Really ought to point out that NotePlan is Mac-only.

MadaboutDana wrote:

It’s worth mentioning, incidentally, that the exceptionally
brilliant NotePlan supports wiki-style links and gives you a smart
dropdown list of links as soon as you type your double-brackets. This
combines with the automatic dropdown list of tags that appears as soon
as you type a hashtag. Oh, and Eduard has just introduced smart folders
(well, saved smart searches - effectively the same thing). The
combination is awesomely powerful.

Eduard has also promised folding in the near future. He’s a gem!

For my personal task management, I’m a total convert to NotePlan.
I mean I haven’t even been tempted by anything else for months!

Not least because you can edit NotePlan’s markdown notes (in both
the Calendar and Notes categories) using any Markdown editor. So if
you’re caught short without NotePlan, but have access to iCloud,
you can change things directly. It also means all data is easily
transferable elsewhere in the exceptionally unfortunate event that
NotePlan suddenly ceases to exist.

Cheers!
Bill

I read the suggestion to use Nativefier with Roam over on Appademic and installed it last night. Not offline, mind, but I appreciate the ability to treat it as its own instance.

https://appademic.tech/how-to-turn-any-website-into-a-native-mac-app/

MenAgerie wrote:

I emailed Conor White-Sullivan at the end of October. He said a desktop
version was "three to six months" away

Beck wrote:

I read the suggestion to use Nativefier with Roam over on Appademic and
installed it last night. Not offline, mind, but I appreciate the ability
to treat it as its own instance.

And where does the "nativefied" Roam store the data?

Oh, it's all completely web-app, same as in any browser window, just evoked through an "app" named "Roam.app" and running it its own instance so I can easily ⌘+Tab to it and the like. Sorry to be unclear.

Franz Grieser wrote:

Beck wrote:
>I read the suggestion to use Nativefier with Roam over on Appademic and
>installed it last night. Not offline, mind, but I appreciate the
ability
>to treat it as its own instance.

And where does the "nativefied" Roam store the data?

Beck wrote:

Oh, it's all completely web-app, same as in any browser window, just
evoked through an "app" named "Roam.app" and running it its own instance
so I can easily ⌘+Tab to it and the like. Sorry to be unclear.

So: Your data are stored on the Roam server not on your local disk. Right?

That's right - at present, it's solely a cloud service. The "app" is simply a frontend to the web - saves having to open the browser and navigate, or maintain open tabs/windows

Franz Grieser wrote:

Beck wrote:
>Oh, it's all completely web-app, same as in any browser window, just
>evoked through an "app" named "Roam.app" and running it its own
instance
>so I can easily ⌘+Tab to it and the like. Sorry to be unclear.

So: Your data are stored on the Roam server not on your local disk.
Right?

Thanks, NickG

https://appmaker.xyz/ does a similar job in windows

Beck wrote:

It's been a month since Roam came on my radar and wondering if anyone
here is finding it useful?

Still just experimenting... It does take some concentrated effort to watch the videos and play around in order to start imagining the possibilities.

I am a heavy WorkFlowy user and I also use Dynalist for some specific purposes (and a longstanding ConnectedText user), but RoamResearch offers some competitive features those don't have, enabling entirely new ways of managing tasks (which is what I'm focusing on right now).

Initially I was sceptical about the forced creation of the daily (dated) notes, thinking that I'll ignore that, but I'm starting to realise that the lack of that is what may the the big weakness of WorkFlowy/Dynalist.

You can of course create such daily notes with a date manually, but there is something about enforcing the discipline that makes a difference. In WorkFlowy I just wasn't able to stay consistent doing that manually.

Ultimately my huge WorkFlowy file is a massive forest of thousands of trees and branches, and while search is good, it's becoming increasingly difficult to manage related items as the database grows (with many duplications, triplications etc.), especially when needing to find stuff on the spot, under time pressure (e.g. to recall info in a meeting).

This is where Roam excels. The bidirectional links allow a whole new way of relating to and organising data, and finding important stuff.

The filtering system is the other killer feature. You can create all kinds of customised ways of focusing on information (by including or excluding info).

Being able to display a second note in the same window is also very helpful (and something WorkFlowy/Dynalist can't do).

I haven't found the graph view all that useful yet, but it's early days.

As it's still a beta, there are some bugs and limitations.

For me to fully commit to this system I'd need an automatic daily backup to Google Drive or Dropbox and similar.

Also, the system would need to become much faster, which I presume is a matter of investment into resources.

But it is an ingenious system already, definitely one of the more exciting developments since WorkFlowy/Dynalist have appeared.

BTW, I recommend using the Stylus extension with this dark themed stylesheet:

https://userstyles.org/styles/180163/roam-research-dark

Actually I was maybe a bit too reserved in my comment.

I bl**dy love this thing!!!

Dr Andus wrote:

For me to fully commit to this system I'd need an automatic daily backup
to Google Drive or Dropbox and similar.

I see that someone has actually created an automated backup system (every 15 min.) to Github:

https://github.com/signalnerve/roam-backup

An interesting discussion about Roam Research vis-a-vis Dynalist:

https://talk.dynalist.io/t/roam-research-new-web-based-outliner-that-supports-transclusion-wiki-features-thoughts/5911

Thought I would share this here

Welcome to TiddlyBlink! TiddlyBlink is an adaptation of TiddlyWiki with the goal of helping you see connections between your ideas, and move quickly from one idea to another. It was inspired by the bi-directional linking found in Roam (https://roamresearch.com/ but built with capabilities already available in TiddlyWiki (https://tiddlywiki.com See my example file here.
https://giffmex.org/gifts/tiddlyblink.html

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tiddlywiki/oWNZa3i4EoE

This sounds interesting.

Is it compatible with NoteSelf?

TiddlyBlink sounds very interesting! My biggest issue with RoamResearch is that it doesn't have offline access or local sync. I always thought TiddlyWiki is an open source ancestor to RoamResearch with similar capacities plus offline access. Where RoamResearch is different, and more optimised than TiddlyWiki is in the database backend, which is a graph database. I presume that once the databse starts getting really big, performance would be much better in RoamResearch.

Nomatica, have you tried TiddlyMap? You could install it as a plug-in to your TiddlyBlink (or any TiddlyWiki) and you'd also get the graph visualisation. In live view you can see all the tiddlers that link to your selected tiddler, like Roam's graph visualisations. In addition, you can create and save custom views to focus on some relations/connections that you can then embed into other tiddlers. It's very flexible, with a very sleek infinite zoom.

Thanks for sharing your TiddlyWiki adaptation!

Nomatica wrote:

TiddlyBlink is an adaptation of TiddlyWiki with
the goal of helping you see connections between your ideas, and move
quickly from one idea to another. It was inspired by the bi-directional
linking found in Roam (https://roamresearch.com/ but built with
capabilities already available in TiddlyWiki (https://tiddlywiki.com

"Rudimentary Roam replica with Org-mode"

https://github.com/jethrokuan/org-roam/

Looks very cool, I'd love to have something like this but I can't see myself going into the trouble of learning Org-mode etc., as I just haven't got the time...

I finally tried Roam and am really impressed. What I really love is that you don't have to move items to file them away. This is a big problem with outliners and task managers, where you constantly have to monitor and sort your inbox. Roam's ability to generate pages related to any keyword or tag means that you can move something just by tagging, while it still remains in its original location. This is important because items always remain their context: whether that context was a document you were reading, a journal entry, meeting notes, whatever. And it shows you that context as well as the linked text. For me this is the real genius of it all - the way context is preserved. If I tag a quote from a book, when I look at the page for that tag I'll see the title page for that item which is the name of that book. So not only do I not have to move my quote from the book page to a new page of selected quotes related to the topic and then copy all the meta data over as well, I can just add the tag and see the item on the new page along with the metadata! It is really a much better way of doing things. It basically is a zettelkasten without having to do all the annoying work that makes it impossible for most people to maintain a zettelkasten.

Right now the biggest problem for me is that the mobile version of the app doesn't work well on the iPhone's mobile safari web browser. (I couldn't delete a node, I couldn't upload a photo, the page always defaults to a quick entry screen instead of the page I was last using, etc.) But if that were all to be fixed, I could really see myself jumping ship and moving a lot of my Dynalist data (or all of it?) over to Roam. Right now though, Dynalist remains a much more polished product. Their mobile app is not great, but compared to Roam it is far superior. Also, Dynalist's sharing interface is much more advanced which makes it better for collaborative projects or just making individual outlines public. I'm glad to see the active discussion of Roam on the Dynalist forums and I hope they can figure out a way to capture some of what makes Roam so revolutionary.

Roam is so different from anything else it really takes some time to explore, but I really think it is a new paradigm. I look forward to not only seeing it develop, but also seeing how other developers get inspired by this approach. It would be great to see something like VoodooPad be developed which could bring Roam's approach to a native app for Mac and iOS. This would allow for more secure data storage, offline access, and tighter integration with other apps...

Edu Nv wrote:

TiddlyBlink sounds very interesting! My biggest issue with RoamResearch
is that it doesn't have offline access or local sync. I always thought
TiddlyWiki is an open source ancestor to RoamResearch with similar
capacities plus offline access. Where RoamResearch is different, and
more optimised than TiddlyWiki is in the database backend, which is a
graph database. I presume that once the databse starts getting really
big, performance would be much better in RoamResearch.

Have you tried to use tiddlywiki for anything large? I have barely explored it, but it has quite a following. I am curious if people have used it for large projects and how it has responded to the growth.

Nomatica, have you tried TiddlyMap? You could install it as a plug-in to
your TiddlyBlink (or any TiddlyWiki) and you'd also get the graph
visualisation. In live view you can see all the tiddlers that link to
your selected tiddler, like Roam's graph visualisations. In addition,
you can create and save custom views to focus on some
relations/connections that you can then embed into other tiddlers. It's
very flexible, with a very sleek infinite zoom.

Thanks for sharing your TiddlyWiki adaptation!

I am familiar with TiddlyMap, but have not explored it. The whole tiddly ecosystem seems very interesting.
It is not my adaptation. I was posting quickly and decided to copy text from the TiddlyBlink's website to help provide some context. While that might have been helpful. It also makes it look like I was the creator. I am not. Just a fan. Sorry for the confusion.

Nomatica wrote:
>TiddlyBlink is an adaptation of TiddlyWiki with
>the goal of helping you see connections between your ideas, and move
>quickly from one idea to another. It was inspired by the bi-directional
>linking found in Roam (https://roamresearch.com/ but built with
>capabilities already available in TiddlyWiki (https://tiddlywiki.com

Thanks, Nomatica, for the clarification.

I haven't used TiddlyWiki with a very large collection. It handles 2000 tiddlers without any problem, but I have no idea how it would be with hundreds of thousands of tiddlers for example. Since everything is contained in a single html file, I anticipate it would hit performance issues sooner than Roam's graph database backend. On the other hand, having everything on a portable html file makes it very durable and accessible.

TiddlyWiki is no longer limited to a single HTML file, though you can still run it that way. These days it seems to be more common to run it in a configuration where each tiddler is stored as an individual file.

--Chris

Edu Nv wrote:

Thanks, Nomatica, for the clarification.

I haven't used TiddlyWiki with a very large collection. It handles 2000
tiddlers without any problem, but I have no idea how it would be with
hundreds of thousands of tiddlers for example. Since everything is
contained in a single html file, I anticipate it would hit performance
issues sooner than Roam's graph database backend. On the other hand,
having everything on a portable html file makes it very durable and
accessible.

Dr Andus wrote:

BTW, I recommend using the Stylus extension with this dark themed
stylesheet:

https://userstyles.org/styles/180163/roam-research-dark

I took this screenshot for another purpose, but I might just as well share it here. It shows what a RoamResearch page looks like with the above dark theme:

https://imgur.com/a/fLQKcs1

This is showing my calendar page, which I created to make it easier to track and revisit tasks in my daily notes pages (which are automatically generated by RoamResearch). Some dates are missing, because I didn't use Roam on those days. Plus some days are still in the future. Unticked days mean that I need to revisit those pages, as they have some incomplete todos.

I see that charging ($15/month with some discounted categories) is planned for next month or thereabouts.

Interesting that they say specifically that the price is set to deter some users and get the numbers down

https://twitter.com/RoamResearch/status/1257857549606387712

I see that the wording was "Beta price for Roam will be $15/month". Perhaps the "post-beta" price will be higher? And a lower price for persons who "provide evidence they earned under 30k USD last year". What -- share income documents with some guy running a cloud service as if Roam was some social services organization? More of Roam's tone-deaf marketing and PR.

Meanwhile, on the bright side, Obsidian is moving along. Even just a few weeks into in very early development stages, it is ermerging as enjoyable, standalone alternative for many of Roam's core features.

NickG wrote:

I see that charging ($15/month with some discounted categories) is
planned for next month or thereabouts.

I imagine that the better features of Roam Research will be incorporated into other apps (Workflowy, for instance, soon will have "Roam-style backlinks") marketed by developers less ... eccentric ... than the Roam guy, so it won't matter what he charges.

From the same Roam Twitter feed: "Now starting to think it would be better to charge upfront and refund/give credits if you get bugs." What's a bug worth? Does everyone get a refund for the same bug, or just the person who reports it? Are some bugs worth more than other bugs? Must the bug in question earn less than $30k a year? Sounds like a good plan!

I doubt they'll be charging anytime soon. They just closed off new signups because of scaling issues. Some people lost data.