH, so thank you for the excellent summary!
Next step, someone needs to build a Whalebrew-friendly image based on Neuron’s or modify it to be compatible with Whalebrew.
Edit: opened a feature suggestion ticket: https://github.com/srid/neuron/issues/307
Wow, who knew the note taking business would get so hot again? Been using Roam for a little while now, but I haven’t reached that breakthrough moment where I declare it a “game changer” for my personal use. Definitely giving it more time.
I’ve been using a similar tool based on the Roam/Zettelkasten note taking way called foam https://foambubble.github.io/foam/
It integrates pretty well with my editor (vscode) and is really lightweight since all it does is really add backlinks to markdown files and converts them into a static site. so far I’ve been liking it as a pretty nice upgrade over my previous setup of just having a folder of unrelated markdown files
The problem with Foam is that it requires you to use VSCode, whereas the philosophy behind neuron is that it is not tied to any text editor. If I’m forced to use a particular text editor, it violates the future-proof property.
Neuron does have editor support, but they are decoupled from neuron itself (the editor plugins use
neuron query‘s JSON output to interact with neuron), which will be perfected through Language Server Protocol. I believe decoupling is the right way, so I’ve suggested to Foam’s author to consider integrating with neuron, which would also bring the benefits of one tool to the other and vice versa.Any word when the LSP integration might be done? I’ve been looking for a new note-taking app. This seems close to something I might like.
Can’t say when, but Trevor just started looking into implementing it.
Being editor-agnostic is a good idea but I’m using it mostly within vscode which integrates well within my workflow and doesn’t need me to have a command running in the background.
but integrating it into a lsp protocol to take care of the behind-the-scenes implementation (backlinks, autocomplete for maths, and stuff ) is a really great idea!
Interesting. I’ve been wondering if someone would do something like this. I’m currently using Obsidian, kinda. I use Vim to do the actual writing and only use Obsidian to render the markdown. I hate leaving Vim. Even when apps have Vim bindings, it’s not the same.
On the other hand, if Obsidian were just a VSCode plugin like Foam, I feel like that might limit the audience to mainly programmers.