My latest project... will it last?... is to go all-in with Dynalist. I am going to try to use it to replace as many different apps as possible that I've used for note taking repositories - notably The Archive, DEVONthink, Ulysses, iA Writer, OmniOutliner, iThoughts, MindNode.

I got sick of knowing that I'd written something but not knowing where I might find it.

I have a soft spot for outliners so Dynalist had a natural advantage. The only downside is the non-integration with macOS which I use 98% of the time. Such is the price to pay adopting a web application.

But OmniOutliner, for all its Mac-ness, was too fiddly, too document-centric and had no support for Markdown - not to mention its overwrought styling system. It Mac-ness couldn't overcome these downfalls.

So now I've bought an annual licence for Dynalist and I'm going to try _really_ hard not to tire of it after a couple of months.

If you haven't already done so, check out https://userstyles.org/ for Dynalist themes. They can greatly enhance the experience.

I'm using 4 at the moment: Darknest Hour 1.2, Dynalist Dark Custom, Dynalist Row Separator, and one that's just called Dynalist (that uses typewriter font I like).

For Chrome, there is also the "Clip to Dynalist" extension, which I can't do without.

Haha. This was me a year ago!

(Now I’m moving everything to Roam...)

I did experiment with Roam, but the combination of the price and the poor iOS experience put me off.

Of course, everything is subject to change at any time!

That makes sense. I was an early user of Roam so I have access to a free "graph" (as they call each database) which they say I can use indefinitely without paying. If I didn't I'm not sure if I'd be willing to pay or not. Do note, however, that they are pretty free with discounts if you write to them to explain why the price is too high for you. And while the dynalist iOS app is much better, the Roam progressive web app (PWA) isn't too shabby.

Drewster wrote:

I did experiment with Roam, but the combination of the price and the
poor iOS experience put me off.

Of course, everything is subject to change at any time!

Have you looked at Obsidian at all? I wonder how you would compare it to Roam. Thanks.

Daly

Luhmann wrote:

That makes sense. I was an early user of Roam so I have access to a free
"graph" (as they call each database) which they say I can use
indefinitely without paying. If I didn't I'm not sure if I'd be willing
to pay or not. Do note, however, that they are pretty free with
discounts if you write to them to explain why the price is too high for
you. And while the dynalist iOS app is much better, the Roam progressive
web app (PWA) isn't too shabby.

Drewster wrote:
> I did experiment with Roam, but the combination of the price and the
>poor iOS experience put me off.
>
>Of course, everything is subject to change at any time!

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Have you looked at Obsidian at all?

Note that Obsidian is from the same authors as Dynalist. But both are different, Obsidian is not a traditional outliner.

https://blog.dynalist.io/obsidian/

Have you looked at Obsidian at all?

I have Obsidian installed and I've played around with it. I was previously invested in The Archive and DevonThink with respect to experimenting with "zettelkasten" style notetaking.

I know Obsidian is the poster boy at the moment, but it's not for me.

Right, who knows if it will last. But for me, I've noticed that Dynalist, over the past couple of years, has quietly moved to the center of my work. It's a journal, a project management tool (for my relatively modest needs), and the tool of choice to start writing or thinking. I still use Simplenote for those small bits of info I seem to refer to fairly frequently. I use Google Keep for shopping lists. I use Google Docs for final polish or collaboration. As mentioned in another post, I have rediscovered the VYM Linux mindmapper, which I use for planning talks. But Dynalist has grown organically into my main app. It's not only frictionless, an easy writing tool that works the way my mind does, but it's very easy to paste from or into. I also use the Clipper Chrome extension.

I do hear you about wondering where the hell you might have stashed something. I miss the old Palm Pilot, which allowed you to do one search, and scan all your pdb files.

Here's to a 2021 that may bring just a little more focus and clarity to our lives.

Thanks Christoph.

I am aware that Obsidian developers also created Dynalist.

I have spent many hours learning how others use Obsidian - and I like what I see.

Clearly, Obsidian is not a traditional outliner. Once I get my Windows laptop fired up again I will be trying Obsidian.

As a result of learning how others think about/use Obsidian my own thinking is shifting. I am doing more in Dynalist, especially in terms of processing information, and not just using it as a place to keep notes.

Daly

Christoph wrote:

Daly de Gagne wrote:
Have you looked at Obsidian at all?

Note that Obsidian is from the same authors as Dynalist. But both are
different, Obsidian is not a traditional outliner.

https://blog.dynalist.io/obsidian/

Luhmann wrote:

That makes sense. I was an early user of Roam so I have access to a free
"graph" (as they call each database) which they say I can use
indefinitely without paying.

Do you remember where you might have read that Roam will continue to provide free access to that free graph indefinitely?

avernet wrote:

Do you remember where you might have read that Roam will continue to
provide free access to that free graph indefinitely?

It was discussed many times on their official Reddit page, and the founder might have commented on it on Twitter as well. There was no 100% guarantee given that it will stay that way for ever. My understanding is that they didn't find it worthwhile to spend coding time on locking out the free beta users.

From a marketing point of view it was the right decision, as beta users tend to be the ones who would be creating word-of-mouth buzz about the service on various forums (as it happened over here).

I've seen it on Twitter, Reddit, and the Slack channel. Basically, you can keep your existing graphs, but can't create any new ones without paying.

I like Obsidian a lot, and I like the developers a lot, but I want an outliner and Obsidian is not an outliner. (As I define it, I know some forum members have a more flexible idea of what constitutes and outliner.) However, the Obsidian developers did suggest they might start work on "Dynalist 2.0" after they are done with Obsidian. Basically, a re-write of Dynalist that includes some of what they learned from making Obsidian. That sounds ideal to me, but it could be a long way off (or even never, they didn't make any promises).

Luhmann wrote:

However, the Obsidian developers did suggest they might start
work on "Dynalist 2.0" after they are done with Obsidian. Basically, a
re-write of Dynalist that includes some of what they learned from making
Obsidian. That sounds ideal to me, but it could be a long way off (or
even never, they didn't make any promises).

That would make a lot of sense as I suspect Dynalist appeals to a much broader market (e.g. WorkFlowy users) than Obsidian, which is a bit of a niche (it doesn't even fit my use case, and normally I'd be all over this kind of stuff).

jaslar wrote:

Right, who knows if it will last. But for me, I've noticed that
Dynalist, over the past couple of years, has quietly moved to the center
of my work. It's a journal, a project management tool

For me, it seemed that Dynalist was the best choice when I came to the somewhat obvious realisation that everything is an outline. Mind map? It’s an outline. Kanban board? It’s an outline. Chapters and paragraph styles? It’s an outline. Diaries and daily notes? It’s an outline.

So if everything at its essence is an outline, why not use an outliner? So here I am.

Drewster wrote:

So if everything at its essence is an outline, why not use an outliner?

Yes, but I believe your premise that everything is in essence an outline is wrong. Take a hen and and egg. What comes first if you want to put them in a hierarchical outline?

Christoph wrote:

I believe your premise that everything is in essence an outline
is wrong.

This article explains it very well. Networks (graphs) are more than just trees (outlines):

https://medium.com/the-graph/trees-vs-networks-f7aef799f75e

That's why I now prefer Obsidian over simple outliners, which I have used for a long time as well.

Of course, everything you can do with an outliner, you can also do with Obsidian, as trees are just a special kind of graphs. But Obsidian gives you more flexibility.

Dr Andus wrote:

It was discussed many times on their official Reddit page, and the
founder might have commented on it on Twitter as well. There was no 100%
guarantee given that it will stay that way for ever. My understanding is
that they didn't find it worthwhile to spend coding time on locking out
the free beta users.

Luhmann wrote:

I've seen it on Twitter, Reddit, and the Slack channel. Basically, you
can keep your existing graphs, but can't create any new ones without
paying.

Got it, and thank you Dr Andus + Luhmann for confirming this. I had noticed my initial graph was apparently still usable, but hadn't read anything about this so didn't know this was part of a "strategy".

Dr Andus wrote:

Luhmann wrote:
>However, the Obsidian developers did suggest they might start
>work on "Dynalist 2.0" after they are done with Obsidian. Basically, a
>re-write of Dynalist that includes some of what they learned from
making
>Obsidian. That sounds ideal to me, but it could be a long way off (or
>even never, they didn't make any promises).

That would make a lot of sense as I suspect Dynalist appeals to a much
broader market (e.g. WorkFlowy users) than Obsidian, which is a bit of a
niche (it doesn't even fit my use case, and normally I'd be all over
this kind of stuff).

My perception is that, in 2020, Obsidian created more buzz in the productivity space than Dynalist or WorkFlowy ever did. Maybe even more so than Roam Research and Notion, or on par with those. Will the commercial success be commensurate to that buzz? If so, even with Erica and Shida being are amazing developers, it might be hard for them to keep their focus on Dynalist if it generates significantly less interest (thus potential) and maybe even revenue than Obsidian. Does anyone here have a crystal ball they can read to know how those products will evolve in the next few years? ;)

Christoph wrote:

Of course, everything you can do with an outliner, you can also do with
Obsidian, as trees are just a special kind of graphs. But Obsidian gives
you more flexibility.

What about:

- Zooming/focusing at any level (not just headings).
- Folding/unfolding at any level (not just headings, and with the folded/unfolded state being part of the data structure).

To me, outliners, with WorkFlowy being the prototypical example thereof, are fundamentally different. Let me stress "different". But for a given person, an outliner might be better, in particular if it better reflects the way one tends to mentally organize thoughts in their head, either by habit or for some other reason.

As the originator of this thread, I thought it would be appropriate for me to share a post I wrote (using Dynalist - and therein lies a story) about using Dynalist as my daily notes repository. I hope it's of interest to the readers here.

https://canion.me/dynalist-as-a-tool-for-daily-notes

Christoph wrote:

Drewster wrote:
>So if everything at its essence is an outline, why not use an outliner?

Yes, but I believe your premise that everything is in essence an outline
is wrong. Take a hen and and egg. What comes first if you want to put
them in a hierarchical outline?

I tried to answer but I returned a Stack Overflow error.

:-)

Drewster wrote:

As the originator of this thread, I thought it would be appropriate for
me to share a post I wrote (using Dynalist - and therein lies a story)

Thanks for the write-up. I would agree that many things can be structured as outlines. Just not everything. Btw, Obsidian also has a Daily Note feature and a calendar plugin that supplements it quite nicely.

I also agree that "zooming" (hoisting) is a really useful feature. There are already requests to get this into Obsidian as well (for bullet points and headings in Markdown pages). Obsidian also has a view that is called "local graph" which is a similar feature.

avernet wrote:

My perception is that, in 2020, Obsidian created more buzz in the
productivity space than Dynalist or WorkFlowy ever did. Maybe even more
so than Roam Research and Notion, or on par with those.

The buzz around Roam, Obsidian and Notion has been an interesting phenomenon.

My sense is (just from looking at the fresh faces on Youtube being excited about these) is that a new generation has just grown up who have discovered the specialist need for digital outlining, knowledge building, note-taking etc., while their peers are content with keeping notes in MS Word files, Google Docs or in Evernote (apart from the sophisticated folk on this forum who are a very niche crowd, and who's average age is probably that of the parents or grandparents of this new crowd).

This buzz suggests that maybe the market for these outlining tools is widening (though it's probably still a niche compared to the mainstream digital tools everyone else uses at work or in school).

I guess what this new generation might not realise that there has been a previous wave of outliners etc. in the past few decades, some of which were pretty good and had some innovative ideas. There used to be a live spreadsheet circulated here that listed most of them, but in recent years many of these have disappeared, so the ecosystem has become poorer.

There should be some kind of a digital museum where all these tools could be preserved for posterity...

Dr Andus wrote:

My sense is (just from looking at the fresh faces on Youtube being
excited about these) is that a new generation has just grown up who have
discovered the specialist need for digital outlining, knowledge
building, note-taking etc.

They also have more pressure to organize their knowledge than we had since the information flood and has only grown over the years, and the half-life time of knowledge has decreased. Plus, many now need to work from home office and probably use this to better organize their knowledge management.

And I think this is not only a hype, these new tools bring something really genuinely useful and new. For instance, use of Markdown to avoid vendor lock-in, back-links and more flexible graphs than outliners can offer. At the same time they are less complicated than personal wikis which usually had peculiar, ugly syntax and were not a joy to use.