Show HN: Logseq – A roam like open-source plaintext note-taking app | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Logseq – A roam like open-source plaintext note-taking app

logseq.com

65 pointstiensonqin20 comments

After a few minutes of looking around I'm pretty excited.

I like the idea of Org mode, but don't really like TUIs (looks, interactivity), Orgzly or the available web interfaces.

I've never gotten into roam.

Since my notes tend to be made up of deeply nested bullet points (Studies>Lectures>Programming 2>Lecture 1>History of C...) I've been stuck with Dynalist, which is like Workflowy but better in most dimensions (multiple documents, lower price, more features, wonderful developers from the interactions I had with them) ... but still proprietary SaaS I don't want to have to rely on for something so important.

I haven't yet thoroughly tested, but on first look it seems like it supports the basic bullet point features I need (collapsing with the state saved, dragging around) and maybe more (embedding of media, other node trees?).

Super exciting! Thanks for developing this!

Thank you for trying logseq!

If you don't already know, the makers of dynalist are working on https://obsidian.md/

Pretty cool competitor in the space. Still closed source, but I think the community was able to get them interested in an open source pledge. Not sure if they are committed or not.

Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea! I'm not sure whether it's for me since I'm pretty locked into the outlining style and while open source is always better no cloud dependency is definitely great (and essential for work).

My perception of the Dynalist devs' coolness seems just about right.

Random thing I think is cool about Dynalist: A full backup is one get-request to dynalist.io/backup with the right cookies away.

That said it does feel a bit like abandonware. Obsidian would explain that.

I don't use Dynalist on a regular basis, but maybe "finished" instead of "abandoned"?

I am a backer, after having discovered logseq as a viable alternative to Roam. Great project, and a great and responsive team building the system.

For the ones looking to do the same: https://opencollective.com/logseq

Definitely would be great to see this project gain mindshare and funds. Also, for the ones who wonder what it is they reach when clicking the link for this "Show HN", there is an about-post here: https://logseq.com/blog/about

Thank you for the support!

I've noticed this is built with clojurescript, as is Roam and https://github.com/athensresearch/athens

I have never seen any other projects using clojurescript and don't know much about clojure/clojurescript, so this may be a silly question, but what is it about clojure/clojurescript that makes it the choice for these roam clones? Or is it just that everyone is reverse engineering the Roam code??

Author here. I started it as a side project to have a local-first, org-mode outliner web app to use on my phone. I chose Clojure/Clojurescript because I'm more familiar with both compared to Javascript/Typescript. Several things I like a lot about Clojure/Clojurescript: Data-Oriented Programming, all three (logseq, roam, athens) use Datascript, which is an in-memory database and Datalog query engine. REPL (as other lisp languages) Clojure is very stable, I can run all my old projects without any issues. Also, I don't reverse engineering the Roam code(it'll cost more time for us), Logseq is hugely inspired by Roam Research, Org Mode, TiddlyWiki, Workflow.

- Datascript: https://github.com/tonsky/datascript

Super excited to share this with HN! We're building a privacy centric networked knowledge base for knowledge management and sharing, where you own your data! Come say hi in our discord!

https://discord.gg/y25pKc7WXG

Source code: https://github.com/logseq/logseq. It supports both Markdown and Org Mode.

this is super exciting to see! love the task mgmt features amidst others. can’t wait to see this develop over the next few months.

Thank you! The task management is from Emacs Org Mode, logseq has the similar TODO/DOING/DONE/NOW/LATER keywords and A/B/C priorities, deadlines and scheduled are supported too. More org mode features are coming!

I might be missing something but how is it privacy first if all files are on github, unencrypted?

The files can store in the GitHub private repo, not in the logseq server. Also, the team is working on storing on the local disk.

You missed this:

Where are my notes saved?

Your notes will be stored in the local browser storage using IndexedDB.

Now, if you use the sync feature, the "privacy first" goes right out the window, as stated in the next statement right after the above one:

"Currently, we only support syncing through Github, more options (Self-host git, WebDAV, Google Drive, etc.) will be added soon."

this is great. can i import my Roam data?

yes you can.

yes i found it! just canceled my roam subscription. thanks so much for your hard work!

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