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Making a copy of notes to practice with and Marked 2 newbie questions

benesserebenessere
in The Archive

Hello everyone,
I'm slowly making my way through the 7 intro videos while populating my ZK with my notes from Roam and I have a couple questions, apologies in advance if this has already been answered somewhere else, I tried searching but haven't found an actual starting point yet, although I am making a lot of progress in understanding how the ZK fits my learning style. That said the questions are:
1) what are the steps to go through to make a copy of my ZK notes so I can test and play without risking my real notes?
2) I see that on the homepage The Archive recommends Marked 2, it seems to do the things that I really loved both of Roam and Notion, the collapsable sections, as I write best with as close to a blank page as possible but still with the option of seeing the info I need to formulate my writing and the collapsable sections worked really well for me. But I have no idea of what Marked 2 is, how to install it and how to get it working with The Archive. HELP! and thanks :)

Comments

  • EiffEiff
    edited April 2020

    @benessere said
    1) what are the steps to go through to make a copy of my ZK notes so I can test and play without risking my real notes?

    Good idea to make a copy to learn the ropes. The way the archive works is to point it to a folder containing text files. So to make a copy to test and play, all you need to do is make a copy of the folder (using MacOs finder you can Copy and then Paste) - and then point 'The Archive' app to your newly created folder. You do this by selecting 'Switch Archives' in the apps menu (see pic)

    Then when you're ready to work with your real notes, just repeat the steps and point it to the folder with your real notes.

    @benessere said:
    2) Marked 2 ... seems to do the things that I really loved both of Roam and Notion, the collapsable sections, as I write best with as close to a blank page as possible

    I fear that the 'Marked 2' app might not do what you're hoping. It's a 'Preview' app, so it allows you to look at your markdown files, but it does not allow you to write in them. So you would write your files in The Archive (or any text editor) and then you preview them in Marked 2. It's true that you can collapse the sections, but since you can only look at your files and not modify them it might not do what you want.

    For a good text editor that would allow you to collapse sections, it's worth taking a look at Visual Studio Code. It's free. Here's a 30 second video of it's folding capability.
    So this wouldn't REPLACE the archive app, but since all the files are simply text files on your computer, you can edit them with any text editor. So some of us use apps like Visual Studio Code to do longer-form writing because of the features (like section folding). A quick way to do this is by right clicking the file in The Archive and selecting 'Open with External Editor'

    Hope that helps!

  • benesserebenessere

    Thanks a lot Eiff. I've just downloaded VS and am taking it for a spin. I really appreciate your help :).

  • mediapathicmediapathic

    I use folding a whole lot with my files, and there are a number of text editors that do it very well. I use emacs often (but that is a commitment). I seem to recall Sublimetext doing a good job with folding as well. One of my favorite apps for this is FoldingText, which does this and a few other things very well. It's pretty much abandoned right now, though the original author has offered to open it up to others, so it may come back to life, but it will work well enough until Apple updates the OS past it.

  • benesserebenessere
    edited April 2020

    Thanks mediapathic! I really like FoldingText, but how does one use it with The Archive???

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