Zettelkasten Forum


Spatial card sorting app?

Is there an app out there that imitates the original Zettelkasten's spatial positioning (sequential ordering of index cards)? I would like to create one large universal stack of digital cards and sort them manually; I know that sounds tedious but it's a hunch I'd like to explore.

Comments

  • You mean the Folgezettel thingy? I think zkn3 is the best implementation of that. Hope you find it useful. :smile:

  • @rosano zkn3 does sequential ordering for the notes, but has a outline sidebar that allows you to dynamically create a giant table of contents, similar to what you'd find from the Folgezettel idea.

  • I recommend looking at Tinderbox. It’s pricey but immensely powerfully and had has (like here) a wonderful community. The trial will work with maps of up to a 50 notes or so, which should give you a good sense of how it works.

  • @Annabella_Zelsky @Nick @alexchabot Thanks for the tips. It looks like both zkn2 and Tinderbox have cards that can be ordered and connected, but I was looking for something that feels less like computerized list items or nodes and more like a physical deck of cards. I might just want to create it myself but after confirming there's nothing like that already out there :wink:

  • There are several apps for the iPad that provide a large canvas where you can place large numbers of cards - examples are Cardflow+ or ThinkSpace.

  • Good luck with your search. If you don't find anything useful, good luck with the invention too. :mrgreen:

  • edited December 2021

    @thomasteepe said:
    There are several apps for the iPad that provide a large canvas where you can place large numbers of cards - examples are Cardflow+ or ThinkSpace.

    There are a number of digital whiteboards that provide this capability. One that I particularly like is Miro, which we use at work (placing and organizing cards on a large canvas is just one small part of its capacity). It is well suited to team collaboration. It is a subscription service but there is a free version that has more than enough functionality for personal use. Well worth checking out.

  • @thomasteepe @GeoEng51 I didn't mention but I mean spatial more as in 'positional' not sure how to describe it, like imagine a skeuomorphic list of cards that you can flip through, like Apple's coverflow–you would only modify the order, not the x/y position.

  • @rosano, have you ever played with the freeform corkboard view in Scrivener? I find it to be a lot like shuffling around real cards. After shuffling around the cards, you can hit "commit order" and the items are reordered in Scrivener's database. You may know Scrivener as a long-form writing app, but some people use it as a personal knowledge base. The app has a 30-day free trial mode.

    Before you build your own ideal software app, you may want to reread Christian's blog post "How to program yourself for productivity and stop searching for the ideal software".

  • @Andy said:
    @rosano, have you ever played with the freeform corkboard view in Scrivener? I find it to be a lot like shuffling around real cards. After shuffling around the cards, you can hit "commit order" and the items are reordered in Scrivener's database. You may know Scrivener as a long-form writing app, but some people use it as a personal knowledge base. The app has a 30-day free trial mode.

    I didn't know Scrivener had a corkboard. My hesitation with 'freeform spatial' is that it feels like I'm working on layout. One of the things I like about Mindnode, as an example of apps that do layout automatically, is that it feels like you are editing a tree and not its presentation. But aside from the comfort that the 'visualization' will always look right, a freeform environment doesn't feel like the right place to manage more than a handful of items, certainly not over a thousand.

    Before you build your own ideal software app, you may want to reread Christian's blog post "How to program yourself for productivity and stop searching for the ideal software".

    This is good advice: get started with what's around you and find the gaps later. I'm currently using my journaling app to take notes on what I read, but don't have a reflex to connect those points together. 'Ordering folgezettels' feels like something I'd like to explore because it's low friction, not layout, and can be done as a kind of a zen activity, raking sand sort of thing. Rather than being the 'home' for this information, I would want it to 'ingest' multiple sources and provide an alternate view on existing data in other contexts. My hope is to continue using tools I rely on every day, but for this specific activity to present the data in a different way.

  • @rosano said:
    I didn't know Scrivener had a corkboard. My hesitation with 'freeform spatial' is that it feels like I'm working on layout. One of the things I like about Mindnode, as an example of apps that do layout automatically, is that it feels like you are editing a tree and not its presentation. But aside from the comfort that the 'visualization' will always look right, a freeform environment doesn't feel like the right place to manage more than a handful of items, certainly not over a thousand.

    There are two basic layout options for the Scrivener corkboard (in version 2, which I've used, but the current version is 3): "Keep cards arranged in binder order" and "Freeform corkboard". It sounds like both are very far from what you're looking for, but the stream of counterexamples that people are giving seems to be making your list of requirements more precise.

    Rather than being the 'home' for this information, I would want it to 'ingest' multiple sources and provide an alternate view on existing data in other contexts. My hope is to continue using tools I rely on every day, but for this specific activity to present the data in a different way.

    Your phrase "provide an alternate view on existing data in other contexts" describes well how I work with my own personal hypertext system (zettelkasten): it is just a set of interlinked and tagged files, but I use a variety of different applications to work with them, each of which provides "alternate views" and different features.

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