That’s helpful, peedwards. Thank you. You’re right that DTP is an incredible tool. I can’t imagine being without it, and I’ve been using it for only a few months.
One question: in Obsidian, when you’re taking notes on a journal article or book, do you have a zillion notes in separate small files, or one long scrolling file, or what’s your approach?
Also, you mentioned that you copy and paste the reference from Bookends into your notes. Is that in the form of a link, or just the citation plain and simple?
Thank you, peedwards. I’ve been using a single document per source, essentially creating a long scroll but with dividers between notes. But now I’m thinking it would be cleaner if I were to go with a separate file for each note. I guess if I’m willing to draw a horizontal dividing line, I should be able to divide my thoughts into discrete notes. And a decent template would certainly facilitate this.
For the most part, I agree with what was said on this forum by SebMacV, who’s clearly thought about these things much longer than I have: “there is way too much fetishising of this vague idea of atomicity – I mean, good luck deciding on what is just ‘one’, ‘indivisible’ ‘idea’.” But I also have begun to feel a bit out of control with my 100m-long scroll of a file of notes on a single book – virtually speaking, of course.
I often remember what a veteran linguistics prof once told us in class: “The world is divided into two kinds of people: splitters and clumpers.” Though I may be a third type: flip-floppers.
Dear colleagues, I encourage you to see at the comfortable outliner app, if you haven’t already. I, personally, like and use extensively OmniOutliner, it’s like a mind-mapper and note-taker at once:
You can collapse/expand and doing this you kill the question ‘one long note’ vs ‘small/atomic notes’ forever
You can use RTF-linking to any document, PDF-selected text, calendar, e-mail, bookends and everything allowing URL scheme or located in DT. Yes RTF-links are not so good for automation (hard to dismantle), but they are short and in-text
You can link to any subtopic in outliner document from inside or outside of the outliner
You can use all the intellectual power of outliner ‘mindmap notation’. I used different mind mapping software, but soon enough all my maps became a hierarchical structures. I understood, that all elementary logic operations (like part and whole, whole verification, ‘below par-up to par-on the par’ and etc) for what we all love mind-mapping is well realized in oulining hierarchy - much more simple format, you are not loosing anything except a visualisation - which is an arguable pro itself. All this constant logic building doesn’t brake the crosslinks.
You can write there anything right from short topic title to loooong text, or put it short and use notes to this topic (citations, service info) or subtopics.
I understand that workflows may vary (though I guess we are talking about academic workflow), but it is interesting for me: what valuable things can be done with Obsidian, which is hard/impossible/uncomfortable to do with Outliner?
From my experience taking notes with Logseq (an outliner with powerful block-level bi-directional linking) and DT (document-based, traditional), the two have different advantages when it comes to note-taking.
Outlining is great for retrieving pieces of information. It excels at creating a functional reference for technical matters.
Paragraphs are great for reviewing chunks of information. I can happily read my longhand notes in paragraphs, but it’s almost impossible to read 70 sprawling bullet points. (Maybe this is just me though; I don’t recall seeing anyone else saying something similar.)
I have stopped using Logseq as my main note-taking tool because, among other things, it’s critical that my notes remain readable. I realized this when I could not decipher what some of my 2021 Logseq notes were intended for.
(Aside to forum mods: Thank you for letting us go on with this discussion, which at times may seem to have DEVONthink more in the background. In fact, DEVONthink is a common denominator for most if not all of those posting here. For my part, I find that DT users provide insight that’s much more applicable to my own situation and my own way of thinking than on, say, the Obsidian forum or out there in the Wild West of Reddit.)
As long as nothing gets personal and expletives are kept to a bare minimum, this is a place for open discussion. Sharing opinions and perspectives as well as (constructive) criticism, even of our apps, is welcome. And we also benefit from the discussions as it shows us what people are thinking about and doing or what misunderstandings they may have. These things are especially important to me for documentation, blog posts, tutorials, etc.
Hi, meowky and Silverstone. I’m always shifting back and forth between outlining and non-hierarchical organization which relies on fast searches if not tags.
One question about OmniOutliner: how future-proof are its files? Doesn’t it use a proprietary file format? I know some people say this is a non-issue, but I certainly have some ancient data produced under extinct software that I’d like to get at. I’m trying to use markdown as much as possible in DEVONthink notes, and, of course, that’s the default in Obsidian.
OmniOutliner uses a proprietary format. The other reason I never considered OO is its lack of bi-directional linking, which I consider as essential for any outliner to be a primary tool.
For fun, or for what passes as fun in my life, I saved one of my long Obsidian note files as txt and then opened it in OmniOutliner. I knew there’d be a colossal job of formatting for it to be useful. In fact, it was a bit like putting a leotard on a giant squid. I finally gave up. Perhaps if I’d begun the notes on OO I’d have been happier.
I will say that my links out to other apps did work just fine in OO. I haven’t tested my internal links (block-to-block, for example). UPDATE: the few block-to-block links I’d used in my Obsidian file aren’t operational outside of Obsidian (as the Obsidian docs acknowledge).
Also, for what it’s worth, that long Obsidian-produced md file looks pretty good in DEVONthink’s built-in editor. Much better than what showed up, at least initially, in OO (no surprise, since OO doesn’t natively support markdown). In DTP’s editor, all my links and tags stand out, as do my horizontal dividers. The long scrolling md doc is perfectly accessible, searchable and editable. No complaints.
I do there all the work from retrieving pieces and summarizing, to building the final logic structure for turning it to the plain text of the manuscript. OO file contains citations with the direct links to PDF texts and Bookends refs, may be even the exact pieces of text, if inspiration came in one of those moments. And you see how these parts are connected to each other (without any backlinks and additional extentions), you may fluently change all the logic at any moment. You may collapse/expand and focus.
Not sure of how it is done in Logseq, but in OO you have a very wide options for formatting your notes, you can make it a table (add or hide additional columns), you can make checkboxes visible or hide them, you have a very smart and flexible styling in OO, including all RTF powers. It also has its preview plugin, you can see a formatted note in Finder and DT (with the saved collapsed/expanded state), collapse/expand, click links - all this - not opening the document.
Yes, OO does use the proprietary format, but you can open OO documents in any software which is able to read .opml files. This is a universal format for outlining software. OO needs .oouline for additional formatting and their own automation ecosystem.
I use OO for more than 10 years, OmniGroup is a very respectable and responsible company. Just like DEVONtech )
Any topic in OO has a unique link like: omnioutliner:///open?row=ahAJ8L0f2_K. You can open it from everywhere and it will find the document and highlight the topic (document needs to be open, but you can overcome it with the script if needed). A simple script can make these links bi-directional in a way and format you prefer. Not a problem. Didn’t use backlinks, but it’s a nice thought to try, thanks.
Anything else worth to give it a try with Obsidian?
I think the main requirement to such a soft - is minimizing the distraction from the subject of your thinking. So, formatting, styling, linking and re-ordering have to be as automatic as possible and do not distract in real time, but give you a maximum of a “supporting readability”.
Since my attempt to move my long notes file from Obsidian to OO didn’t go too well, I then tried a couple of the outliner plugins in Obsidian. The results weren’t especially satisfactory.
I see some of the advantages of outlining, in part because of the discipline that is imposed. You pretty much need to treat notes as discrete from one another and set them up in some kind of hierarchy. But this is also its disadvantage, since your note-taking time could be taken up by thinking about how to organize information. Of course, that’s not necessarily a waste of time!
In any case, this is the (sometimes creative) tension that exists between hierarchical and non-hierachical organization. There’s something to be said for both. I just wish it were easier for me to enjoy both at the same time.
I did give OmniOutliner a try. IMHO it’s far behind Logseq (and Roam Research and RemNote, I shall add) in terms of essential features for building a knowledge base.
No wikilink.
No native interface to display incoming references, at both block- and document-level, from other documents.
No way to embed blocks of document A within document B.
Without these, an outliner like OO is still good for giving individual documents additional structure. But I can comfortably do that in markdown documents, too, without having to get acquainted with RTF or intrusive bullet points everywhere. Indented lists are, as we all know, not exclusive to outliners.
For truly “minimal distraction” there is Bike Outliner, which I have been using for brainstorming purposes.
OO does have solid sync between desktop and mobile. Apart from that, however, I see no particular advantage of OO to competitors.
Not quite sure what you mean, but you can create an on the par topics in some place (meaning there are no any hierarchy yet between them) and further reorder them when you are ready. You don’t need to create another document for it. Collapse it, if it distracts you. Or use Focus feature, allowing you to work with the part of complex doc like with the small file.
But I think hierarchy relationships, imposed in outline, are essential for info processing as its first pre-stages you cannot skip (otherwise this piece of info will be in a kind of vacuum). You can hide them in plain text, meaning more words and loss of, to say, clearness. To re-structure it you will need to re-write the text, not just to reorder hierarchy in a few clicks - time loss (the essence of ‘atomic notes’ - is a mean to avoid it). In my experience, cementing structure in plain text should be the last stage of writing.
I just think manipulating topics in outline is much easier than manipulating separate plain text files. Technically, visually and logically.
I tried to use wikilinking, maybe not hard enough, but it distracted me more than helped…
All these three features are absent in OO, you are right, but all them may be seen as the result of a different approach: manipulating topics in outline VS manipulating separate plain text files.
And keeping this in mind you don’t need:
additional wikilinking - just backlinks between topics
incoming/outcoming references - you see visually more comprehended picture - hierarchy expanded to the needed level of details VS plain list of links which you have to open to see what’s inside and go back
blocks embedding - you just copy the structure you need to the topic you need. You can collapse inserted (maybe be here I don’t quite understand what is the need for it)
Yep, topics in one (or several) individual documents instead of bunch of different plain text files, connected with the links. I’m sure there are some solutions allowing to see the graphical representation of all these links between files (a kind of network graph), but not so sure if it is as interactive - means you see it but can’t change as easy.
I tried that and didn’t find the way to do it as easy as in outliner. In AI Writer e.g. In OO it is right at your fingertips
Yes, RTF maybe a problem, if you use AppleScript for example. Bullet points you may hide easily, not a problem )
Thank you @meowky!
I’ll see at other outliners you mentioned.
I always liked OmniOutliner but I never used it much. I never did any serious long-form writing in anything but Scrivener. For me, the flow of what I wrote was crucial and I found Scrivener to be unparalleled for getting material in the right order. Plus, Scrivener had so many other tools for the writer that I couldn’t imagine using anything else. But people have different requirements.
@Silverstone – just curious, but are you a francophone? You use “soft” as a noun to mean a program or application, which is usually a give-away! It isn’t English!
So many times and for so long I here the word “Scrivener”… Need to look at this software a bit closer )
Yes, probably, there are no such a term as “best workflow”, it depends significantly on how you think and write.
I wrote a PhD thesis using it in combination with Bookends. I can’t imagine how I would have written it with anything else. I also had DEVONthink as part of the armoury, and the combination of the three was very satisfactory. @kewms who sometimes posts here knows more about Scrivener than most of us possibly could. There are plenty of sources of help for Scrivener.
Since @mbbntu summoned me… The best way to get started with Scrivener is to download the free trial and look at the Interactive Tutorial, available from the Help menu.
