Roam Research, new web-based outliner that supports transclusion & wiki features - thoughts?

[Vadych]

I am glad that the idea of backlinks, which I proposed in 2017, is finally being implemented. Take a look at my other offers , suddenly they will become mainstream in 3 years:)
This, in my opinion, is what distinguishes Roam from DL

• Tables. Roam has a beautiful and simple solution for how to do this .
• If you can insert any branch as a child element and change it in one place, it will result in changes in another place.
• Tags consisting of several words
• Inserting a block with all mentions of a tag

[Kenneth_Aar]

@Vadych

• Tables. Roam has a beautiful and simple solution for how to do this .
• If you can insert any branch as a child element and change it in one place, it will result in changes in another place.

These two would really be awesome.

[Alan]

Feature requests for these two:

Table View

A method that makes a lot of sense to me is to have the list interpreted as json, and thus each node consists of a key value pair. Example: Fruit table apple price:20 health:10 toblerone price:100 health:2 danger:5 In this case, the nodes (Apple) become the table index and the keys are column names. Values are, well, values. If there is no key-value pair for a node, it would default to null. It’s a similar approach to many other json-to-table implementations. One clear benefit of t…

Clone (display item in multiple places)

(Moved from Trello; you can vote for this feature and see past discussion at https://trello.com/c/zrla0Fmx/150-clone-display-an-item-in-multiple-places) This feature would allow you to “insert” an item elsewhere. This is not a copy, as the updates of the original item will be reflected everywhere that it’s referenced this way. “Clone” is a temporary name for this feature, lacking a better name. Cloning still indicates having multiple copies (in the sense of cloning an animal), but that’s not …

[Alec_Fokapu]

@Erica

Unfortunately I don’t think Dynalist works this way. Roam Research doesn’t allow duplicate page names, but in Dynalist the document name and item name can be anything. So when there are multiple documents named “Page name”, what should [[Page name]] link to?

Whent typing [[Page name]] it could display in a dropdown the potential [[Page name]] candidate from which user user could select from ?

[Kerim]

So after reading Nat Eliason’s article on how he uses Roam I was convinced to give it a try, and I have to say I really like it. This especially jumped out at me:

Notion, Workflowy, and a few others allow infinite nesting. A note lives in a note lives in a note and so on.

In Roam, notes live nowhere and everywhere. … Each note has relationships to other notes, but no note lives inside another note or notebook. All of the information is fluid in the sense that you flow between notes based on their relationships, not because they’re all in the same folder or hierarchy.

It really does seem to work better than using a traditional outliner for this very reason. There are two things that Roam does to make this work which really jumped out at me:

1. The ability to create pages which don’t exist as you type. I you use #tags [[brackets]] or definitions:: those words become a page. You don’t need to first create a page and then link to it. This makes it very easy to create pages for everything. Autocomplete then makes it easy to link to those pages again.

2. Context. It isn’t just the existence of backlinks, but the fact that each backlink shows the reason why it is linking to that information. This is what I found most powerful. So, for instance, if I have a person’s name [[Alice]] nested in a hierarchy under [[Acme_Co.]] > #human_resources then when I look at Alice’s personal page the backlink will tell me where she works and in what department. This is incredibly powerful!

There are many other nice things, but these are the two keys that really made Roam seem very different to me from Dynalist. Thinking purely in terms of the UX (because I have no idea what is easy or not from a developer point of view), I think the first one shouldn’t be a big issue. The second one might be more difficult to integrate into Dynalist’s existing layout. One idea would be to have each backlink appear as an automatic note field under the item with the link.

To be honest, if Roam had a decent iOS app and a little more polish, I would be using it for many of the tasks I now use Dynalist for. I’m glad to see that the developers are watching this thread and look forward to see what creative solutions they come up with to implement some of these features.

[Kerim]

Thinking about this some more …

While creating tags in Dynalist creates a search result page, it is not an actual page that you can edit. This feature of Roam is also very nice because you can make notes specifically on the tag. To do this in Dynalist you would basically have to create a new document and tag it in the notes field on the top level. Something I was already doing before I discovered Roam, which makes this much easier.

[Stephen_Dewitt]

@Alec_Fokapu

Whent typing [[Page name]] it could display in a dropdown the potential [[Page name]] candidate from which user user could select from ?

Dynalist already does this

Edit: however I agree it probably does solve the problem

[Kerim]

A lot of the difference between Roam and Dynalist comes down to what you do with information after it gets entered into your Inbox. Dynalist wants you to file it away using the “move” command, while Roam lets you leave it in place and file it by simply adding tags or turning the text itself into tags. (Roam also shows you “unlinked” items that are related by search terms even if they aren’t tagged as such.) This is why Roam can give you a new inbox every day. I don’t think the same thing would work in Dynalist, because you really need to file things away into the appropriate location in order to find them again. I have to say, the Roam approach is really appealing! (Which is why I’ve already written three posts about it).

[Stephen_Dewitt]

One thing I just want to add to this is that over the past few years of trying every digital system going I’ve really come to see that there are psychological considerations to what makes a good system over and above how well a system might work for e.g. some perfectly rational, cognitively unlimited android.

As a small example I have found that one advantage of concrete ‘places’ where I make a conscious decision to ‘send’ things over simple tagging is the imprint in my memory. With the former, am I much more more likely to (1) know what lists I have and (2) remember where I sent a given item - it’s a more active process which yes adds a bit of friction, but that friction in itself can be a positive as it creates a stronger memory trace in my mind. The GTD guy has similar concerns about this - in one of his books he talks of the problem of ‘invisible’ information in digital systems - you can throw everything in there, but will you ever see it again (even if its tagged, will you remember to search for that tag)? If you do have great systems for retrieval, and good behaviour around this, wonderful, but I’ve personally found these behaviours harder to set up and maintain with ‘all in one box / tag’ systems vs concrete separate lists than I can ‘visualise’ as separate spaces and furthermore are shoved in front of my face as I move around my lists. I can really see a poorly managed Roam system quickly falling into this problem.

Not saying what’s best, just my experience (I have a bad memory generally so might be a stronger effect for me)

[Alan]

You say DynaList wants you to move stuff and Roam wants you to tag. I don’t see why DynaList couldn’t be used without moving.

My DynaList I have files wherein every day I create a new entry that’s just the date. (What Roam does for you, but it’s literally 10 seconds a day, and I have full control.). Under that I put my notes for the day. I could tag if I choose, and use those tags to view a themed history of my work.

Now if we had cloning I could make topical documents and reference these inline in the dailies but that’s generally not necessary. If I wanted to write an essay I could make a new note elsewhere and my daily entry would be scratch pad to help draft. I think I might even prefer this as it keeps context clear whereas a daily entry containing a cloned item would become anachronistic.

[Kerim]

The main difference is how tags work in Roam. As I said above they are actually pages, not just search results - though they are that too. But even when they are search results you can still edit them in place, without going back to the original context to edit. (You can edit in place when search local tags in Dynalist, but not when searching across documents.) This is completely different workflow which obviates the need to move, or even clone, an item. (Though I have found cloning to be useful as well, but for different reasons.)

[David_Goggin]

@Yosevu_Kilonzo

• Backlinks
• Page Sidebar (This is not a list of notes or pages sidebar that is present in most note-taking apps. I think this could be extended to just be tabs like a text editor)
• Automatic page creation based on links
• Automatic reference aggregation based on heading level references
• Automatic link updates e.g if you change the page title it changes all linked references on all pages!

The Sidebar is a killer feature that’s largely overlooked in favor of fancier features like bi-directional links.

While the ability to quickly cross-referencing notes in Roam is impressive, I am surprised by how useful it is to simply be able to work with multiple notes at the same time! You can open 1, 2, …multiple notes in the sidebar and work with all of them real time cut/pasting/re-arranging – and most importantly – discovering common concepts between them!

This “multiple notes open at once” seems like such a low tech feature I am surprised that it might just be the most powerful feature I use on Roam!

dgg

[Craig_Oliver]

@David_Goggin

The Sidebar is a killer feature that’s largely overlooked in favor of fancier features like bi-directional links.

That’s a good point David. Dynalist works well in two browsers side-by-side, but the ability to e.g. drag and drop from one window to another would be great.

[Kerim]

I’ve been thinking a bit about what Roam lacks that Dynalist does well:

• API
• Date range searches
• Mobile app
• Desktop app
• Notes
• Easy navigation and search between separate documents
• Send to inbox from browser, mobile extension, API, or email
• Custom CSS

And there are a bunch of features Dynalist is working on which I’m not sure Roam will support? For instance some kind of end-to-end encryption, mobile URL scheme/deep-linking, true-offline, etc.

Did I miss anything?

They are very different apps so some features (such as separate documents) might not really be “missing” from Roam, but I am personally still not sure I want all my data in one single database…

UPDATE 2020-06-30: Since I wrote this Roam has added “Date range searches” and “Custom CSS.”

[Stephen_Dewitt]

Yea now that we have archiving, separate files has really come into its own for me

[Michael_Potter]

Hi Erica, if the Dynalist team were to create another app with Roam type powers, what would it take to get the process started?

I would not mind putting $100.00 towards the project.

What if 50 individuals contributed in this manner - does this help the project get started?

[Philipp]

That is an interesting idea. But I am not sure if the Dynalist Team has enough resources to create a whole new app while still maintaining Dynalist.

[Michael_Potter]

Here’s why I am asking…they might be able to do it!

@Erica

Honestly, it might be better to build something new at this point, given that I’ve personally been itching to build a knowledge base app for years (I started experimenting with TiddlyWiki/TheBrain almost 10 years ago)

[Michael_Potter]

I really think the user base would support @Erica doing this. I’ll put my money where my mouth is right now.

[Philipp]

@Erica

Honestly, it might be better to build something new at this point, given that I’ve personally been itching to build a knowledge base app for years (I started experimenting with TiddlyWiki/TheBrain almost 10 years ago)

Okay I am reading that the first time and I am a bit surprised.