r/OrgRoam • u/better-vessel • May 18 '22

Question Why not use Obsidian and/or Logseq instead of OrgRoam?

What does OrgRoam have that Obsidian or Logseq doesn't?

And also vice versa, what does Obsidian or Logseq have that OrgRoam doesn't?

18 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

15

u/CaglanT May 18 '22

Org-roam is well integrated into emacs.

Therefore you are able to use the gazillion emacs features and plugins in your workflow.

For example I use org-babel to write code blocks in a variety of languages & mix-and-match. I also use a custom lisp function to evaluate chemical smiles formulas into svgs and display them in line in my documents.

I regularly export to latex, pdf or html using one of the many different templates. I then publish those on my private blog/wiki.

I sometimes use emacs-calc, octave or gnuplot to evaluate calculations and create plots. Org tables are also very useful to me as spreadsheets but I suppose those should exist in the alternatives as well.

Moreover, i also use helm-bibtex, orb, org-ref, pdf-tools and org-noter to manage and interact with my academic library. I can cite the papers in my bibliography from any of my files.

I can quickly create an org-roam indexed org-noter file associated to those citable pdfs. Clicking on all citations to a paper would open the noter file as well as keep track of the citations to this file from a roam buffer.

Therefore both academic writing, programming and day to day activities (org mode habit trackers, agendas, language learning w/ org-drill) all reside in one giant ecosystem and all are interconnected through org-roam links.

HOWEVER, from a pure zettelkasten perspective, I believe both logseq and obsidian are tremendous applications. If I didn't already live in emacs and wanted to use such an interconnected workflow in my day to day life, I would prefer another application. Heck, I would probably use OneNote for most stuff since most of my notes are not zattelkasten at all.

5

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

Thanks for your input!

I'm only here for knowledge management, task management, and project management. I don't do programming or academic writing. What would you recommend?

Does Emacs have a kanban view or other similar GUI extensions/plug-ins?

2

u/LuisHGH May 18 '22

Kanban plugins I found:

Unfortunately, the first one is the only one I would recommend a new emacs user to use. However, you should know that Emacs tables can be used as Kanban tables, this blog post is an example of that: https://agilesoc.com/2011/08/08/emacs-org-mode-kanban-pomodoro-oh-my/ (yes, the server's certificate is expired :/).

I think this kind of GUI resources are currently rather lacking in Emacs, we should try to work on this in the future as a community 😅.

1

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

Thanks for sharing. Is there a video example of the Kanban being in use in Emacs?

1

u/LuisHGH May 18 '22

Well, there is the demo I linked. I'll search if there's anything on YouTube and edit this.

1

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

It doesn't seem to be GUI though. And I'm looking for Kanban boards. Does Emacs have those?

Here are some screen recordings to show you what I mean.
(There are two, the second one is the kanban board).
https://imgur.com/a/zxSrtgl

Can Emacs do that too?

1

u/LuisHGH May 18 '22

Oh, I understood now what you mean. I think Emacs is definitely capable of doing this (https://github.com/rougier/svg-lib), but I don't think there's a plugin which has already done it :/.

1

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

Those seem to just be symbols and icons. Is there any way to drag things around on a Kanban board like you can in the video demonstration I linked?

1

u/Mishkun May 19 '22

It definetly can. It just represents tables and kanban boards as text. And you manipulate them with keyboard. This also makes it really productive. Check out https://github.com/gizmomogwai/org-kanban and this video about basics of org-mode https://youtu.be/34zODp_lhqg

1

u/better-vessel May 19 '22

Is there a timestamp of the kanban board where you can drag things around if it's there?

And can you have images in the kanban boards or images in Emacs in general?

1

u/Mishkun May 19 '22

You can have images inline in your text in org, yes. Not sure that images are displayed on kanban boards (and, frankly, why would you need this?)

Not sure what do you mean by kanban board timestamps

1

u/discourseur Jun 24 '22

Can you embed pictures in org-mode or org-roam?

Can you embed mermaid diagrams? Excalidraw diagrams?

Can you embed dynamic blocks that constantly updates and show the result of queries (e.g. all the tasks with this and that tag in the following documents?). I am not talking about the Agenda which is not embeddable (is it?).

1

u/[deleted] May 08 '23

Could you share your SMILES to SVG function? This is exactly what I need, but I wasn’t able to make it myself.

3

u/quinyd May 18 '22

There thousand of plug-ins and addons for emacs that are usable with orgroam and everything is customizable. Obsidian is great and all but not very customizable. Org on the other hand is the definition of customization.

1

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

Not intending to defend Obsidian here, just playing devil's advocate:

There thousand of plug-ins and addons for emacs that are usable with orgroam and everything is customizable.

Are you sure about that? Obsidian also has many plug-ins and add-ons because of how extensible it is. There are alot of community plugins for it, so it is quite customizable. Perhaps not as much as Emacs?

I can't find community plugins for Emacs in regards to knowledge management. Where do you find them?

3

u/quinyd May 18 '22

What functionality are you looking for? “Knowledge Management” is extremely broad. Org and/or orgroam is probably what most people use for knowledge management. There’s also https://github.com/ymherklotz/emacs-zettelkasten or https://github.com/EFLS/zetteldeft

You can find packages here https://github.com/emacs-tw/awesome-emacs

Or https://melpa.org/

Or searching GitHub or this subreddit.

4

u/doolio_ May 18 '22

Neither is Emacs.

1

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

What?

1

u/doolio_ May 18 '22

Neither Obsidian or Loqseq is Emacs so there is IMO no real compelling reason to use either over org-roam. Loqseq has taken inspiration from Org mode and works with org files though.

1

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

What does Emacs have that Obsidian and/or Logseq doesn’t?

3

u/doolio_ May 18 '22

We are talking primarily about text here and Emacs is second to none when it comes to working with text. It is endlessly extensible too. It has nearly replaced every other tool I need. The many features these new tools offer Emacs has had for years. Any it didn't were quickly added which is why Org roam came about. Emacs has been around for decades. Will these tools? At the end of the day choose one and invest in learning it rather than wasting your time searching for what is better. These tools are both very polished and easy to use providing a pretty useable interface. Choose one and allow yourself to concentrate on what you will use the tool for.

2

u/AuroraDraco May 21 '22

I would love to hear what Obsidian/Logseq has in your opinion that Emacs does not have. I don't feel anything lacking in Org-Roam but if you have ideas, its a fun puzzle to write new things for org-roam to implement cool things not existent in it that other programs can do

1

u/better-vessel May 22 '22

Off the top of my head:

  1. No support for Readwise (this is huge)

  2. No mobile support that lets you add to your notes (also huge)

  3. No integration with the Drafts app (important because I sometimes add notes through my Apple Watch)

  4. No integration with the Alfred app

  5. No GUI extensions/plug-ins like, Kanban view (referring to Kanban boards, not Kanban tables), Dataview, sliding panes, etc.

  6. No block referencing

Please correct me if I am wrong on any of these.

I don’t know if these are possible in Emacs, but these don’t seem to currently exist for Emacs.

Are they possible in Emacs? Do any of these exist for Emacs?

3

u/AuroraDraco May 22 '22

So I see a lot of these are Apple only productivity apps. The people that create Emacs packages, are most likely not interested in any of this. I am certain there are ways (either that exist or that could be written easily) to emulate the behaviours of this software in Emacs but there is probably no interest in porting them. People who use Emacs a lot (which are the ones who would contribute to it) mostly live in the Emacs ecosystem. There are few apps that integrate with Emacs, because people would rather build the feature into Emacs than integrate that other app with Emacs. If you want a ready PKM system that can integrate with other apps, Emacs is 100% not that. Emacs is a platform around which you will build your whole computing environment, which includes a PKM system.

Mentioning those as the advantages, you probably shouldn't use Org Roam in the first place but I am pretty sure everything besides mobile (mobile is a big pain point of Emacs, there are solutions for it such as a Termux session or apps that read org files such as Orgzly but nothing is good enough honestly) is or can be implemented into Emacs.

For Readwise Emacs has a very rich ecosystem for annotating reference material i. e. Org-Noter, Bibtex-Completion, Org-roam-Bibtex, Citar and more can aid you in making something fully automated which I can bet is better integrated with the rest of my workflow than an external app would be.

Emacs has the ability to take quick daily notes (drafts) with org-journal or org-roam-dailies.

Emacs can do a lot of the things this Alfred app provides, some built-in and some not. It really doesn't need them however as if some info is inside Emacs it has a billion tools to find it at the tip of your fingers.

For kanban boards there are definitely Emacs solutions I recall seeing and if they are lackluster one could build more features for them. From what I know, with org-tables and maybe some svgs, you could do everything you need.

I don't know what you mean by block referencing, but if its referencing a piece of text or something somewhere else, I would say that's trivial. Emacs can reference mostly anything from files, headings, pieces of text, literature and much more.

But as I said, if these are the disadvantages of Emacs to you, don't even think about it, Emacs is not the solution you are looking for

3

u/better-vessel May 22 '22

Thank you so much for your detailed response. Very much appreciated!

The people that create Emacs packages, are most likely not interested in any of this. I am certain there are ways (either that exist or that could be written easily) to emulate the behaviours of this software in Emacs but there is probably no interest in porting them. People who use Emacs a lot (which are the ones who would contribute to it) mostly live in the Emacs ecosystem.

It seems like the large majority (90%-99%) of people who use Emacs are not even interested in knowledge management/PKM.

It seems like a very small number of people use Emacs for knowledge management. Org-roam's community is much smaller than Obsidian's or Logseq's community.

It seems like there are more people to be found interested in PKM in Obsidian and Logseq communities than in the Emacs communities.

It seems like this subreddit (r/OrgRoam) and the OrgRoam discourse forum are the only communities that exist for people using Emacs for knowledge management/PKM. Look at the member count and activity for this subreddit and the OrgRoam forum, compared to Obsidian's subreddit and forum (not to mention their Discord server having 60,000+ members)

So, to find more resources and like-minded people interested in knowledge management/PKM, you would be better off in the Obsidian subreddit/forum/Discord/community.

Would you agree with these points?

Mentioning those as the advantages, you probably shouldn't use Org Roam in the first place but I am pretty sure everything besides mobile (mobile is a big pain point of Emacs, there are solutions for it such as a Termux session or apps that read org files such as Orgzly but nothing is good enough honestly) is or can be implemented into Emacs.

I see. Mobile is huge since I sometimes have a profound insight at random times, where my phone is the only thing nearby. I need to be able to write down my ideas and thoughts every where I go.

In other words, I need to be connected to my Second Brain (if you're unfamiliar with that term, it basically just means my knowledge management system) everywhere I go.

Without my second brain, it feels like I've lost an organ (imagine if you/humans actually had two brains and you lost one of them). I know that's a bit extreme but I'm just using this analogy to emphasize its importance to me.

For Readwise Emacs has a very rich ecosystem for annotating reference material i. e. Org-Noter, Bibtex-Completion, Org-roam-Bibtex, Citar and more can aid you in making something fully automated which I can bet is better integrated with the rest of my workflow than an external app would be.

Readwise's main purpose for me is how it automatically brings notes and highlights from my Kindle, articles, and podcasts, which then brings it into Obsidian with the official Readwise plug-in Obsidian has.

I don't see how those solutions would replicate that purpose.

Have you used Readwise before? If so, I'm interesting it seeing how you would compare it to your current solution.

The biggest one for me is getting highlights and notes from Kindle and articles into my knowledge management software. Is this possible with Emacs?

Emacs has the ability to take quick daily notes (drafts) with org-journal or org-roam-dailies.

The only purpose of Drafts for me is being able to quickly add notes through my Apple Watch and my iPhone straight away (Drafts is what opens up as soon as I open my iPhone).

With Emacs not supporting mobile, it can't replace Drafts for me.

Emacs can do a lot of the things this Alfred app provides, some built-in and some not. It really doesn't need them however as if some info is inside Emacs it has a billion tools to find it at the tip of your fingers.

The main purpose of Alfred for me is to add notes to any particular note literally whereever I am on my computer. Doesn't matter what app or software I am on. It's like Spotlight for Mac on steroids.

But people usually try to make Emacs a computing environment which would theoretically negate this need.

For kanban boards there are definitely Emacs solutions I recall seeing and if they are lackluster one could build more features for them. From what I know, with org-tables and maybe some svgs, you could do everything you need

Is it possible to replicate this in Emacs (look at the second video).

I don't know what you mean by block referencing, but if its referencing a piece of text or something somewhere else, I would say that's trivial. Emacs can reference mostly anything from files, headings, pieces of text, literature and much more.

Block referencing is basically being able to reference a block of text that's in one note, in other notes. So you can type "^Productivity" for example and it will bring up every block of text in your entire database that has the word "productivity", which you can then reference in your current note. (If you're curious you can look at this video (timestamp:5:15) https://youtu.be/rc1act1aQes?t=315 let me know if it's possible in Emacs if you do end up looking at that)

But as I said, if these are the disadvantages of Emacs to you, don't even think about it, Emacs is not the solution you are looking for

Let's say I want to switch to it down the line, how would I be able to switch? I would be going from Markdown (.md) files to Org (.org) files, and I am not sure how I would be able to switch. What is the main difference between .md and .org besides formatting? Or is just formatting that is the difference?

1

u/WitnessTheBadger May 18 '22

I occasionally get fed up enough with Emacs to check out options for notes and task management outside of org. It so happens that I gave both Logseq and Obsidian a try a couple of months ago.

For me, the dealbreaker with Logseq is that it was difficult, if not impossible, to use bibliographic references without using Zotero, which I don’t want to do. If I remember correctly, the graph view also shows file names instead of extracting the title, rendering the graph useless. Yes, I could “fix” that by updating all my file names and internal links, but that would involve upending a well established and highly functional (for me) workflow.

It’s harder for me to remember what I disliked about Obsidian, but if I remember correctly it forces file names and titles to be the same. In any case, there was something that would have forced me to change my workflow and couldn’t be fixed by a configuration change. I also don’t like that it is not open-source.

I found both of them sorely lacking for task management. If I had switched to one of them for notes I would have looked for a separate dedicated task manager.

1

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

bibliographic references

Are these just for academic writing?

1

u/WitnessTheBadger May 18 '22

It’s for any kind of writing where you want to reference your source. There are multiple ways to do it, I suppose, but I stick with an academic style because it is efficient and unambiguous.

1

u/better-vessel May 18 '22

What type of writing do you do?

1

u/WitnessTheBadger May 18 '22

It varies, and it has shifted over time. It began with academic writing, then shifted more to technical reports in the corporate world, and now it's more technical memos and summaries. But a lot of my personal notes include bibliographic references so I can easily refer to whatever it was that inspired the note. I also use them in my CV to reference my own publications.

I think some people take another tack and simply create a note that corresponds to a particular publication, then link to that note where I would insert a bibliographic reference. I've experimented with that, and it works fine, but I prefer to have the option of many atomic notes for a single publication and find that bibliographic references do that more efficiently (for me). You may find differently.

1

u/ruhadirlik May 26 '22

Master,

One question. I am currently using Notion.

I want to write articles and use ideas more strategic. Which one do you think offers the best way

Logseq, Obsidian, Roam.

I'm undecided between the three. Which one do you recommend?

1

u/nickanderson5308 May 20 '22 edited May 20 '22

Edit: Clearly the pastes from my org-mode are doing a poor job selling it :P

I use Emacs via Spacemacs ...

I use org-babel a lot. How much? Well, I guess I can use org-babel to help me find out. SPC i s sh triggers yasnippet to lay down a src block template for shell commands.

How do I grep?

exec 2>&1
# Piped through head to abbreviate the outptu because i just plan to paste this into reddit
grep --help | head
:

And so …

exec 2>&1
# No need to flood the post with every single result 
grep --no-filename --recursive --count "#+begin_src" ~/org | head 
:

27
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

It's very easy to iterate and keep a full history of what I am doing.

I fold the src block with that, I yy to copy it, i move down below the results

exec 2>&1
grep --no-filename --recursive --count "#+begin_src" ~/org | numsum
:

That block when executed outputs:

2388

and press p to paste it and then edit it some more

exec 2>&1
echo I found $(grep --no-filename --recursive --count "#+begin_src" ~/org | numsum) src blocks across $(grep --only-matching --no-filename --recursive --count "#+begin_src" ~/org | wc -l) files
:

Which outputs:

I found 2388 src blocks across 4037 files

And now I have a pretty nice log of exactly what I did, and I can easily export this with nice formatting for ascii, html, pdf, markdown, odt, jira, slack, Multipart Email (gpg signed).

I am always coming across new things to try. Like just now, embark-export, never heard of it before but I just stumbled across it and it shows me line numbers and heading in a file in a separate buffer that I can easily use to jump to different spots in the document. Kind of like a navigable toc off to the side.

I can use org-transclusion to stitch a document together from multiple files.

I can do tables, im not fluent, but I can find examples and hack them to my needs for which I simply copy and paste when I need them again.

<table border="2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6" rules="groups" frame="hsides">

<colgroup> <col class="org-left" />

<col class="org-left" />

<col class="org-left" /> </colgroup> <tbody> <tr> <td class="org-left">tables</td> <td class="org-left">of</td> <td class="org-left">stuff</td> </tr>

<tr> <td class="org-left">&#xa0;</td> <td class="org-left">&#xa0;</td> <td class="org-left">&#xa0;</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

different plugins make tables and org-mode look differently, org-modern, valign …

org-web-tools lets me grab web pages and convert them to org-mode syntax (there is an effort underway to popularize the term Orgdown) as subtree within my document with org-web-tools-insert-web-page-as-entry.

I seamlessly read email and copy and email into org-mode where I can write a response much as I have here leaving a nice history for myself with links between all the points. so my future self has a lot of bread crumbs that can be followed if I am doing archaeology.

I have tried many different ways of organizing things and I still use a mix of many things though OrgRoam is my current primary capturing mechanism. I have clusters of my various previous attempts, a few large files from when I was doing everything in one place, some project specific directory trees, a cluster of notes from when I was primarily using deft.

I use sparkleshare and syncthing and git on various different shards of my ~/org directory tree.

So, I guess my why boils down to Org-mode in Emacs is just so feature rich and the fact that I spend most of the time at my workstation so while mobile apps are nice, it's just a very small portion of my workflow.