With the rise of these .md based personal knowledge database applications it would be amazing to see some conversion software.
I understand that each has their special sauce. Does anyone know what would be the most difficult part about building a tool like that to copy in Logseq data to SB for example?
Or unification/interoperability even
pandoc.org is probably what you are looking for, but you might have to create a custom reader/writer or find one on the internet.
Oh cool! I didn’t realize pandoc was extensible enough to deal with this kind of conversion. I’ll give it a look!
I had been using logseq before. This is great running on one of my rpi4b’s. Thanks!
This is very cool, and I’ve been watching the project for a month or so.
I like the query setup and the templates look very interesting. One of my biggest complaints about Logseq is how much of a pain simple query operations can be.
A few things make me hesitate a bit:
- I’ve been burned on single-dev passion projects in the past.
- As a self hosted web app, it’s a bit more difficult to manage on a company owned machine. I know Electron apps get hate, but that would ease some pain here.
- The rapid pace of development is both exciting and worrisome. For example, a recent update completely changed the underlying templating engine from a well-known open source solution to a custom solution. I worry if I rely on this, something might catch me by surprise.
What are your thoughts on those concerns, OP?
All your concerns are completely fair.
Regarding the first, the best I can offer is what many other project in this space say: “it’s just markdown files on disk, you can take them anywhere at any time”. Obviously this is only partially true, because the more SB-specific features you use, the more you get locked in. Your notes will never go away (if you back them up). But all time building queries and templates, would have been wasted.
Regarding company owned machines: a concern I heard for Logseq and Obsidian is that people cannot use them at work/with a work machine because they’re not allowed to install anything. For SilverBullet I’d recommend not installing it on your laptop (work or otherwise), but rather on some other machine. Perhaps you have a Raspberry Pi lying around unused. Or maybe you buy a cheap VPS (silverbullet.md itself runs on a $5/month Hetzner VM). Then you can access it from anywhere with a web browser, and I assume your work laptop has one of those.
Regarding the high pace of development: also fair. The reason I have not been very actively promoting SB so far is because of the high change churn rate. If you’re a power user, you kind of need to keep on top of stuff. Mostly I attempt to give people migration tools, but this is always a opportunity cost decision. Until recently some fundamentals still didn’t feel quite right (like the templates). I think we’re getting there now though. Another one I still need to figure out is how to do the distribution of templates, slash commands. This idea of a Library you import works, but you cannot easily keep it up to date. This so something to still figure out. Generally I’ll do my best to mark the parts of this that are experimental or prone to still change.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for your answers! Very fair thoughts, particularly about the flexibility of keeping things as just files on disk.
Regarding the work thing, I should clarify my use case: I’d like to take work related notes that could contain privileged company data. With a standalone app, I can install it and manage the files on my device (with cloud syncing in an approved corporate way). I could still probably do that here, but it requires the work of running the web server locally. Unfortunately, an external source like a VPS wouldn’t be allowed.
I have one more question, if you have some time: One of the things I like most about Logseq is that when there is a list of back links on a page, the context capture is excellent (likely due to it being an outliner). I’ve noticed that with SilverBullet, the context capture might begin/end in the middle of a word, etc. Is there a way to configure that or plans to enhance it?
Makes sense. Regarding the linked mention snippets. Please create a GitHub issue (https://github.com/silverbulletmd/silverbullet) for that. Right now it does the simplest thing, which is just to take x characters on each side. That can definitely be improved.
This looks interesting; is anyone here using it?
i’m using it at work to take notes and write documentation.
i think it’s a fantastic app.
i have it as a pwa and have at least one silverbullet for each desktop.
i have ~100 notes perfectly organized in silverbullet!
the only things i would change is compatability with other tools. there is no way to export to PDF, if you nees to convert the note to docx you need to copy paste everything.
I use it and love it. Having the metadata (tags, dates, …) of your pages available to query and organize is awesome. I also love the tagged tasks feature.
Yes, I do and it’s great. I just wrote a template for cooking recipes.
I’m using it! I’ve been using it to track various household things and it’s worked great so far!
Well I have for the last two years, but I’m biased because I wrote it 🤓
I’d be curious to see comparison with Logseq. As it’s rightly mentioned, there are thousands of note taking apps and I’m not quite sure I see the selling point of SB. I really love the idea of notes as a database, but the query langauage seems subpar, more akin to obsidian’s dataview than the overwhelming power of tiddlywiki’s filters or Logseq’s queries.
I went from evernote to tiddlywiki to Obsidian to Logseq and somewhat stuck here now because I got the powerful queries in a very neat UI. With the market oversaturated as it is, I’d be nice to see what Silverbullet brings to the game that others don’t, what are the distinguishing features.
Also see here: https://lemmy.world/comment/7440117
While I cannot give you an in depth comparison, I’m sure there’s a lot of overlap in functionality. Where I think things are heading in a relatively novel direction is with the recent improvements I’ve been making to templates. While long, this video gives a reasonable sense of what that can do and I’d say it’s early days: https://youtu.be/ZiM1RM0DCgo?si=qL795lyKNe9HwoxI
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/ZiM1RM0DCgo?si=qL795lyKNe9HwoxI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yes, I have used it for many months. It has been the best solution for my use case for a while. Which is tasks, shopping, planning (trips, …), recipes, and a simple knowledgebase. It was the offline support that set it apart from some other solutions
I have the files in a syncthing folder, so I can access the files without running silverbullet
My biggest problem is keeping up with all the changes. Zef made some youtube videos that are helpful
Wow, this is super cool - saving this for when I finally spruce up my old desktop for a home server. You’re a talented person mate
Why not something like syncthing and then just use a text editor you like?
That’s exactly what I did and never looked back. Just installed code-server + a few vs code plugins. Automatically synced via some some scripts that push and pull+merge git commits, done. No need for one of those million note taking apps. I also installed polyglot notebooks for vs code to embed code into notes.
Did you bother opening the link? This project is clearly much more elaborate than simply synchronising notes.
I tried this, but couldn’t find a better editor as android app. The closest I got was Zettel notes. But silverbullet worked better
If you know of any FOSS, offline editors for Android which can do what silverbullet can, drop a link.
Interesting, but what does this solve what Bookstack does not solve? I mean sure, it looks nice and hacky and all that. But if i am going to host some note thingy, https://www.bookstackapp.com/ is right there and apparently the dev nowadays lives from the thing (which is nice i guess). Not to belittle your project in anyway, even if something like your thing would exist exactly as that its still commendable but i am already running Bookstack and this seems to add anything to any use case i could think off.
Nice notetaking app with powerful features!
Main question for me: Can you export plain markdown from the application (or Docker Volume) or is everything only accessible through the application?
I don’t want to manually export my stuff if I want to switch note application sometime in the future
All files are kept on disk as “plain” markdown files. I say “plain” with quotes because SilverBullet does support some non-standard markdown notations. But in essence, like logseq and obsidian: it’s a folder with text files under the hood.
Nice! Thanks for the clarification.
deleted by creator
Okay this is looking great. Spun up the docker container though and it’s a preeeeetty steep learning curve. Any suggestions on how I could move my obsidian vault into my silverbullet space?
Since both services store your notes as markdown files on your disk, you can just move your files over. When spinning up a docker container, you likely defined a path for your SilverBullet space. If not, try creating a note and see if you can find it on your disk.
What’s a “hacker mindset” and why do you need one to use this app?
Update: The homepage explains “hacker mindset” by linking to the wiki article for hacker lol
Where does it say that you need one?
That’s what the word “for” implies in the title
Well, that implies that it is made with that community in mind, not that everyone in that community needs it.
I clicked on the link to “installation instructions” on your home page in a couple of different places and got the error “e.split is not a function”.
It works for me on the main page. The Installation link sends you to:https://silverbullet.md/Install
Thanks, your link worked for me.
This looks very similar to trilium
Don’t all users of self-hosted personal knowledge management systems have a hacker mindset?
literally
This is how I know I don’t need to look it over.
