There is no "The Archive" for Windows, please suggest some other good choices to use in academia.

Jvet

Hi everyone I'm looking for software recommendations, the ones you vouch for, not necessarily what you have heard from.

I'm interested in using Zettlr with Obsidian.

Thank you!

drorsh

vscode has several great extensions that fit my needs as a graduate student. I use "markdown notes" extension, but you can also check out foam and "markdown memo"

Jvet

@drorsh said:
vscode has several great extensions that fit my needs as a graduate student. I use "markdown notes" extension, but you can also check out foam and "markdown memo"

I have no experience with coding or using visual studio. I'm looking for a more "tech-friendly" alternative. But thanks for suggesting what you use.

cctrovall

I have been using Obsidian for over a month now and have been very satisfied. My university computer uses the Microsoft ecosystem and I use a MacBook Pro at home. I store my Zettelkasten on Dropbox, using Obsidian as my interface at home on my MacBook and at work on my Thinkpad. My experience for what it is worth.

Splattack

For Windows;

• iA Writer

This is the one I use. It seamlessly let's you use markdown and images on your plain text (txt or md) files and preview them as html or pdf.

That's perfect for academia since you can quickly have your text and an image of the blackboard, a lab note's page, a graded homework, a diagram from an article, or a page of a book from the library. And you can sync your text files with dropbox or iCloud for accessing your notes on your phone. (I have one folder for text files and another for images).

Before iA Writer I used these for years

• Sublime Text
• Atom (free, heavily updated as it's an open source coding app)
• Text Mate
• Nvalt or its derivatives.

drorsh

@Jvet said:

@drorsh said:
vscode has several great extensions that fit my needs as a graduate student. I use "markdown notes" extension, but you can also check out foam and "markdown memo"

I have no experience with coding or using visual studio. I'm looking for a more "tech-friendly" alternative. But thanks for suggesting what you use.

It's true that vscode is mostly used by developers. But actually it is a great text editor, and Foam is especially friendly for use as a zettelkasten, really no coding knowledge is needed. There are several Youtube videos that can get you started (e.g. this one).

Having said that, Obsidian is nice overall. Also, there is Notable (https://notable.app), which I find cleaner and have used for a while (back then there was no link autocomplete, maybe things have changed since)

GeoEng51

@Splattack said:
For Windows;

• iA Writer

This is the one I use. It seamlessly let's you use markdown and images on your plain text (txt or md) files and preview them as html or pdf.

That's perfect for academia since you can quickly have your text and an image of the blackboard, a lab note's page, a graded homework, a diagram from an article, or a page of a book from the library. And you can sync your text files with dropbox or iCloud for accessing your notes on your phone. (I have one folder for text files and another for images).

I am partial to iA Writer as well - it's a capable editor with a polished interface - overall, a very nice product. It's what I use for editing ZK markdown files when on my iPad or iPhone.

Filex

Zettlr is nice et functionnal. Nice combo with Zotero. Open source. You can use it for your Zettelkasten as well as for writing articles, dissertation.

SteveH1UK

I used VS Code with Foam for a bit before deciding to go with "The Archive" (and Marked2 for previewing). Part of the reason for this is that I think that a "Zettelkasten" specific app will be better for managing your Zettelkasten. VSCode with Foam also had restrictions (no spaces in the filenames) that go against the general advice on this forum but overall was quite nice - especially if you use VS Code anyway (which I do).

Nick

After having experimented a ton, Obsidian ended up being the one I settled with. I have been using it since it pretty much released with the early builds back in April and haven't found the desire to switch away from it.

Here is a video of a PhD student going over how she used Obsidian for her qualifying exams.

sepuku

There is also Roam Research, which is like Obsidian, only web based. I tend to go for web based apps over local ones now, just because.
I know Roam has some features that Obsidian doesn’t (I have a colleague who uses Obsidian, and we’ve compared notes), but I imagine that’s only a matter of time and prioritisation for the dev team.
Obsidian is free, roam is paid for, but worth looking into if the extra functionality of roam is worth it for you before taking the plunge.
I think you can do 95% of what you can do in roam, in Obsidian. There may be other features that I’m not aware of that make ita better choice of course.

Jvet

@cctrovall said:
I have been using Obsidian for over a month now and have been very satisfied. My university computer uses the Microsoft ecosystem and I use a MacBook Pro at home. I store my Zettelkasten on Dropbox, using Obsidian as my interface at home on my MacBook and at work on my Thinkpad. My experience for what it is worth.

Thank you! I suggest you check resilio to back up your files.

Jvet

@Nick said:
After having experimented a ton, Obsidian ended up being the one I settled with. I have been using it since it pretty much released with the early builds back in April and haven't found the desire to switch away from it.

Here is a video of a PhD student going over how she used Obsidian for her qualifying exams.

Thanks! I might just end up with obsidian.

Jvet

@sepuku said:
There is also Roam Research, which is like Obsidian, only web based. I tend to go for web based apps over local ones now, just because.
I know Roam has some features that Obsidian doesn’t (I have a colleague who uses Obsidian, and we’ve compared notes), but I imagine that’s only a matter of time and prioritisation for the dev team.
Obsidian is free, roam is paid for, but worth looking into if the extra functionality of roam is worth it for you before taking the plunge.
I think you can do 95% of what you can do in roam, in Obsidian. There may be other features that I’m not aware of that make ita better choice of course.

A free roam alternative I came to know is logseq. Do you know if it has a zotero integration like zettlr?

Jvet

@Filex said:
Zettlr is nice et functionnal. Nice combo with Zotero. Open source. You can use it for your Zettelkasten as well as for writing articles, dissertation.

I agree, I think it's the thing right now that differentiates from obsidian. How long have you been using zettlr?

Filex

Only fews weeks, mostly for documents and presentations (really nice with the reveal.js exportation). The Z. remains "embryonic"

cctrovall

@Jvet said:

@cctrovall said:
I have been using Obsidian for over a month now and have been very satisfied. My university computer uses the Microsoft ecosystem and I use a MacBook Pro at home. I store my Zettelkasten on Dropbox, using Obsidian as my interface at home on my MacBook and at work on my Thinkpad. My experience for what it is worth.

Thank you! I suggest you check resilio to back up your files.

Thank you for the recommendation!