Hi @argonsnorts - I read started using SublimeText with Rene's plug-in today, but there seems to be some issue (or maybe it is just me, since I am new to this). However, my question to you is: how does SublimelessZK compare to SublimeText with Rene's plugin?
@StefanHansen said:
how does SublimelessZK compare to SublimeText with Rene's plugin?
It has been quite a while since I've used SublimeZK, so I can't recall all the differences. But if you look through this thread, you'll see that I pretty much kept bugging Rene until he had added all the SublimeZK functions I liked to SublimelessZK.
After a while I think he started focusing solely on updating SublimelessZK, at which point it came to have more functions than SublimeZK. (For example, you can open a handy side panel on the right that lists search results, and there's an area for saved searches. You can also open an 'open windows' panel on the left-hand side.)
I would recommend using SublimelessZK for any of the extra functions, and also because it'll likely be the focus of any updates in the future. As a bonus, too, it doesn't require you to pay for SublimeText.
In either case, both should be stable, so it might just be a matter of preference. I didn't use SublimeText for anything else, so it was easy to switch over once SublimelessZK got up to speed. Might as well give both a shot and see what you think.
Thanks @argonsnorts. I tried Sublimeless last night. It doesn't have the issues I experienced with SublimeText (with the plug-in). The only thing I like better about SublimeText is the user interface. It is more pleasing to the eye, which matters to me. Still, functionality is obviously more important, but I do hope Sublimeless will get a facelift.
So I'm trying out sublimless_zk and I am really liking it thus far. However, one thing that I have noticed is that when using the German umlaut or even a Greek character (which I prefer) in a tag, clicking that tag crashes the program. Can this bug be addressed on the next update?
@Darryl said:
So I'm trying out sublimless_zk and I am really liking it thus far. However, one thing that I have noticed is that when using the German umlaut or even a Greek character (which I prefer) in a tag, clicking that tag crashes the program. Can this bug be addressed on the next update?
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!
If you can, can you provide sample text, like, a #greektag pls ? Oh, German Umlauts, I can do that myself -- I thought these Unicode-issues were solved already. But, maybe there's one last place where one still lurked around --- will look into it, will definitely be fixed by the next update!
Speaking of it: I really hope to make 1.0 this year, with productive work starting from, like, end of November.... New family situation, ever demanding research projects, and crazy busy days at work are a challenge - but I don't want to delay much longer.
If you can, can you provide sample text, like, a #greektag pls ?
Sure thing, one tag I'm using is (typed using the Greek keyboard on Mac): #Σ
Also, now that I think of it, using the section symbol crashes the program as well (opt-6): #§
Speaking of it: I really hope to make 1.0 this year, with productive work starting from, like, end of November.... New family situation, ever demanding research projects, and crazy busy days at work are a challenge - but I don't want to delay much longer.
Looking forward to it! Thanks for all the time you invest in the midst of everything else going on!
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2000/12/21/extraordinary-commonplaces/
I thought of this excerpt because this is exactly what I tend to do. Reading and writing are inseparable activities.
Excerpt:
Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it; and if they did not have access to his popular De Copia, they consulted printed models or the local schoolmaster. The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality.
Name suggestions:
-- Zibaldone (a unique word that would be easy to get a domain for and would more than likely return your website when people searched for the application)
-- Commonplace Book (a lengthy term, but perhaps better communicates the purpose of the app than the Italian "zibaldone")
@onesentforth Regarding "commonplace books", I want to nitpick As per the conventional meaning of the term, these collect knowledge in an objective way. It's commonplaces you collect, in accordance to their essential categorization. Like the Dewey Decimal System, it's about a shared perception of the world. A Zettelkasten, on the other hand, is made to create order from nothing for you, not in accordance with anybody else's perception of the world and what it's made of except yours and yours alone.
But that "order" you speak of cannot come from nothing. Rather, it makes itself obvious based on the fragments we collect from a vast sea of sources - books, articles, documentaries, conversations, quotes, poems, etc...
We don't simply invent reality. We discover it by examining as much of it as we can, and gaining further insight from the observations of others. If we are all seeking an accurate perception of the world, surely our perceptions will overlap in many ways, seeing as how there is only one Reality. Observe as many cultures across history as you can, and you will find that certain timeless axioms emerge.
You also suggest that a true Zettelkasten should only include one's own perceptions. Yet in your argument, you included two links to articles - which indicates that your perception has been influenced by others. Thus proving my point. A zettelkasten is a form of "commonplace book" - a collection of information that we then use to form our own concept of reality.
Here is a definition from the popular Brain Pickings blog:
A commonplace book is "a creative and intellectual ledger of fragmentary inspirations, which a writer would collect from other books and copy into a notebook, often alongside his or her reflections and riffs. These borrowed ideas are in dialogue with the writer’s own imagination and foment it into original thinking. Over long enough a period of time — years, decades, often a lifetime — the commonplace book, while composed primarily of copied passages, comes to radiate the singular sensibility of its keeper: beliefs are refined, ideas incubated, intellectual fixations fleshed out, and the outlines of a personhood revealed."
"Of the enormous volume of literature a reader this voracious devours in a lifetime, only a fraction — a deliberate, meticulously selected fraction — ends up in this sacred notebook, constructing a special kind of secondary world."
It is a fundamental mistake to think that the commonplaces were arbitrary headings that could be re-arranged at will to "make" sense of the world. Commonplaces were "common places," i.e. places that everyone would recognize as places. They expressed the fixed nature of the closed universe in which the Renaissance thinkers were thinking and living. They did not make sense, they discovered pre-existing sense that they thought was independent from their subjective musings. In this context, the commonplace book would be your own book only in the sense that it contained your selection of the many (or copious) meanings that the world held independently of your subjective effort to understand it. In fact, notebooks "stamped with your personality" were later inventions, presupposing a universe not ordered by God or Nature. They clearly post-date Locke's suggestion to alphabetize one's commonplace book and are a much more recent phenomenon. [Emphasis his.]
I didn't do any historical analysis myself. I tend to believe in Manfred's knowledge regarding note-taking. Maria Popova has a great blog and collects lots of stuff herself -- she's a grand practitioner of collecting. But I don't think she's the better source when it comes to terminology and history of note-taking.
In other words, Maria's interpretation of the term is modern. It's not what the term used to mean. Language is arbitrary, @Sascha reminds me time and again, and meanings change. I can only say that I don't care if people mix "commonplace book" and "Zettelkasten" nowadays because it does no harm. I still hold the opinion that these people are wrong, though
This is great app! It is simple, fast, and does what it supposed to do. I appreciate its close adherence to the basic of a zettelkasten method. I am using it on two linux systems, a Fedora desktop and a Mint/Cinnamon laptop.
I have noticed a problem on both systems: I am unable to enter international characters using the English (US, international with dead keys) keyboard. Setting the keyboard to English (US) enables entering what would be the deadkeys on the International keyboard. Much of my work is in Spanish (and occasionally German and French), so this is important to me. Pasting text in works, but that is rather cumbersome!
I appreciate your work so much and with a tweak to solve my problem, this would be perfect for my needs.
Just a quick thank you to @rene to express how grateful I am for Sublimeless_ZK. I have tried several of the tools described by @ctietze and although they are all wonderful, this is ideal for me as a Windows user. Truly grateful for your gifts of time and expertise. Thank you!
I just started using Sublimeless ZK and I follow the manual on the GitHub site.
One problem I have is that my links are not clickable. I start by entering [[ and the list of notes pop up. I then choose a specific note and the link is created. However, I can not click it. All that happens is that the link gets highlighted.
Rene, I love your app! It is perfect to use the Zettelkasten system with plain text files. One question: is it possible to link to files (in the notes directory) inside notes? I usually save articles, blogs etc. as html files and pdfs, and it would be really handy if I could refer to those inside the notes. When I use the standard markdown format [name](./filename.htm), Sublimeless_ZK crashes.
I have another question: is it possible to show all notes that are related, other than with tags?
Luhmann placed related notes behind eachother, so finding the first automatically means finding the whole thread. Only when he had a significant amount of follow-up notes did he create an overview note.
I now put a small piece of text in a note saying "follows [[name of previous note]], and the first note (the entry point) goes in the index. But the function to find friend notes shows only direct links, not the whole thread.
To follow the Zettelkasten more closely, it might be helpful to have a feature that asks whether a newly created note is related to an already existing note, and a function to find such threads at once.
@Garwyx said:
Rene, I love your app! It is perfect to use the Zettelkasten system with plain text files. One question: is it possible to link to files (in the notes directory) inside notes? I usually save articles, blogs etc. as html files and pdfs, and it would be really handy if I could refer to those inside the notes. When I use the standard markdown format [name](./filename.htm), Sublimeless_ZK crashes.
I understand now that this is not the intention of a Zettelkasten. I was inspired by posts on literatureandlatte.com, where people seem to keep everything inside the same folder, but I usually use Zotero to store reference material.
Ctrl-Shift-T does not insert a ToC here on Windows 10. The ToC menu option under Edit works fine though. I logged it on GitHub; I ask here because its not apparent the project is undergoing any further development. Which would be sad; I find this far, far better than Zettlr. Zettlr's developer is seemingly more interested in producing manifestos than assisting people trying to use the progam to build zettelkasten.
Ok since @Rene seems to have moved on - for whatever reason, how difficult would it be for someone else to step an offer to be its maintainer?
Python isn't a language I've ever written in, I have to give Rene credit - the code base is clean and readable.
Is someone willing to step up, become the maintainer and if Rene returns the he gets a tool that moved on a few inches in his absence.
If I adopt the tool - not a given, I will offer to help. Without knowing python I could at least review pull requests and see if they made sense. Will anyone else step up to better than I?
Well, sometimes life presses on us in ways we don't like. Hopefully Rene is in good health and spirits and is able to continue his work soon!
In any event, the files are in markdown and can be easily tweaked via scripts (if that is even necessary) to be adopted by other MD-based tools should that later be necessary.
I just started using this, and if Rene ever reads this again, please note that I consider you both a scholar and a gent for all your hard work making note taking easy for us Windows laymen. With no background in coding, I found even the SublimeZK app hard to set up, so Sublimeless was a godsend. However I do notice that this is no longer being worked on, so can anybody tell me if it would still be okay to use or if it is likely to collapse under the weight of my ZK at some point? My own thinking is that since this is all in markdown and produces separate .md files, it wouldn't be difficult to export to another platform once this one is no longer doing its job.
In short, it's daunting to build something that should last a lifetime
Comments
Hi @argonsnorts - I read started using SublimeText with Rene's plug-in today, but there seems to be some issue (or maybe it is just me, since I am new to this). However, my question to you is: how does SublimelessZK compare to SublimeText with Rene's plugin?
Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.
It has been quite a while since I've used SublimeZK, so I can't recall all the differences. But if you look through this thread, you'll see that I pretty much kept bugging Rene until he had added all the SublimeZK functions I liked to SublimelessZK.
After a while I think he started focusing solely on updating SublimelessZK, at which point it came to have more functions than SublimeZK. (For example, you can open a handy side panel on the right that lists search results, and there's an area for saved searches. You can also open an 'open windows' panel on the left-hand side.)
I would recommend using SublimelessZK for any of the extra functions, and also because it'll likely be the focus of any updates in the future. As a bonus, too, it doesn't require you to pay for SublimeText.
In either case, both should be stable, so it might just be a matter of preference. I didn't use SublimeText for anything else, so it was easy to switch over once SublimelessZK got up to speed. Might as well give both a shot and see what you think.
Thanks @argonsnorts. I tried Sublimeless last night. It doesn't have the issues I experienced with SublimeText (with the plug-in). The only thing I like better about SublimeText is the user interface. It is more pleasing to the eye, which matters to me. Still, functionality is obviously more important, but I do hope Sublimeless will get a facelift.
Hi again @argonsnorts,
Do you know how to make the citations work in Sublimeless?
I have a bib file, called bib.bib in the same folder as my Zettels, but when I press [@ it says "No .bib file found".
I tried to edit the settings file, with no luck.
I found the solution: Don't save the bib file with Notepad, since it adds .txt without showing it. Save the bib file with a proper editor.
My Sublimeless takes about 10 seconds to load. Does anyone else have the same issue? Running it on Windows 10.
So I'm trying out sublimless_zk and I am really liking it thus far. However, one thing that I have noticed is that when using the German umlaut or even a Greek character (which I prefer) in a tag, clicking that tag crashes the program. Can this bug be addressed on the next update?
Solved by making it a trusted program. Details on request, maybe from @StefanHansen
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!
If you can, can you provide sample text, like, a #greektag pls
? Oh, German Umlauts, I can do that myself 
-- I thought these Unicode-issues were solved already. But, maybe there's one last place where one still lurked around --- will look into it, will definitely be fixed by the next update!
Speaking of it: I really hope to make 1.0 this year, with productive work starting from, like, end of November.... New family situation, ever demanding research projects, and crazy busy days at work are a challenge - but I don't want to delay much longer.
Cheers,
Rene
Thanks, so much!
Sure thing, one tag I'm using is (typed using the Greek keyboard on Mac): #Σ
Also, now that I think of it, using the section symbol crashes the program as well (opt-6): #§
Looking forward to it! Thanks for all the time you invest in the midst of everything else going on!
Darryl
Looking forward to the release
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
Just found this forum, and I'm pretty excited about it.
I downloaded the app, and I really like it so far!
Great job!
Have you considered any new names for the application?
I've been looking over some notes and have some articles that might serve as a good source for potential names.
I love visiting AtlasObcura:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-keep-a-zibaldone-a-13thcentury-answer-to-tumblr
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2000/12/21/extraordinary-commonplaces/
I thought of this excerpt because this is exactly what I tend to do. Reading and writing are inseparable activities.
Excerpt:
Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it; and if they did not have access to his popular De Copia, they consulted printed models or the local schoolmaster. The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality.
"Commonplace Books and the Teaching of Style" (GREAT article!)
http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/teachingwriting/article/view/1208/1169
Name suggestions:
-- Zibaldone (a unique word that would be easy to get a domain for and would more than likely return your website when people searched for the application)
-- Commonplace Book (a lengthy term, but perhaps better communicates the purpose of the app than the Italian "zibaldone")
@onesentforth Regarding "commonplace books", I want to nitpick
As per the conventional meaning of the term, these collect knowledge in an objective way. It's commonplaces you collect, in accordance to their essential categorization. Like the Dewey Decimal System, it's about a shared perception of the world. A Zettelkasten, on the other hand, is made to create order from nothing for you, not in accordance with anybody else's perception of the world and what it's made of except yours and yours alone.
The argument is taken from
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
But that "order" you speak of cannot come from nothing. Rather, it makes itself obvious based on the fragments we collect from a vast sea of sources - books, articles, documentaries, conversations, quotes, poems, etc...
We don't simply invent reality. We discover it by examining as much of it as we can, and gaining further insight from the observations of others. If we are all seeking an accurate perception of the world, surely our perceptions will overlap in many ways, seeing as how there is only one Reality. Observe as many cultures across history as you can, and you will find that certain timeless axioms emerge.
You also suggest that a true Zettelkasten should only include one's own perceptions. Yet in your argument, you included two links to articles - which indicates that your perception has been influenced by others. Thus proving my point. A zettelkasten is a form of "commonplace book" - a collection of information that we then use to form our own concept of reality.
Here is a definition from the popular Brain Pickings blog:
A commonplace book is "a creative and intellectual ledger of fragmentary inspirations, which a writer would collect from other books and copy into a notebook, often alongside his or her reflections and riffs. These borrowed ideas are in dialogue with the writer’s own imagination and foment it into original thinking. Over long enough a period of time — years, decades, often a lifetime — the commonplace book, while composed primarily of copied passages, comes to radiate the singular sensibility of its keeper: beliefs are refined, ideas incubated, intellectual fixations fleshed out, and the outlines of a personhood revealed."
"Of the enormous volume of literature a reader this voracious devours in a lifetime, only a fraction — a deliberate, meticulously selected fraction — ends up in this sacred notebook, constructing a special kind of secondary world."
(from https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/05/10/w-h-auden-commonplace-book-doubt-truth-enchantment/ )
I can only quote MK verbatim:
I didn't do any historical analysis myself. I tend to believe in Manfred's knowledge regarding note-taking. Maria Popova has a great blog and collects lots of stuff herself -- she's a grand practitioner of collecting. But I don't think she's the better source when it comes to terminology and history of note-taking.
In other words, Maria's interpretation of the term is modern. It's not what the term used to mean. Language is arbitrary, @Sascha reminds me time and again, and meanings change. I can only say that I don't care if people mix "commonplace book" and "Zettelkasten" nowadays because it does no harm. I still hold the opinion that these people are wrong, though
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
This is great app! It is simple, fast, and does what it supposed to do. I appreciate its close adherence to the basic of a zettelkasten method. I am using it on two linux systems, a Fedora desktop and a Mint/Cinnamon laptop.
I have noticed a problem on both systems: I am unable to enter international characters using the English (US, international with dead keys) keyboard. Setting the keyboard to English (US) enables entering what would be the deadkeys on the International keyboard. Much of my work is in Spanish (and occasionally German and French), so this is important to me. Pasting text in works, but that is rather cumbersome!
I appreciate your work so much and with a tweak to solve my problem, this would be perfect for my needs.
Hey @rene! Just getting around to trying this, and I found a crashing bug for you! I'm helpful!
Anyone seen @rene in a while?
"Last active December 2018", so not long enough to be worried yet. But yeah I'm wondering too. I assume he's just having a real life away from us
Just a quick thank you to @rene to express how grateful I am for Sublimeless_ZK. I have tried several of the tools described by @ctietze and although they are all wonderful, this is ideal for me as a Windows user. Truly grateful for your gifts of time and expertise. Thank you!
I just started using Sublimeless ZK and I follow the manual on the GitHub site.
One problem I have is that my links are not clickable. I start by entering [[ and the list of notes pop up. I then choose a specific note and the link is created. However, I can not click it. All that happens is that the link gets highlighted.
Can anyone please help?
Rene, I love your app! It is perfect to use the Zettelkasten system with plain text files. One question: is it possible to link to files (in the notes directory) inside notes? I usually save articles, blogs etc. as html files and pdfs, and it would be really handy if I could refer to those inside the notes. When I use the standard markdown format [name](./filename.htm), Sublimeless_ZK crashes.
I have another question: is it possible to show all notes that are related, other than with tags?
Luhmann placed related notes behind eachother, so finding the first automatically means finding the whole thread. Only when he had a significant amount of follow-up notes did he create an overview note.
I now put a small piece of text in a note saying "follows [[name of previous note]], and the first note (the entry point) goes in the index. But the function to find friend notes shows only direct links, not the whole thread.
To follow the Zettelkasten more closely, it might be helpful to have a feature that asks whether a newly created note is related to an already existing note, and a function to find such threads at once.
I understand now that this is not the intention of a Zettelkasten. I was inspired by posts on literatureandlatte.com, where people seem to keep everything inside the same folder, but I usually use Zotero to store reference material.
Hi Rene,
your app is really great, elegant and simple together.
I just have an issue with windows 10. Yeah I know, Linux is better but at work is only Windows available.
It seems, that there is an error again, we had long time ago. "Failed to execute script"
Maybe you could check if you deploy the default settings file. Would be really great.
Ctrl-Shift-T does not insert a ToC here on Windows 10. The ToC menu option under Edit works fine though. I logged it on GitHub; I ask here because its not apparent the project is undergoing any further development. Which would be sad; I find this far, far better than Zettlr. Zettlr's developer is seemingly more interested in producing manifestos than assisting people trying to use the progam to build zettelkasten.
Ok since @Rene seems to have moved on - for whatever reason, how difficult would it be for someone else to step an offer to be its maintainer?
Python isn't a language I've ever written in, I have to give Rene credit - the code base is clean and readable.
Is someone willing to step up, become the maintainer and if Rene returns the he gets a tool that moved on a few inches in his absence.
If I adopt the tool - not a given, I will offer to help. Without knowing python I could at least review pull requests and see if they made sense. Will anyone else step up to better than I?
Well, sometimes life presses on us in ways we don't like. Hopefully Rene is in good health and spirits and is able to continue his work soon!
In any event, the files are in markdown and can be easily tweaked via scripts (if that is even necessary) to be adopted by other MD-based tools should that later be necessary.
I just started using this, and if Rene ever reads this again, please note that I consider you both a scholar and a gent for all your hard work making note taking easy for us Windows laymen. With no background in coding, I found even the SublimeZK app hard to set up, so Sublimeless was a godsend. However I do notice that this is no longer being worked on, so can anybody tell me if it would still be okay to use or if it is likely to collapse under the weight of my ZK at some point? My own thinking is that since this is all in markdown and produces separate .md files, it wouldn't be difficult to export to another platform once this one is no longer doing its job.
In short, it's daunting to build something that should last a lifetime