Knowlege management / connected markdown editors (Electron-based)

[webfork]

This thread is a merge of several overlapping programs that help deal with a lot of notes and connected information, which I'm calling "knowledge management."

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First mentioned by Midas in a discussion about CommonMark, Zettlr https://www.zettlr.com/ is an open "markdown editor for personal knowledge management and publishing".

I dug into this because I've been experimenting with Pandoc quite a bit, which Midas pointed out in his original mention. At the moment it looks to just enable export to things like Word and OpenDocument, but both of those programs should work fine with the HTML the program outputs natively.

Anyway, there's a lot here and it's the sort of thing that could really break into an area I don't think Microsoft will ever come close to.

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Steps: Open with 7zip and open the the sub-folder \$PLUGINSDIR\app-32.7z or app-64.7z ... extract to any folder and launch Zettlr.exe.

Status: Not portable -- writes to \AppData\Roaming\zettlr ... While enabling portability may yet be possible, I haven't run a thorough test and am throwing this into the "not portable" sub-forum because of a discussion on their forums:

> Probably you might think about offering a portable Version in the future too...

As I said, yes, but it doesn't have a high priority. My resources are limited, and currently I have to wrench out a lot of small stuff happening on the backend! Furthermore, I can't go to any different specs, but I'll use the Electron-builder portable setting to do so, which'll work either way. I'm never impressed by this and that many downloads (let's be honest, even my bragging with xyz downloads is more for show), and I suspect just offering a portable app would increase developers' interest . I think it's more aimed at non-tech-customers (but nevertheless an option).

Other Details

Resource usage it's Electron so ...

• Download: 127 megs (it includes 32 and 64-bit copies along with FFMPEG)
  Extracted: (just the 64-bit version) 270 MB
  RAM: 185 megs across 5 processes

Phone home? Yes
Requires admin No Run as limited user? Yes, launch with (runas /trustlevel:0x20000 "zettlr.exe")



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Related

• Softpedia mirror: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-to ... ttlr.shtml
• A comparison with the non-free Obsidian (https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettlr/comment ... _obsidian/) was also informative to show what kinds of feature sets we're looking at with these edit tools.
• yCombinator article on Zettlr - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23723775
• Elephant editor - similar to Zettlr but a bit simpler - https://www.ghacks.net/2020/03/13/eleph ... plication/

[Midas]

Incidentally, as mentioned in the Ghack.net article comments, Typora (https://typora.io/; first mentioned by shnbwmn at viewtopic.php?p=81297#p81297) is yet another Electron-based Markdown editor I have seen getting consistent praise. Mind you, devs say upfront it'll only be free while in Beta, so there's that, too.

FYI, Typora's release announcements and documentation are at http://support.typora.io/.

Typora is probably the best Electron app I've ever seen, but I ultimately switched to the MarkdownLivePreview package for Sublime Text. I definitely prefer having a more native app over Electron.

@ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21461174

[webfork]

Update on Zettlr ...

Status: Not portable, writes program and all settings to the AppData folder.

License Open source

There is a discussion about Zettlr being a portable app, but that's a bit dated and didn't appear to go anywhere: https://forum.zettlr.com/discussion/16/ ... rtable-app

Home page: https://www.zettlr.com/



Screenshot:



Usage notes

While I'm definitely frustrated that it's resource intensive and not portable, but I can't deny that it's has become a major part of my workflow. It's displaced Notepad++ for many operations I've been maintaining for years.

The important bits

• Standard Markdown benefits like simple links, easy formatting,
• Open source, it's been in development for some time, reasonably easy to use.
• Import to Markdown - Works with basically any format you paste into it, and it looks pretty good. Even tables.
• Format agnostic - To pull out bad formatting or make different programs talk to each other, I literally paste my files into the program and then copy them out again (as HTML) to save in their destination. Whether Google Docs, LibreOffice, Microsoft Word, etc. it consistently looks better.
• Filter HTML junk tags - works as an amazing HTML filter so I can get (close to) plain HTML files without a bunch of fancy Regex tweaks. Also ignores paragraphs space (multiple carriage returns) which I prefer.
• Tabbed view, reasonably customizable, good themes/skins, "code folding" that functions at the headline level

Other nice things

• Night mode and distraction-free mode are both great.
• Handles nested bullets and nested number lists better than other text editors, also does a really great parenthesis and quote auto-complete (type one parenthesis or quote the other shows up in place).
• Readability mode (also available on the web at https://www.zettlr.com/readability) is great. I use this a lot more than I expected to.

Wishlist

• Image handling isn't exactly how I'd like - optional attachments are preferred over inline images, which are huge.
• Not as bad as other programs in this space but still uses a lot of resources for a simple text editor (four processes, 150-200 megs of RAM)
• Always visible table of contents (and not the "toggle sidebar" junk that covers up my text)
• Change fonts - I don't mind the standard Courier New thing, but just a nice-to-have. (There is a way https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettlr/comment ... ange_font/ but it would be nice if it were a bit easier.)

[webfork]

Zettlr update v2.0.3

So I've had some issues with the most recent version of this program complaining constantly that it needs to reload the files from disk. I don't know what's going on with that. It might have something to do with the portable instructions below. Proceed with caution.

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The program now lists an ability to do portable installations:

--data-dir="/path/to/directory"

But in testing it actually needs either a hard link like c:\temp or a period in front for the local folder .data to write to c:\whatever\zettlr\data

Steps:

1. Download and install to a temporary folder (by default C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Programs\Zettlr)
2. Copy contents to a folder of your choice
3. Uninstall the program
4. In the destination folder, create a text file with the following contents:

Code: Select all

@echo off
start "" "zettlr.exe" --data-dir=".\data"

5. Save the text file as "zettlr portable.bat" and launch

Status: Portable, some settings don't hold between sessions. Stealth: No, still writes something to AppData and insists on the standard documents folder: C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Zettlr Tutorial

If you accidentally start the program normally, you need to go and delete the AppData folder C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Zettlr

Dark mode doesn't seem to persist

https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/releases

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EDIT: Turns out there's a whole program page dedicated to portability: https://docs.zettlr.com/en/portable/

[webfork]

Update: v7.1.0 is out.

Among a lot of other changes, I'm pleased to report that the new version of Zettlr is allowing the TOC to be visible at all times. This is huge for me because headlines and subheadings help me organize content, and having them always at hand (and not overlapping text) just makes my life easier.



Negatively, I'm getting a "changes on disk - do you want to reload?" error message from the program. Not sure what's causing that and can find only one github issue referencing it: https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/issues/37

[webfork]

So Zettlr's latest version was a bit of a letdown -- buggy, lots of extra HTML tags nobody asked for, just frustrating at every turn. I still use it for converting Google Docs and Microsoft Word garbage into clean and friendly Markdown, but that's about it. Really wish I could back up to the version I originally downloaded last year but that doesn't seem to work either.

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Fortunately there's another one to add to the pile of local, Electron knowledge base tools.

Athens is an open-source knowledge graph that helps individuals and organizations solve complex problems by enabling them to capture, compose, and recombine ideas.

The video is worth reviewing in terms of how they handle file and topic linking -- some really neat ideas here: https://www.loom.com/share/7f9876cb28bd ... 73efefa2c8

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Status: Untested but unlikely to be portable -- only addresses relative path management in the Github issues section.

Resource usage: it's Electron-based and even the nifty demo above ran into some issues with larger databases of info.

Home: https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

Softpedia: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-to ... hens.shtml

[webfork]

Zettlr update: there's a new version 2.1.3: https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr/releases and a PA release: https://portableapps.com/apps/office/zettlr-portable

EDIT: The PA version seems to work fine but still having issues with the "file has changed" error message. I cannot seem to figure out what's causing that.

EDIT2: After a LOT of testing I'm officially giving up on the various flavors of portable Zettlr. Not sure what I'm doing wrong but at this stage have to recommend sticking with the standard installer if you have a need for this program.

EDIT3: I'm back on the installed version but now the readability tool is now failing to show clear highlight analysis according to sentence length/complexity. Somehow the website readability analysis still works so I'm using that instead. @#$%

[webfork]

So there's another innovative open source markdown editor? How does this keep coming up?

https://www.mindforger.com/

Are you drowning in information, but starving for knowledge?

Where do you keep your private remarks like ideas, personal plans, exam preparation notes, gift tips, how-tos, dreams, business visions, finance strategies, meeting minutes and auto coaching notes? Loads of documents, sketches and remarks spread around the file system, cloud, web and Post-it notes? Are you afraid of your knowledge privacy? Are you able to find particular remarks once you create them? Do you know how are the remarks mutually related when you browse, read or write them? No?

I guess it's a good time to be in freeware.

[Midas]

So there's another innovative open source markdown editor? How does this keep coming up?

I guess markdown is just too good a concept to let pass, both for users and devs -- I only wish something lightweight will come along...

[webfork]

only wish something lightweight will come along...

Not lightweight but may be competition for all the similar Electron-based tools in this area: Keenwrite.

https://github.com/DaveJarvis/keenwrite
https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-to ... rite.shtml

License: BSD

Status: Untested but the mention on the github page of deleting a folder in AppData when upgrading makes me think this is "no install" and not portable.

[Midas]

Not lightweight but may be competition for all the similar Electron-based tools in this area: Keenwrite.

Definitely not lightweight, with Keenwrite being Java based and all -- it's a 137MB download to start with...

Still, it's good to know there are other options.

[webfork]

[@webfork: edited post with a simpler an cleaner way to create vertical spacing, hoping you wouldn't mind. Feel free to revert. Your, Midas]

Update:

The search has continued on this topic with a new program called "Notion" but I'm still struggling to find a reasonable option in this space.

• Obsidian - Currently testing this one but I really want a portable option. There's some available tweaks out there, but I'm trying to find something that's low-maintenance.

• Zettlr - I absolutely love the distraction-free mode and the way it can convert from other rich text formats, but lots of small frustrations with the interface have made me look elsewhere for a note-taking program. I also need to have access to it on a small monitor (tablet) and it's just a little too screen hungry.

• Notion - Has some nice features but it falls a little into the Microsoft OneNote hole of being a little too finicky about formats and structure. I drag and drop just a little and get a bizarro column format that throws off everything on the page. I also wouldn't call this a privacy option, unlike the other two.

If you want to mess with some AI writing tools, those are also available in Notion. It's amusing but I was underwhelmed.

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Also I didn't respond to it when Midas posted about this originally:

Recent debate in the Obsidian forum about the security implications of it being an Electron app

Very interesting, thanks for that.

[webfork]

Small update here: As both Zettlr and Obsidian function on individual, local files, you can easily index and backup all your work. It also means that you can both programs in tandem on the same files at the same time. This means that whatever the strong points of one program.

At the moment I'm using simultaneous editors to divide and conquer different tasks:

• Zettlr has a better import tool, meaning if you paste from Google Docs or Microsoft Word it shows up with much of the same formatting aspects like headlines, bold, and italics. I also like reading docs a little more on Zettlr.
• Obsidian has a bit better file management, visualization, and customization. I prefer initial ideas/drafting with this program.

Negatively, both programs running at the same time takes up a LOT of system resources.

[webfork]

[Moderator note: posts about the Obsidian editor were given their own thread.]

[blkcrowe]

I've had a pretty good experience with both Joplin and Trilium Notes. Admittedly, neither is as powerful as Obsidian in terms of feature set or extensibility, but are portable and get the job done. And to be fair, most of the features that I see in Obsidian look cool and make me want to use it, but in the end, I just need something that is efficient at taking notes and organizing my thoughts. I guess I am not as diligent as I should be with knowledge management given the increasing amount of data we create, gather, and are pretty much forced to maintain these days. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences on these as the choice of tools out there for this task is overwhelming!