Workflow suggestions for Zettel creation on iOS?

thoresson

I do a lot of my reading on my iPad, in my RSS reader and Pocket in particular. I’ve linked Drafts to Dropbox and use it to create notes in my Zettelkasten directory. And I have a TextExpander snippet that creates a Zettelkasten template with placeholders for the title, the source (so I can add it to Zotero) and tags.

But there is still a lot of app switching and copying and pasting going on to get the URL and quote(s) into the note.

I can’t be the first person struggling with this on the forum. How are the rest of you do this? I guess that one could to more advanced things using Drafts’ scripting possibilities, but I do not know where to start.

ctietze

I never tried Workflowy etc. to see if an additional app could make things easier But then again you probably read and take notes a lot more on your iPad than I do. Here's my setup:

I've found that Drafts works good enough for me: share with drafts, edit the note, then use a "Save as Zettel" template which takes the 1st line as the heading, then wraps it in my Zettel template (notably adding the ##inbox tag to encourage processing on my Mac). In a second step, Drafts adds a paste-able link with the Zettel ID to my clipboard for quick reuse. The original draft is removed. Here's a link to the Drafts 4 action: Save to Zettelkasten

I wonder what you need TextExpander for when Drafts can do the template-formatting for you?

kevin

I can’t be the first person struggling with this on the forum. How are the rest of you do this?

Plain text may be future proof but it’s only usable in the present if you’re using machines from the past.

I’ve tried to figure out an iOS system that would work with the plain text awesomeness of The Archive, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to do it that isn’t a system of ropes and pulleys and bubblegum and tape, which then still require working with the note a second time back on MacOS. Which for me, isn’t very often.

It might be that I don’t have the scripting ability to hack things together the right way.

But man, The idealism of plain text is losing to the practicality of the real world.

Honestly, Bear seems like the closest and easiest way to make the zettelkasten work across platforms.

No it doesn’t have note IDs and it probably won’t be around in 50 years. But at least it works now.

Sorry. I’m extremely frustrated. I really want to make this work.

thoresson

@ctietze said:
I wonder what you need TextExpander for when Drafts can do the template-formatting for you?

Because I hadn't realized that it's possible to build templates like this in Drafts.

thoresson

@kevin said:
I’ve tried to figure out an iOS system that would work with the plain text awesomeness of The Archive, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to do it that isn’t a system of ropes and pulleys and bubblegum and tape, which then still require working with the note a second time back on MacOS. Which for me, isn’t very often.

On iOS, I doesn't work with my notes as much as I use my phone and tablet as capture devices. But I do share you concerns for situation where I would like to do more work on mobile.

thoresson

@kevin said:
Honestly, Bear seems like the closest and easiest way to make the zettelkasten work across platforms.

No it doesn’t have note IDs and it probably won’t be around in 50 years. But at least it works now.

Had a look at it. And for sure, it looks promising. There is even a robust export function. Using a TextExpander snippet that prepends all titels with a timestamp means that notes exported from Bear will indeed include the unique ID in the filename.

The only thing I found missing after a quick test run was internal linking between notes based on just the note ID and not the whole title.

cowraiser

@ctietze said:
I never tried Workflowy etc. to see if an additional app could make things easier But then again you probably read and take notes a lot more on your iPad than I do. Here's my setup:

I've found that Drafts works good enough for me: share with drafts, edit the note, then use a "Save as Zettel" template which takes the 1st line as the heading, then wraps it in my Zettel template (notably adding the ##inbox tag to encourage processing on my Mac). In a second step, Drafts adds a paste-able link with the Zettel ID to my clipboard for quick reuse. The original draft is removed. Here's a link to the Drafts 4 action: Save to Zettelkasten

I wonder what you need TextExpander for when Drafts can do the template-formatting for you?

Hi, I am wondering if you have a Drafts 5 actions for saving as a Zettel?

mediapathic

@cowraiser said:

Hi, I am wondering if you have a Drafts 5 actions for saving as a Zettel?

I have one. I just published it and this should be the link for it. Let me know if that doesn't work, I've never published a Drafts action before.

cowraiser

Thank you! Just getting started with Zettelkasten.

mediapathic

@kevin said:

I’ve tried to figure out an iOS system that would work with the plain text awesomeness of The Archive, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to do it that isn’t a system of ropes and pulleys and bubblegum and tape, which then still require working with the note a second time back on MacOS. Which for me, isn’t very often.

But man, The idealism of plain text is losing to the practicality of the real world.

I actually wildly disagree. I am having the opposite experience: Every time a service works in some unpredictable way or shuts down because the owners lost that VC round, I find myself thinking "well, I don't have to worry about that." Hell, just as an extra layer of smugness, I've implemented ZK in emacs so that if my Mac goes away I can use any cheapo linux box I can get my hands on (caution: do not attempt to implement anything in emacs unless you are a weirdo).

I use 1Writer on iOS, and it works fine for me (with the caveat that I only use it for quick work and do all of my real editing on an actual keyboard). Links in 1Writer are a little annoying, but functional. I use the Drafts action I've linked below above to get things into ZK on Dropbox and it works great.

What, beyond those things, are you trying to do on iOS that isn't working?

Sorry. I’m extremely frustrated. I really want to make this work.

Sympathies. This is a thing I struggled with a bunch, but since I've come up with a few best practices (those mentioned above, actually using standard UIDs, making backups, etc) I've found myself much happier than using anything that is [insert deleted rant about capitalism here].