Dendron: A personal knowledge management solution built on VS Code

Wow, logseq seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Also detects file changes, so using a different editor side by side works.

Well, that's going to save me a chunk of time.

Thanks for recommending logseg. Going to give it a try.

I've been using Dendron mostly because of the search feature and the ability to publish it on web but I didn't really like the experience of editing my notes on VS Code. Seems like logseg have similar feature as well.

sorry dendron didn't work out. was there anything specific that felt "janky"? we've had lots of updates on general ux (see https://buttondown.email/dendron/archive/) and are continuing to focus on that this year. that being said, logseq is also a great tool. a bunch of folks use both dendron and logseq in tandem

I'm strongly considering moving away from Obsidian to Logseq, obsidian just has some limitations that I think I can work around in Logseq (insufficient syntax highlighting due to old integrated version of prismjs being one issue for ex).

I have sincere doubts that Obsidian will ever go open source.

If you live in the Apple ecosystem, Agenda(1) could be just the right tool for you. I also very much like their pricing schema(2), more apps should do it like this!

1. https://www.agenda.com/

2. https://drewmccormack.medium.com/a-cash-cow-is-on-the-agenda...

I wonder if Trilium Notes and the journal functionality would address your needs. You can use tags and backlink to other related notes if you wanted to. You can view notes in a standard hierarchy structure or view a note map.

You can take it a step further if that doesn't completely address your needs by customizing it. The journal button is just a note with a script (with a specific tag). It's highly customizable.

You can export your notes (all, or get granular with some or a single note) as HTML or Markdown or OPML.

Dendron is very focused on local viewing, creating, and managing your notes (UX/DX). This is in addition to publishing, which is a differentiator between it and SSGs like Jekyll, Hugo, Sphinx, etc. It automatically timestamps notes at creation, and every following update, in two separate fields within a note frontmatter. Since Dendron encourages git for the versioning of your note vaults, you can get the full git history of each note.

With VS Code, you can also use GitLens to traverse and view the history of all the lines within each note (who modified this line last? etc.) with the built-in git blame navigation.

You could technically create a script of some kind that runs git diffs across the git history of files, and maybe create a "*.changelog" child file for each note, in the event that you want to have dedicated files displaying how each note evolved over time? Otherwise, that isn't a built-in feature with Dendron.

For mobile use, I've liked using mgit (Android) + Obsidian for editing my Dendron notes, and then use Dendron on my laptops/desktops. Others have mentioned GitJournal working well for them. Some more on that: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/SJtEnmQQYGu0bP2Kg7UbA/

Zim wiki maybe?

I think one reason Dendron (and generally PKM topics) resonates on HN is because fundamentally, we haven't figured out "information architecture for humans"

Google works for the internet but we don't have an equivalent for PKM or TKM (team knowledge management). This is why we build Dendron (more details at https://blog.dendron.so/notes/N9VxT7G5SovmncezBAGO2.html)

And whoever posted it put a second slash at the end of the URL, apparently to trick the HN system into allowing it to be posted again. I’m not saying I care, I’m just pointing out that it seems like that’s what was done, because I believe you can only post a link again after a certain time has passed.

The temptation to snidely suggest you add listifi to your list overwhelms.

Here's another you might like: https://www.zettlr.com/

zettlr is also missing - opensource and really nice (also goog for zettelkasten)

https://github.com/Zettlr/Zettlr

There is a Second Brain PIM/PKMS graph based app released in public beta now called rea.ch

You mentioned roam - you should also mention org-roam, which sits atop emacs.

Reminds me of the Apple spin-out name Kalida (sp?) that tried to promote a "personalized programming language" called ScriptX allowing each developer to define their own personal language syntax and write code in that. I was floored something so dumb would get a complete corporate spin-out, developers and the full rah-rah marketing push. Once developed and available, people quickly found nobody could share or even read one another's code. Duh.

Totally agree that mind maps are hard to scale out, either across time or people. This is why Dendron focuses on helping folks create consistent structures (we call them schemas) to help map out their knowledge base. Think of it as a type system for organizing your notes. More details on that here (https://nesslabs.com/dendron-featured-tool) if curious

I was rooting for Topic Maps at the time. The notion of Topics, Associations between them and Occurrences of information about a topic seemed to me to be very powerful. I don't think they were necessarily meant to model mind maps (altho no doubt you could), more of a super charged index of an information space.

FWIW Topic Maps were the inspiration for BrainTool [1], which is a 'Topic Manager' maybe in the same space as Dendron. I wrote about the model here [2]. I'm hoping people will exchange Topic Maps that index an information space or area of research!

[1] https://braintool.org

[2]https://braintool.org/2021/05/15/Organizing-your-life-with-a...

Agree with this, at the same time I find the simple act of writing the notes or a mind map helps with retention even if they're unreadable later on.

I second org-mode. I've tried literally dozens of notes apps, but org-mode just gets everything right.

Well, almost everything. If I have to edit in a simple text editor then I still prefer Markdown and of course syncing files is up to the user (I use a private Gitlab account). Hebrew text that spans a newline is also problematic in Emacs, despite ostensibly fully supporting Unicode. But these limitations are trivial compared to all the issues I've identified in all the newer apps. It turns out that two decades of development really does lead to a mature product.

The number of potential links in a graph of n vertices scales like O(n^2). That does not mean that the actual number of links in the knowledge base should scale like O(n^2). However, it could mean that the overhead work to maintaining and building the connections in the knowledge base becomes unbearable. That is, the solution is not saving time anymore. Solutions like these need, imo, really good link prediction solutions to make it easier to manage them.

Are any of these personal knowledge base solutions offering link prediction as a feature to alleviate this problem?

> are notes in Roam/Obsidian/Logseq/Joplin/Dendron useful on the long term?

Very useful but the UX is very far from perfect. I would change/add dozens things in Obsidian. I also hate storing notes in a tree hierarchy - a very annoying overhead. I want it to be a freeform graph only with no taxonomy requiring a note to be located in a single specific place.

What I actually want is an open-source (fundamentally extensible but not necessarily free - I would pay up to $100 one-time if I really like it and probably donate more once it becomes an integral part of my life) offline sqlite-backed hybrid of Notion and Obsidian.

The most important feature I miss in Obsidian (as long as it is file system based) is a second file tree - dragging a note file to a distant (not fitting in the screen) place in one panel is painful.

Wikis work for notes if linking to other pages isn't a chore and is either completely automatic or so simple you can do it while you write.

If I need to start adding some (link markup)[linkmarkup.example] while writing, I can't be bothered.

Obsidian has a "Live Preview" mode.

The latest Obsidian release has a WYSIWYG editor mode that's quite good in my experience. It stores everything in plain old markdown files and has a ton of plugins for extra stuff like backlinks, etc.

Take a look at Joplin, it had a WYIWYG editor and normal editor.

It’s like an open source Evernote.

Obsidian (it's fantastic).

I've configured VSCode for this purpose. You can set a proportional font, at which point you are already halfway there. The default syntax highlighting already assigns scopes for headlines, bold/underline/italics, lists, code blocks and links, and it is either easy or default to style the text accordingly.

Dendron has plans to add WYSWG functionality this year

there's also https://logseq.com/

The new Obsidian version does this extremely well.

You can try out https://bangle.io, it is a real WYSIWYG Markdown * based note taking app that is local and open source.

* By real I mean that the UI stays WYSIWYG, unlike other apps that fall back to Markdown notation while editing.

Can I ask why the move from Obsidian?

+1 for LogSeq! Been using it for awhile now and love it!

here's a page that outlines differences between obsidian and dendron: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/a84ff014-e871-445d-9366-d97f1a... also happy to answer any questions you might have about Dendron :)

This may be helpful, if wanting to know some differences in Obsidian vs. Dendron: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/a84ff014-e871-445d-9366-d97f1a...

For migrating content from Obsidian, you can use Dendron's markdown import pod (pods are ways that Dendron imports/exports notes):

Markdown import: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/f23a6290-2dec-45dc-b616-c218ee...

Obsidian style import: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/9kovmyM4T0ZBeWvp5oH62/

I still use Obsidian on mobile to view my Dendron notes, but use VS Code with the Dendron extension when on my computer :)

LogSeq: We are privacy first

Also LogSeq: "It seems that your browser doesn't support the new native filesystem API, please use any Chromium 86+ based browser like Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge, etc. Notice that the API doesn't support mobile browsers at the moment."

... "Privacy first", and forcing you to use Google infrastructure.

I would steer clear of that one, hard.

Trilium Notes can do those very well. The first one being done with the web clipper extension.

https://github.com/zadam/trilium

yep. we have a number of users that do just this

notable is great! generally, anything that comes down to plaintext markdown is great because of data portability and the ability to apply existing tools over your data :)

Yeah, I gave up on Dendron due to performance issues.

Sorry to hear about this. When did you last use Dendron? we've had lots of updates in terms of performance over the past few months so that shouldn't be the case today

And Obsidian! Plugin system is great and allow you to fine tune your workflow.

Foam vs. Dendron: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/p5fMTi-6zOyX1TwhL6dM0/

I've seen many in the Dendron community use the Markdown import pod to convert their notes over to Dendron: https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/f23a6290-2dec-45dc-b616-c218ee...

Here is a comparison between dendron and foam -> https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/p5fMTi-6zOyX1TwhL6dM0.html

I used to love Zim, it was almost feature perfect in my opinion. But if you're using it to store notes with code, check first to see if the formatting feature can be disabled, because that changes the stored note text. I had to stop using Zim due to that, though it was years and years ago so maybe this has been resolved since. Other than that show-stopper, it was a great app and it had a great developer.

For many people, "Obsidian, but open source", would be a pretty compelling selling point. I only became aware of Dendron today, but going to have to evaluate it now

I believe there is a plugin for tiddlywiki. https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/PvoDxAWgziE

no asciidoc support but dendron's syntax is extended markdown and supports concepts like transclusions, diagrams, and other customizations. see https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/ba97866b-889f-4ac6-86e7-bb2d97...

As someone who uses PKM tools I'll say the answer is probably that you _do not_ use the graph view. It makes for nice screenshots.

That being said, part of what makes PKM tools so useful is that they can be used be different people with different workflows, so perhaps other people are using the graph view effectively.

Well, there's also the title.

Lucky you! It takes much longer for me!

But it is improving. In December, it took minutes. Since last update it takes seconds. ;-)

I just e-mail the notes to Evernote. That's what I do now.

Something we recommend for folks is to have different flavors of VSCode to side step this (eg. vscodium for dendron, vscode for code). That being said, if you found something you like, that's the most important thing :)

Every sufficiently advanced editor will eventually contain a buggy halfway implementation of emacs. :)

I don't know if I'll ever find a cooler, more interactive, intuitive, and featureful markdown language and implementation. I use it daily to track issues and progress at work. I use it to document the code, because it can be exported to really any format necessary.

I mean come on, the table editor and Babel still make me grin every time I use them. Truly genius.

That's where I am these days. I've tried all these .md based knowledge vaults and avoided Notion like the plague. I was really stuck on Obsidian... until one night taking notes on something I had to make a bunch of tables. Creating tables with pure .md is just obnoxious. So I decided to take a look at Notion based on the recommendation of another dev. Been using it for 3 weeks now and I have to say, it serves my needs, is super smooth/intuitive, and actually nice to work in.

I use Evernote. I have 18k notes and growing. I really want to like these markdown apps (a long time ago I used org-mode) but at the end of the day, there is always something missing that Evernote has:

In Evernote,

- sharing folders with other people is easy.

- I can easily publish notes to send to other people that don't use the app.

- I can forward e-mails to my note-taking system.

- I can use IFTTT to automatically import stuff.

- I can manage tasks (since the very nice new Tasks feature).

- I can easily put files in the notes, just drag and drop.

Yes, it is slow, but it is getting faster (progress is noticeable) and it works well, despite all the problems.

The only thing I would really like to have that Evernote is missing is backlinks and an interface to make linking easier, such as the Ctrl-K feature in Google Docs, which allows searching the document titles to find the one you want to link to.

By the way, in his last blog post, the CEO said that their revenue is increasing, so I guess people are voting with their wallets.

https://evernote.com/blog/ceo-update-january-2022/

Since it intended to work with local markdown files, you just add a regular link to the file:

https://wiki.dendron.so/notes/3472226a-ff3c-432d-bf5d-10926f...

founder here. let me know how it goes. if you're interested, we do personalized onboardings with new users as well, link to book is here -> https://calendly.com/d/mqtk-rf7q/onboard

PKM is the standard term for a whole diverse field of tools and techniques. Belittling it as "entering text" is pompous.

How about: personal "personal knowledge management" management ?