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0 pointsangleofrepose6y ago0 comments

> It allows us to throw different use-case-optimized GUIs at a sync'ed folder of org-mode files. A clear example are the mobile apps, but there are others.

This is a good point, I agree.

> As for the knowledge base features, however, I'm still far from being able to reproduce the speed and precision of recall that I had on InfoSelect, or even Evernote with a solid tag hierarchy. I also use Dynalist to have an outliner on mobile.

What speed and precision are you missing? It seems that org mode should have the capacity to establish any content connection scheme you could dream up.

> KB situations

What does KB mean?

> I would also love to be able to browse connections in my knowledge base, TheBrain-style, but that will always be clunky to unusable on a pure-text UI.

I don't think this is true. Depending on the kinds of connections you want to browse in your knowledge base there are plenty of ways to transform the ui to show them. That is what I see org mode to be at it's essence, a software tool to allow for transformations of text on screens. I think though, that your point is more about browsing. We should have text-based ui browsers for connections. All a gui like the brain is doing is putting animations and a mouse on top, we can definitely specify things via the keyboard in a number of ways to replace the mouse, and who wants animations to begin with? If the main pull at the end of the day is that GUIs are pretty and text UIs aren't then let me point you here [1].

[1]: https://lepisma.github.io/2017/10/28/ricing-org-mode/index.h...

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voxadam6y ago

> What does KB mean?

Knowledge Base

rodelrod6y ago

> What speed and precision are you missing? It seems that org mode should have the capacity to establish any content connection scheme you could dream up.

That's what I thought too, but I haven't been able to accomplish it yet.

In InfoSelect I had a tree on the left that I could filter instantly and incrementally while I typed in the full-text search box (imagine org-sparse-tree + helm-org-rifle on steroids). In Evernote I have a double hierarchy of notebooks and tags (vaguely based on The Secret Weapon [1]) that allows me to create a new project tag where I pull together new action notes, meeting notes, and old notes from my 17-yo knowledge base. I'll have anything between 5 and 20 ongoing projects that I can toggle quickly on the left hand navigation bar. The notes are shown in a table where I can click on the header to sort by title, created date, or updated date, so I can find what I need within a few seconds.

I can also do a mixed full text/tag/date search adding filtering criteria as I go. In org, I have to decide beforehand what kind of search I want, and if it's a mixed search the syntax becomes very cumbersome.

With org, I can do none of the above on mobile.

In practice, this means that I have more trouble finding things in my 14 month-old org setup than I do in my 17 year-old knowledge base.

> What does KB mean? "Knowledge Base", sorry for dropping the acronym without definition!

> All a gui like the brain is doing is putting animations and a mouse on top, we can definitely specify things via the keyboard in a number of ways to replace the mouse, and who wants animations to begin with?

I have zero problems with using the keyboard. I've been using vim and editors with vim keybindings since the 90s and my favorite laptop of all time doesn't even have a touchpad. There are cases however where specialized GUI affordances can be helpful. I would say that navigating a huge graph of nodes using mind-map-style partial views is probably one of them. I know there's a brave soul trying to pull this off in Org [2] and I sincerely wish them success.

> If the main pull at the end of the day is that GUIs are pretty and text UIs aren't then let me point you here

Pretty is also important but the default Spacemacs theme is pretty enough for me. Mixing fixed and proportional fonts would be nice, I've had that on my to-do list for a while.

[1] https://thesecretweapon.org/ [2] https://github.com/Kungsgeten/org-brain

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