Denote – Simple Emacs Zettelkasten (by Prot)

Loving all the Emacs stuff on HN lately. The cool thing about integrating with Emacs and Org Mode is that you automatically have access to the whole ecosystem. In my experience trying out alternatives, that’s the major shortcoming of other systems—it’s so hard to get your information into them from other sources. Everyone raves about OneNote, but the modern versions don’t even integrate emails and notes.

Meanwhile in Emacs, you can use a client like Notmuch for email (https://notmuchmail.org/notmuch-emacs) and drop links to individual emails or email queries into your notes (https://git.sr.ht/~tarsius/ol-notmuch). I use this to minimize context switching while keeping reference material nearby. It also enables workflows that integrate emails, todos, etc. with checklists in notes. For example I have a “weekly review” Org document that has links to email and todo queries for staying on top of flagged emails, or low priority tasks that nonetheless need to be moved along.

One thing made by Prot that has made a big difference to me is his high-contrast light theme Modus Operandi, which has made working on my laptop on Emacs outside in bright sunlight a cinch. It's comprehensive in terms of the modes it supports, and he chose colours based on WCAG AAA standards. Like Denote, it's excellently documented. Highly recommended.

https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes

The documentation of the package, i.e. the very link of this thread is worth a read by itself. I 'm not an Emacs user so I won't use this but I enjoyed your documentation.

This looks like a really neat version of org-roam, has anyone tried and if so, how does it compare to roam ?

I've been using emacs for over a decade and when it comes to notes in emacs I'm usually on org-mode. This package is interesting, and I like the naming concept. But, I'm not convinced plain-text is a good general purpose note-taking medium.

To be clear, I don't think the issue is that the content is just text. I think text-only systems are great (I built one myself [0]). But, like org-mode, the system should help you make sense of what the text is for or about. I mean what it's about in a mechanical sort of way: such and such format means X and can be recalled like so.

Here's the thing, there's so much you can accomplish with a note-taking practice, whatever medium you choose. I do my books, budget, keep track of my time, manage a running task list, track aspects of my health, all in addition to collecting notes. The _process_ of capturing all this information is exactly the same, I shouldn't need multiple tools for each thing.

But, if I rely on plain-text notes all these functions would add up to a significant time commitment, both on the collection side and the recall side. Not to mention the fact that a lot of time I'm not at my computer to crack open an org-mode buffer.

The thing is, the note-taking system can (and should) supply functionality to support all the things you might want to include in your note-taking practice.

And sure, there could be some specialized functions that are not practical within the note-taking system. But as long as there's an easy way to extract the information to plug into something else -- it's all good.

[0]. https://tatatap.com

As a dedicated org-roam user: Interesting to read Prot's analysis of this crowded space. I must give this a spin some time.

Nice to see the Alternatives section of the documentation! Talking plainly about options and tradeoffs is so useful.

Good stuff =)