rtnF VS TiddlyWiki

While i was researching on the possibility of using wiki software for ontology management back then on 2018, i just realized that "wiki is probably good for personal note taking". From there, at first, i forked pmwiki and modify its UI and UX, focusing it more for personal notetaking than a community wiki. Later, i completely rewrite everything from scratch, aiming for performance reasons (https://github.com/altilunium/rtnF). Now, i use it everyday for my personal use. In fact, this comment is drafted on rtnF first. HackerNews' textarea is too small for me to compose a long text.

Then, out there, coincidentally "networked note" application is booming. Roam Research, Obsidian, and even more : https://www.notion.so/Artificial-Brain-Networked-with-linear... . I dont know who is the actual first inventor. I think Roam popularized it first on the public.

Later, people start asking frequently "which notetaking app do you use?". The realization that people do need a notetaking app. Text editor and word processing software are not enough for notetaking. Because the former is intended just for editing a file and the latter is intended for producing printed document. Notetaking is different usecase. Well, even though the frequent answer like "i use pen and paper" "i use my own brain" is rampant on this kind of thread.

Whether on this is a fad or not, i think some people actually need this kind of app. But i doubt whether everyone need it or not. For me who usually research things, collect data from experiments, write down important texts from papers and articles, write down important information while attending online meetings. All of those can be stored and managed on this kind of app. Using text editor and word processing software for this kind of usecase will make your folder cluttered with files, it's hard to manage it.

>I wonder if this link-setting which is still a manual task would not get tedious over time. Then, I could imagine that finding content is still faster with a full-text search or question-answering DL models than clicking through all your links.

Link forces you to organize your notes, i think. Even though i agree that it get tedious over time.

Back then i used basic text editor to create personal notes. But over times, i got cluttered folder with a lot of .txt files.

Then i made this as a replacement, a web-based notetaking app. With WYSIWYG editor, support linking to other notes (wikilink), image paste support, basic formatting, autosaves.

https://github.com/altilunium/rtnF

Screenshot : https://github.com/altilunium/rtnF/blob/main/rtnf_screenshot...

https://github.com/altilunium/rtnF : Re-written from scratch

I'm still struggling to differentiate this from a wiki, since its main feature is still the [[WikiLink]]. The best thing i could think up for now is to modify the wiki's UI and UX for personal note taking usage. To create "networked-notetaking application". Pivoting my research goal from "organization-knowledge-management" to "personal-knowledge-management".

The idea of "knowledge-graph-based social networks" is cool, but dont you think that the "post + comment thread" pattern, the "interest group" pattern and the "one-to-one direct communication" pattern are irreplaceable in a social network ?

Even the wiki itself is using a rudimentary system to simulate those pattern on top of its knowledge graph structure. Lot of people, communicating together by editing the same single page, just like using a single blackboard together. (For example, see the "Talk" page on wikipedia)

> What does ownership mean here?

It means owning the code and the data. With webapps, the code and data are hosted and owned, the users do not own the code, cannot run it independently. This is a clear dileneation between owner and user, and the owners can use that clear line to create artificial scarcity of various kinds. (The most popular being the subscription SaaS model). It's also easier to defend your IP since end users never see your binaries.

I like to make my software single html files whenever possible. People can just save them and run them locally. Havent met anyone who cares yet though.

I like that idea a lot, and I care. I think others care, but yes, it's a niche interest. Take a look at https://tiddlywiki.com/ for an example of a fairly successful project that uses the single html format running locally. However it suffers from limitations on File|Save which often requires a separate runtime of some kind to support.

Another project that approaches this ideal is https://redbean.dev/, @jart's tiny, performant, featureful single-file webserver. In this case the "single file" is a server executable + zip whose state must be updated on the command-line, but I think hits a sweet spot in terms of practicality, and a global minima when it comes to minimizing dependencies. (Redbean bundles SQLite and Lua so it's also possible to do through-the-web state updates as in a traditional webapp.)

My own project, Simpatico, aspires to be something along these lines. Eventually your browser tab is both a client and server process, connecting via websockets to other connected browsers, storing all state locally. I call this pattern "monomorphism", a play on the "isomorphic" javascript SPA. The server[2] is currently written in ~1 node file, but eventually I would like to port to redbean (and greenbean, the websocket version of redbean, but it isn't quite ready yet). The server grew several features to support a fast, practical BTD loop using markdown[1], and safe, performant execution on the public internet[2], but ultimately I'd like to pare it down to serving a single html file and allow the connected clients to provide all diversity of experience. I've used it to explore all kinds of browser apis, from crypto[3] to svg[4] to writing my own libraries (combine[4] and stree[5]). And it's all running locally, and easily hosted on a $5 VPS, and its all open source.

1 - https://simpatico.io/lit.md

2 - https://simpatico.io/reflector

3 - https://simpatico.io/crypto

4 - https://simpatico.io/combine

5 - https://simpatico.io/stree

I use TiddlyWiki. It's a portable editable wiki that doesn't require a web server or web hosting. You open it from your computer, edit it, and save it. You get all of the linking that you'd expect to see in a wiki, and it's super readable and easy to use.

It is a single-HTML-file TiddlyWiki instance that runs in a web browser (offline as well as online), meant to be downloaded and stored wherever suits you best. Everything that you see when working in BASIC Anywhere Machine (everything that makes "BAM" work as an IDE and all BASIC programs) exist in the one HTML file.

TiddlyWiki still works as intended: https://tiddlywiki.com/#GettingStarted but there are so many different clients to run on. Mobile or Desktop ? What OS? What Browser?

This effort https://val.packett.cool/blog/tiddlypwa/ is remarkable as the mobile side of saving is not as robust as on the desktop side of things and there is a scaling limit on performance as the number of tiddlers grows. Also the syncing between tw documents between different desktop/mobile clients can be a challenge with diffing.

Since then I've moved back to plain vanilla vim for a wiki (map gf :tabe ) but tw.html is still good for data other than plain text and TiddlyPWA https://tiddly.packett.cool/ is a great effort to revisit TiddlyWiki again.

You should check out TiddlyWiki as it’s designed around the concept that small linkable notes are the best way to organize.

https://tiddlywiki.com/

It’s html based so you can access it in the same way you would access a website but it can be locally stored. Saving is a bit tricky but there are multiple solutions detailed on their site. https://tiddlywiki.com/

Hi, you can use tw on nodejs with npm package tiddlywiki....