xournalpp VS logseq

I tried a whole bunch of the these apps, and I decided that Xournal++ [1] is better than Rnote for note taking. However, I have used Openboard [2] for teaching online since 2020.

I agree that Rnote's smoothing is better, but it's tool selection UX is terrible. There are three different bars (top, bottom, and side), and you often need to move your mouse/hand to all of them across the screen in order to select the right tool. In Xournal++ I can put everything on the top bar.

Xournal++ has it's own problems. Pasting an image always makes it so big, that resizing to the correct size is difficult. It also doesn't have a laser pointer, which is why I can't use it for teaching. Creating a new document with the correct template is also painful.

Honestly, in another life, I would write a decent note-taking app.

[1] https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/

[2] https://github.com/OpenBoard-org/OpenBoard/

I highly recommend Rnote to anyone on Linux that misses the "hodgepodge" notetaking of apps like OneNote. It works like a dream on touchscreens and drawing tablets, with a surprising amount of configuration under the hood.

Also worth noting is Xournal, an older but similar project: https://xournalpp.github.io/

I've been using Xournalpp[1] for many years, highlighting books as I read them, adding in text/hand drawn annotations in whitespaces if necessary. Unlike other PDF readers/annotators, it saves a separate file, so the original PDF is untouched. It can also export the annotated PDF as a new PDF with highlights and annotations.

Obsidian[2] also has PDF support, where you can open a markdown document side by side with the PDF to take notes as you read. I think it also lets you highlight the PDF itself.

Emacs I think has a similar feature, via plugins/org-mode(?) to the Obsidian setup.

And of course your typical PDF reader probably has support for highlighting PDFs too, but I find them clunky and they save by exporting a PDF, which can be a bit heavy-handed IMO compared to just saving the annotations/highlights as a separate file as Xournalpp does.

[1]: https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/

Currently, I am trying to build a small open source NLP project for which I first find text on a page and then translate it; see the current project state here: https://github.com/PellelNitram/xournalpp_htr. The purpose of this project is to make handwritten text in Xournal++ searchable for all users.

I decided to write down my family history, and I'm looking for special software to help me with it.

I want the information to be structured. I want to navigate easily between persons, places, events, timelines, see interconnected items, etc.

The best option I found is logseq (https://github.com/logseq/logseq). Are there any better options? How do you manage your family history?

I previously discussed how to apply this method using Logseq, another popular tool that has strong support for journaling. This time, we'll explore how to apply the same principles to Obsidian, another very popular note-taking app.

logseq

1. LogSeq - Notes taking app. Notes taking is a good habit, and I was using obsidian for a very long time, and today I across a new tool named logseq. They are complimentary to each other and I will use them for journaling.

Does anyone have a "lab notebook" style of PKM in Emacs?

I used to use Org-Roam in Emacs, but fell in love with Logseq [0], primarily because

1. it has a "daily journal" default workflow (though individual pages are supported)

2. the support of datalog queries

3. templates

This basically allows me to make templates for things I need (e.g. meeting notes, etc) and to write a few key queries (that are also templated for reuse) to do things like get the most overdue tasks, upcoming, things I promised to others, things I'm waiting on, etc. I can even drill down and get that stuff for an individual "page", e.g. "Emacs" or "C++".

The lack of a "lab journal" format + flexible queries makes going back to other solutions not as enticing, as the "perfect artifact" of wiki-esque editing (and not being able to easily see backlinks) is not as easy. I can open my Logseq folder, make a "meeting" template, then #tag the people and topics discussed, and be able to go back later and make a query to see when I discussed #topic with #person.

I would love to move this back into Emacs, as I hate having a separate tool for PKM, so if anyone has a similar workflow (or at least flexible queries on "tags" and task status, backlinks, etc, even without the daily journal thing), I'd be grateful for any tips.

[0] https://logseq.com/

logseq fully free and open-source Obsidan-like tool with fewer plugins, however, it also gives you a chance to complex everything a lot. I have been using it for less than a year, however at some point, I noticed that I'm writing longer forms in Obsidian, and daily notes in Logseq. Why? Due Logseq design. It starts everything as a new point with -, even if it's a standard Markdown. We’re starting everything at a new point. Issues?

I would recommend https://logseq.com/

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://discuss.logseq.com/t/why-the-database-version-and-ho...

Unfortunately, I think it's ultimately unethical to support the normalization of closed-source text-editing software, because it sets a bad precedent for the level of trust a user should have in their computing environment. For this reason, I much prefer Logseq. https://logseq.com/

I really like Logseq, and I feel it's the only one of the note-taking tools that has the tradeoffs I want (outliner, local-first, focuses on content on a block-by-block basis, has backlinks), but recently there's been not much happening, and the mobile app has been slightly broken for me for a while now (when opening a note I often can't add new bullet points, so I end up writing notes in an invalid format).

I'm really looking forward to their db-oriented version which is supposed to be merged into main (here's the long-lived branch[0]) this month. Presumably that will bring the project back up to speed, since that branch is currently almost 4k (!!!) commits ahead of main.

At the same time, I'm a bit worried about how the company is gonna sustain itself. After all they raised quite a bit of money, while at the same time I'm not sure how large a market there is for commercialisation of an open-source PKM app like this. Esp. since it looks like its market-share is maybe ~1/10th that of Obsidian (based on most popular plugin download counts). TFA is kind of related to this.

While Obsidian is great from a sustainability perspective (it seems to me) but unfortunately it comes short of being a good outliner.

[0]: https://github.com/logseq/logseq/tree/feat/db