"Explain Like I'm Five": Zettelkasten

Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 24, 2015 at 04:23 PM

zoe wrote:
>So in your CT setup, it
>appears that you have a markup template when you create a new note.

Yes, the template is a plain text file with CT markup.

>the source of the quote

The highlighted text in the reference (Vickers etc.) shows that those are attribute links (using CT’s attribute markup). So you can click on the author’s name, and it will go to a meta page with all the entries for that author. The same with the year, the title, and the publication or publisher.

>then (I assume) and automatically populated list of other fragments
>which are associated with that date—so you may retrace your train of
>thought on that day, which probably relates to the source material.

Yes, that’s an optional feature, such as the calendar (both can be turned off). It is a function of CT’s special “date topic.” So date topics with the same date in the title can be displayed within the body of each note for that day. (I believe these were created to use CT as a calendar and for daily task management, so you can see your tasks for the given day.)

>In the bog-basic CT setup (the Welcome Project tutorial), much is made
>of the Categories system, however I find your metadata more in line with
>what I’m looking for: context for trains of thought, and
>incoming/outgoing connections.

In a way it’s up to you what you use the categories for. I use them as labels or tags, to categorise the content. I have 973 categories in my main Quotes & Notes database, and prefer not to organise them hierarchically into a sub-category tree, but it’s possible to do so.

> I’m
>supposing that the backlinks and outlinks map finds more use in other
>types of entries.

Sorry, this was the wrong example to illustrate the utility of links (the screenshot was originally made to illustrate how the date and time ID is displayed in the topic titles). But the back links, out links, and the graph are automatically populated when there are such links from a note. It’s just that this particular note doesn’t have any incoming or outgoing links. But the graph at the bottom actually gives you a TheBrain-like star-formation of outgoing links, when there are any, on which you can click.