Hello :)

There isn’t any community about note taking where I could post my question and no this is not a “What’s the best note taking app” question…

I’m getting tired of maintaining my Obsidian vaults… Somehow I’m fighting to get it right and obsidian seems to fight back. I’ve got 4 vaults of the same subject and I always end to make a mess out of it and make a fresh one… Also my notes a scattered in all direction and the more my knowledge base grows the less I seem to be able to find something…

This is probably a me problem rather than Obsidian issue. The way I’m taking notes are not compatible with Obsidian. IMO Obsidian’s defaults configuration are bad and visually not appealing. Sure customization in Obsidian is “endless” but digging in the HTML code to change the style or adding plugins to somehow get something visually appealing seems more like a chore than actually taking notes.

Here I’m again roaming the web for a Note taking app the could fit my needs and after trying a lot of different apps (please don’t suggest the already well known apps… I have probably already tried it…) I couldn’t find something that fits my workflow.

The only one that looked great and simple was osmosnote but it isn’t maintained anymore. There’s also dendron but it’s in maintenance mode. So there goes the only ones that looked promising from my perspective.

After giving it more thoughts, I was looking for something that could:

  • Keep my scripts updated
  • Simple markdown text
  • No database
  • Local first
  • Open source
  • If webapp self-hostable
  • Back-linking
  • Keep track of changes

Except for back-linking, a self-hosted Forgejo with git seems to fit all my needs, however I’m not sure if this is the right tool and I’m scared that in the long run I will mess it up the same way I did with Obsidian.

Does anyone here has some experience and is taking notes that way? I’m really curious on your experience and maybe your thoughts if it’s feasible ? Practical ?

Please don’t suggest Org.mode or Emacs ! They look very cool and very promising but they are WAY to much overkill ! And they also implement a totally new way of taking notes… Relearning on how to take notes will probably give me the last hit on abandoning to document anything !

Thank you for any helpful input !

  • Dragonish@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    7·
    8 hours ago

    I use obsidian, forgejo, renovate bot and some hugo websites as part of my knowledge garden. I am very happy with my setup, but i think “overkill” probably would describe what i have built. it has organically grown, and some less technical folks in my life follow a slimmed down version of this. I keep a note called _focus that i go to when i am overwhelmed. It contains my “seven W’s”, which are links to separate notes which are purposefully kept simple

    Who am I?
What do I want?
Why do I want the things I want?
When am I going to do these?
What are the things I will consistently do to accomplish these?
With Whom I'm going to surround myself for leverage
Where will I do this; which tools will I use?

    Whenever i am overwhelmed or feeling like my process is not working, this focus note helps keep me on track. It seems like you may benefit from a similar process.

    Forgejo is great! it helps me keep track of different software i use and follow. It is where i store my obsidian vault (i only use 1). Git lets me sync across devices, keeps history (which gives me confidence to press delete which is very important), and i can use pre-commit hooks to run vale to enforce some limited linking behavior. ie some terms i want to ensure i also setup as a back link any time i write them down. It is also somewhat trivial to have bots interact with the markdown files and commit.

    My main hugo site contains recipes. it is a submodule now, but was just part of the same repo at first. Another is a manual for how to build my home lab from scratch. I consider these sites part if my “Express” in Tiego Forte’s CODE method. CI builds and deploys them, and then i scan a qr code i put on my fridge to jump to the recipes website quickly. I can also (manually) print the sites to keep a meat space copy of this crucial and well structured info.

    Renovate keeps some stuff up to date. Specifically it keeps hugo/its dockerfile and the standalone python/go apps i have written for myself and others (and stored in separate repos) up to date. I do keep codesnippets in my obsidian vault, which renovate does not help with because those are small one/two liners.

    What else… imo a monorepo is better for retrieving information than if you split it out. Forgejo search does not work across repos, and imo even if you used a provider that does, it is always more complex to have to look in many places vs 1. I would advise you try putting all your personal scripts in one place rather than spread them around. I only give my apps a seperate repo when i am ready to share them with others and i need that clear boundary for access.

    I also recommend writing down things in your daily note first, and only moving or putting structure around it after you need to retrieve it. Basically reduce the friction with entering info in (also remember to summarize info, dont dump whole articles and such in) and allow yourself grace and time to retrieve it.

    • cybersandwich@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 hours ago

      I stumbled on vimwiki years ago and I’ve never found anything that meets my needs better. You can use markdown, link to things, etc. I use git to help manage versions and track changes, but I truly treat it like a wiki where it’s constantly updated and live.

      You can easily publish to html too if that’s your thing.

      As for searching and other stuff, I use telescope (part of neovim) and grep and other coreutils and bash scripts to do the things I need to do with my stuff. For example I have a vim keyboard that calls a script that greps through my diary notes for “to do” items then puts them in one file for me. But they all link back to the file they reference. So I can quickly see my to do items and jump to that specific note to work out it or close it out.

      It’s all text files; no databases or special formats.

      If you use md it’s interoperable with a myriad of other apps and tools too.

      My blog, for example is a Hugo blog so any personal note that I want to make into a blog post is a ‘cp’ away from publishing.

    • λλλ@programming.dev
      1·
      4 hours ago

      Hugo builds obsidian notes? I know it’s just markdown. But there are some things specific to obsidian. Like the double bracket to link to other notes in the same vault.

      • Dragonish@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        1 hour ago

        The files that hugo build are regular markdown. I can double bracket link into them so that Obsidian shows the graph and backlinks, but i cannot backlink from them into the normal obsidian notes. (without the html showing a double bracket/not a link)

        When i include images in the hugo sites i plop them down right next to the md file so that i can use relative references that the generated site will follow. for my standard obsidian notes i put images and other blobs in a single folder and use the double brackets to make life easier.

        There may be other obsidian specific functionality that i cannot use in those files, which is limiting for sure.

    • N0x0nOP
      1·
      7 hours ago

      imo a monorepo is better for retrieving information than if you split it out. Forgejo search does not work across repos, and imo even if you used a provider that does, it is always more complex to have to look in many places vs 1. I would advise you try putting all your personal scripts in one place rather than spread them around. I only give my apps a seperate repo when i am ready to share them with others and i need that clear boundary for access.

      Thanks for the tip ! Yeah, there goes my idea to host forgejo to the drain. If I can’t search across repos that’s a big NO ! I thought to use repos like a book and separate everything according specific subjects :/. Humm, maybe I should give Git-server + mdBook a try like someone suggested below.

      I keep a note called _focus that i go to when i am overwhelmed. It contains my “seven W’s”, which are links to separate notes which are purposefully kept simple.

      Haha, that’s a nice way to refocus your mind on what’s important ! Thanks for sharing your personal way to refocus on what’s important ! 💖