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My ZettelKasten App for you!

RyukRyuk
in Software & Gadgets

Hi, Folks! I created an easy-to-use Zettelkasten app that exports/import directly to Markdown compatible with Obsidian.

I don’t intend to compete with Obsidian, because that app is really powerful. But I am developing this app to actually help people to understand ZettelKasten from scratch and guide them properly through practice and creating notes.

So, I developed a small app that basically serves as an initial guide to the method: It walks you through it step by step and reminds you to review your temporary notes weekly instead of letting them pile up forever. It gives you a nudge when it thinks a group of notes is substantial enough to become a MOC. It suggests creating your own permanent notes when you already have many on a single topic. Basically, the “training wheels” I believe it's needed when someone starts with ZK!

Obviously, this app isn't perfect at all. Maybe, if you try it, you will find so many errors or mismatches with the method I can amend later, but I am excited I can apport something to this community about this :smile:

  • The app is 100% offline. No account needed, No Servers, No Subscriptions; actually, nothing leaves your device. You can make back ups of your notes and their connections in JSON, but you can also “export/import” using Markdown + “[[wikilinks]],” so if after using this app you want to move everything to Obsidian, or the opposite, bring everything from there over here and use this app as your main ZK... You can do so without any issues!

*** IT’S 100% FREE! *** The only thing I want to know is whether this is useful to anyone here or to anyone in general!

I’ll be happy to hear your feedback: https://zettlekasten-en.netlify.app/

Comments

  • harrharr
    edited September 2

    @Ryuk said:
    I’ll be happy to hear your feedback: https://zettlekasten-en.netlify.app/

    OK, here's some initial feedback:

    • The tours are useful, when you visit the app for the first time. They explain the app well. But when I revisit the app a second time, I want to skip the tours. Once is enough. :-)
    • Thanks for also providing a light theme. I prefer it over the dark theme.
    • I don't understand how "reference" works. Can I add only one reference? Why is the reference not visible, when I look at a permanent note in reading mode?
    • Examples. I'd find the app easier to understand if you provided much more concrete examples. The provided literature note should be a literature note, etc. Maybe prefill the demo with 50 to 100 notes, so that newbies can see how each type might look like, how they can be linked, etc.

    The basic idea of "training wheels" makes sense to me. But what should users do, when they want to take off the training wheels? Where should they move their exported data?

    I enjoy the app, because I like to explore and compare different approaches to digital zettelkastens. Thanks for letting us try it out!

  • GeoEng51GeoEng51

    @Ryuk said:
    I’ll be happy to hear your feedback: https://zettlekasten-en.netlify.app/

    Still looking at the app and could provide more feedback later. However, the dark mode is seriously hampering that effort. How do I switch to another theme?

    I made it through the "tour" but now I'm stuck having to create a zettel. I'd like to dive directly into the program, read the manual and create zettels when I decide to do so. Is there a way to get the program to turn control back to the user?

  • RyukRyuk

    @GeoEng51 said:

    @Ryuk said:
    I’ll be happy to hear your feedback: https://zettlekasten-en.netlify.app/

    Still looking at the app and could provide more feedback later. However, the dark mode is seriously hampering that effort. How do I switch to another theme?

    I made it through the "tour" but now I'm stuck having to create a zettel. I'd like to dive directly into the program, read the manual and create zettels when I decide to do so. Is there a way to get the program to turn control back to the user?

    Thanks very much for trying it! Seriously.

    Sure!! I can modify the app to not make the tour "obligatory" haha. I thought it was a great idea, but I know it can be a little "noisy" because it is having too much steps. After you finish all the tour, it will never appear again unless you click the "tour" button at the header top. However, I will change that functionality right now! So you can try it in a few hours please :smile:

    And yes, there is a button with a "sun" icon, you can click there and "light theme" will appear.

  • GeoEng51GeoEng51

    @Ryuk - ahh..much better...thank you!

  • GeoEng51GeoEng51
    edited September 4

    @Ryuk - Several comments/questions after 15 minutes of navigating around your introductory ZK.

    1. It took me a while to figure out how to find connections to a particular zettel. I could see there were connections in the ZK graph but wasn't sure how to find them until I stumbled across the Connections link in the right hand panel. This approach seems overly formal to me, now that I've found it. I'm used to seeing links (and tags for that matter) right in the body of the zettel, where they are clearly visible and where there is no friction to use them.
    2. I tried importing some markdown files; the app imported two files and then stopped, whereas there are several hundred in the folder.
    3. For the notes that were imported, which are in standard markdown format, there was no recognition of tags or links.
    4. How do you delete notes? There doesn't seem to be any way to do that.
  • harrharr
    edited September 4

    @Ryuk said:
    Sure!! I can modify the app to not make the tour "obligatory" haha. I thought it was a great idea, but I know it can be a little "noisy" because it is having too much steps. After you finish all the tour, it will never appear again unless you click the "tour" button at the header top. However, I will change that functionality right now! So you can try it in a few hours please :smile:

    Tried it. The tour is still blocking access to the app. :-( Clearing the browser cache didn't help. Trying it with different browsers didn't help.

    A "skip" button would be appreciated. :-)

    Ideally the tour would launch only on demand. Visibility of the tour should not depend on data stored in the browser. The tour keeps coming back in my browser, even after I had finished it. :-(

    BTW, where are the notes stored? In the browser? I like how https://app.diagrams.net handles in-browser storage. It notifies you when data needs to be saved/exported.

  • erikherikh

    @Ryuk thank you for the trial!

    This looks very promising. You seem to have put in quite some thought and quite some time to develop this!

    I’ve never developed an app, so my comments are just from a user perspective. I have no concept of how easy or difficult it would be to implement these. Also, mind that my comments are from someone who is used to TA and very happy with TA. So, please consider the below as friendly comments, not as criticism :)

    • Is this to be a downloadable app or a web app? And if web app, how does it know it’s me putting in notes? I assume you’ll be creating some kind of account structure where users needs to log in. That would enable syncing as well. If not, will that mean I’m bound to using it on a single computer? What if that computer stops functioning?
    • An account structure would also enable you to monetize it in the future, a big thing for users because it gives a kind of assurance that it’s more that a proof-of-concept. For example, for me one of the main reasons to go with TA when it launched was that it was nvAlt, but then with the promise of being developed and maintained. Such development and maintenance, not to mention the infrastructure, costs time and money, and as a users I’m willing to pay for that.
    • Where exactly are my notes and the connections? On my hard drive, or in the app? Uploaded to a web server?
    • Notes seem to have a unique ID in the app, like “ZK-I76TW4”. That suggests the app creates a kind of database. How does that work?
    • How to put a link to an external picture or a literature reference?
    • On my iPad the bottom of the screen gets partly hidden or is not completely visible, on my computer it’s looking fine.
    • It may be useful to let a user turn off some of the well-intentioned help, such as the “Remember” in the right panel or the auto pop-up reminding to create permanent notes.
    • The tags list will not scale gracefully. As an example, I have about 2500 tags (currently in 26 A-Z notes in TA).
    • It would be helpful to have “undo” and “redo” buttons / shortcuts. Example: if I create a heading 2, it cannot undo it, unless I go into the note and manually delete the ##.
    • Why only headings 2 and 3?
    • Cannot switch between headings 2 and 3, when I do both it gives ## ###.
    • “2 palabras 10 caracteres” still in Spanish.

    That’s it for now :)

    Happy to look at any update you may have.

  • ArchiMarkArchiMark

    @Ryuk Just tried your app and the tour.

    As others have said, it's clear you put a lot of work and thought into this. I do like the idea of the tour to help you learn the app quickly and as an intro for learning about ZK too.

    Agree with most of the comments above.

    I hope you will continue to develop the app and share its progress with all of us here.

    Best wishes,

    Mark

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