Cosma - visualization for plain text files

Marcus

Hi everyone, I stumbled upon ‚Cosma‘ today and wanted to share it with you here:

Cosmo is a visualization tool for knowledge workers. It reads plain text files containing [[wiki links]] and renders them as an interactive network of index cards.

https://cosma.arthurperret.fr/index.html

Will

@Marcus
I'm giving Cosma a go and find your "Getting Started" to be well-written and helpful. I've successfully launched my first cosmascope. I'd love to apply this to more of my zettelkasten. I use The Archive and have 4443 notes. The YAML front matter syntax differs from that used in the standard cosma config.yml. I'm wondering whether there are any plans to add support for custom YAML front matter syntax, or if I should consider writing a custom Python script to convert all my notes. Notice how the internal links in The Archive are formatted and "links as search" not filenames or even whole note names, partial note names.

Here is a sample note:

---
UUID:      ›[[202206251631]] 
cdate:     06-25-2022 04:31 PM
tags:      #book #craftsmanship #ideation 
---
# Techniques For Producing Ideas
Subatomic: Book by James Webb Young

- [[202205291111]]
- Henri Poincare On How Creativity Works [[202106241737]]
- Five Steps For A Creative Process [[202106241739]]
    - Which is the original of this idea and a processing of Maria Popova's Brain Pickings essay.
- Optimizing Efficiency Of Skills [[202112270819]] 

ISBN: 9780071426251

- Ideas appear suddenly above the surface of the mind with an air of unaccountability. I didn't author them. 



  “Is an idea, too, like this? Is it only the final result of a long series of unseen idea- building processes which go on beneath the surface of the conscious mind?" [young:2003 16]


- Shining A Light On Thinking With Writing [[202109291550]] 
- Deep Think August 25, 2021 [[202108251012]] 

The operative techniques of ideation can be learned.

- Attention is life & Life is attention [[202206210725]] 



  and that its effective use is just as much a matter of practice in the technique as is the effective use of any tool. [young:2003 16]


- Tools for thought: science, design, art, craftsmanship [[202201011020]] 
- Expanded Idea Of Journaling [[202106281518]] 
- Collection Of Tools For Thought [[202106271526]]
- Do Ten Times as Much [[202412040756]]
    - Doing more practice than everyone else is the way to get better than everyone else.


- A speculator is a person who is preoccupied with the possibilities of new combinations of ideas. A very large group.

- A stockholder are people who are "the routine, steady-going, unimaginative, conserving people, whom the speculator manipulates." [young:2003 18]

## Principles
1. Combine elements of old ideas seeing the relationships. "nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements." [young:2003 21]

    - Using the file [[201901211151]]
        - Developing young zettel [[202106040552]]
- Skeuomorphism [[202105021513]]

2. Making new combinations is made possible by seeing relationships.

    - The Act of Note Making [[202203181940]] 

## Methods
- Develop a habit of mind for searching relationships between fact and ideas. [young:2003 21]

- Methods for Producing Ideas [[202306130804]]

Exposed ideas born of this serendipity to scrutiny by the trusted. "You will find that a good idea has, as it were, self-expanding qualities. It stimulates those who see it to add to it. Thus possibilities in it which you have overlooked will come to light." [young:2003 33]

Words matter.
Words are proxies for ideas. 
To master words is to master ideas.
"Thus, words being symbols for ideas, we can collect ideas by collecting words." [young:2003 37]

————
## References and Resources
- A Technique for Producing Ideas by Young, James Webb, 2003.

Marcus

Hi @Will , I'm afraid I have to disappoint you—I didn't create the tool. I found Cosma on a blog about Zettelkasten without even looking for it, and even before I tried it out myself, I was so impressed by the website that I didn't want to keep it from our community.

I'm curious to see what you'll do with the tool and what other users' experiences with it will be. Unfortunately, I don't have much time right now.