Knowledge Management Systems

Background

Every now and then there is a discussion on /g/ or /sci/ about note taking, notes, second brain or knowledge management systems (KMS). Latest thread is the start of this page. This page is meant to collect useful information and make sure future discussion keep progressing rather than noodling around in small circles. People talk a lot about KMS but usually it is too abstract stuff and colorful presentations with fashionable drop shadows, and when everything has been said and done, too much has been said and nothing has been done. That is why we are here. Also see this older note.

What

KMS is simply about collecting information so that you can easily retrieve it and also share it with other people. This sounds simple, and yellow post-its abound. The problem comes when you want to retrieve information and yellow notes do not scale. Instead you end up with the "sunflower syndrome" - yellow paper bits surround your monitor until it looks like a deranged sunflower. To retrieve information you need keywords, title, abstract, categories, and complexities quickly increases.

Common Features

Most offer one or more features along

• Simple markup such as Wiki or Markdown, typically bold, italics, strike through, underlining
• Notes
• Outliners
• Todo-lists
• Meta data such as title, keywords, abstract, name and date of creation, name and date of editing etc.
• Searching based on contents, metadata and folder
• Linking to other pages
• Importing contents such as images and documents
• Annotations

Reviews

Note Apps hs an extensive review. LWN has an extensive review of Zettlr.

Examples

For now just a list of various KMS that were brought up in these discussions.

Another notes app

Another notes app is an Android app that strives to provide a simple way to take notes.

BookStack

BookStack is an open source self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organizing and storing information.

CherryTree

CherryTree describes itself as a hierarchical note taking application, featuring rich text and syntax highlighting, storing data in a single xml or sqlite file. It is open source. People have complained in the past that the SQLite database failed. It can be repaired with sqlitebrowser.

Clover

Clover describes itself as "your daily workspace: Notes, Tasks, Whiteboards and a Daily Planner in a streamlined workflow".

Dendron

Dendron describes itself as an open-source, local-first, markdown-based, note-taking tool. It's a personal knowledge management solution (PKM) built specifically for developers and integrates natively with IDEs like VS Code and VSCodium

Denote

Denote is simple notes for Emacs with an efficient file-naming scheme.

DokuWiki

DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn't require a database. (GitHub)

Foam

Foam describes itself as a personal knowledge management and sharing system inspired by Roam Research, built on Visual Studio Code and GitHub.

GoodNotes

GoodNotes is a commercial notetaking app with PDF annotations for iPad, iPhone, and Mac.

ImapNotes2

ImapNotes2 is an Android app that permits to sync notes between an Android device and an IMAP server in an apple way. ie the way iPhone notes are synced with an IMAP server.

Joplin

Joplin is an open source note-taking app. Web pages can be saved as notes and notes can be shared via the cloud. It is cross platform, with clients for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. Its internal database can be synced without external botnets using tools of your choosing.

Jrnl

[https://jrnl.sh/en/stable/ Jrnl is a simple journal application for the command line. Journals are stored as human-readable plain text, and can also be encrypted using AES encryption.

Kolab Notes

Kolab Notes is an Andriod App for taking notes locally and optionally sync them with Kolab and IMAP servers in the Kolab v3 storage format.

LaaNo

LaaNo is an Android app to bind Notes to Links and, at the same time, providing independent access to them.

Logseq

Logseq describes itself as a privacy-first, open-source knowledge base, a joyful, open-source outliner that works on top of local plain-text Markdown and Org-mode files

Markdown Memo

Markdown Memo describes itself as a knowledge base with bidirectional links built on top of VSCode. Is is inspired by Obsidian.md and RoamResearch.

MarkText

MarkText is an MIT licensed open source project. It support CommonMark Spec, GitHub Flavored Markdown Spec and selective support Pandoc markdown with markdown extensions such as math expressions (KaTeX), front matter and emojis.

MDWiki

MDWiki is a CMS/Wiki completely built in HTML5/Javascript and runs 100% on the client. No special software installation or server side processing is required. Just upload the mdwiki.html shipped with MDwiki into the same directory as your markdown files and you are good to go. (GitHub)

Memex Garden

Memex Garden (formerly Worldbrain.io) is in beta but offers presently "Collaboratively Curating, Annotating and discussing websites & PDFs" and interfaces with other systems such as YouTube and Roam/Notion/Evernote via Readwise.

Memos

Memos is an open-source, self-hosted note-taking solution designed for seamless deployment and multi-platform access. Experience effortless plain text writing with pain-free, complemented by robust Markdown syntax support for enhanced formatting. (GitHub)

MindForger

MindForger describes itself as a "Thinking Notebook & Markdown Editor". It is open source and available on several platforms.

Mymind

Mymind is a non-collaborative system described as "notes bookmarks, inspiration, articles and images in one single, private place, enhanced with artificial intelligence."

Napkin

Napkin is a system to collect and reflect thoughts.

nb

nb is an open source command line and local web note‑taking, bookmarking, archiving, and knowledge base application with many features including bookmarking and plugins.

Nebo

Nebo is a note taking system based on handwriting.

Neorg

Neorg is an all-encompassing tool based around structured note taking, project and task management, time tracking, slideshows, writing typeset documents and much more. The premise is that all of these features are built on top of a single base file format (.norg), which the user only has to learn once to gain access to all of Neorg's functionality.

NoNonsense Notes

NoNonsense Notes is a notepad and todo list Android app. It is replaced by Orgzly, an outliner for taking notes and managing to-do lists where notebooks are saved in Org mode’s file format (see below).

Notejot

Notejot describes itself as "Stupidly simple notes app."

Notes

Notes is an open source multi platform note taking system for QT, that has both folders and tags.

Notion

Notion is a collaborative document/note taking system with a workflow. Data is in the cloud and people complain about reliability. When the cloud is gone the sun shines over your empty workspace.

Notesnook

Notesnook is an open source note taking system with end to end encryption.

ObsidianMD

Obsidian is a KMS based on local files written in Markdown. There is also graphics to show how things are interrelated. Export is not completed yet.

The bug reports are growing but there is less sign of bugfixing. People also report on data loss. In addition, this product is continuously shilled on /g/, which hardly helps the credibility.

OneNote (Microsoft)

OneNote is a digital notebook from Microsoft, and is often available with Office installations. Linux versions are not available. OneNote 2016, an older version, and native Windows program, allows storing OneNote files on Dropbox. It comes with Office 2019 VL.

Org Mode

Org mode for Emacs is a plain text major mode for keeping notes, to-do lists, and more. It provides for metadata such as title, author and date. One can use org-fragtog for inline LaTeX rendering. One anon published his init.el

Org Roam

Org Roam describes itself as a tool for networked thought. It reproduces some of Roam Research’s 1 key features within Org-mode. It is open source.

Org-Roam-UI

Org Roam UI describes itself as a graphical frontend for your org-roam Zettelkasten. Note that Org-roam-ui tries to keep up with the latest features of org-roam, which conflicts with Doom Emacs's desire for stability.

Orgzly

Orgzly is a free outliner for taking notes and managing to-do lists with specialized search functionality, where notebooks are written as plain text files in Org mode file format. This can be synced with many existing systems.

Paper (Gnome)

Paper is a note taking app for Gnome. Some report there are still a few bugs.

Saber

Saber is a (work-in-progress) cross-platform libre handwritten notes app. Please note that this app is still in early stages and not ready to trust with your notes yet.

SilverBullet

SilverBullet is a note-taking application optimized for people with a hacker mindset aiming for a hackable notebook where your notes are _more_ than plain text files, and where your notes essentially become a _database_ that you can query; that you can build custom knowledge applications on top of. (GitHub repository)

Simplenote

Simplenote is a multi platform note taking application.

Sublime

Sublime Outline Notes Publisher lets you publish HTML pages using tab indented notes or markdown (md). It is also an outliner, and static site generator.

TiddlyWiki

TiddlyWiki is a single page application (SPA) that implements a wiki on a file.

Tomboy (Gnome)

Tomboy describes itself as "Tomboy is a desktop note-taking application for Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac OS X. Simple and easy to use, but with potential to help you organize the ideas and information you deal with every day." It has Wiki style linking and add-ins. Note Tomboy is well know even though it is no longer maintained and replaced by Tomboy-ng.

TreeSheets

TreeSheets descibes itself as a "hierarchical spreadsheet" that is a great replacement for spreadsheets, mind mappers, outliners, PIMs, text editors and small databases. It is open source.

Trilium

Trilium Notes is a hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases. It features note versioning, where note attributes can be used for note organization, querying and advanced scripting.

Typora

Typora is a minimal markdown editor. Files can be saved to Git.

Rnote

Rnote describes itself as an open-source vector-based drawing app for sketching, handwritten notes and to annotate documents and pictures. It is targeted at students, teachers and those who own a drawing tablet and provides features like Pdf and picture import and export, an infinite canvas and an adaptive UI for big and small screens.

Roam

Roam describes itself in a whitepaper as an online workspace for organizing and evaluating knowledge that is built on a directed graph.

VimWiki

VimWiki is a simple local wiki with a search engine.

Xournal++

Xournal++ is an open source multi platform tool for handwritten input with annotations.

Zettelkasten

Zettelkasten is a complete and complex system from reading and writing to management of knowledge. It takes the no-hierarchy approach to knowledge management.

Zettlr

Zettlr is another open source notebook with markdown

ZimWiki

ZimWiki states: "Zim is a graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages."

Mind Maps

Notes and knowledge can also be organised graphically, typically known as mind maps, also known as concept mapping or information mapping.

Freeplane

FreePlane is a huge system, written in Java and thus available on many platforms.

TheBrain

TheBrain presents itself as "digital memory."

Reference Management Systems

These are systems with a focus on handling references to and between document. Note that the Wikipedia article on comparison of these is having trouble with Wikipedia gatekeepers, and is also out of date.

Zotero

Zotero is an open source reference management tool to help you collect, organise, annotate, cite, and share research and documents. There was a major upgrade recently.

Specialised Systems

git-annex

git-annex is a tool for organising files, using the file system and git. Tagging is also available. Multiple devices can be used for safekeeping data. in the words of the home page: git-annex allows managing large files with git, without storing the file contents in git. It can sync, backup, and archive your data, offline and online. Checksums and encryption keep your data safe and secure. Bring the power and distributed nature of git to bear on your large files with git-annex.

Hydrus Network

From the home page: "The hydrus network client is a desktop application written for Anonymous and other internet enthusiasts with large media collections. It organises your files into an internal database and browses them with tags instead of folders, a little like a booru on your desktop. Tags and files can be anonymously shared through custom servers that any user may run."

Also see the local page on Hydrus Network.

Shaarli

Shaarli is a personal bookmark manager written in PHP. It integrates into any modern browser using a JS bookmarklet and allows the user to apply thumbnails, tags and Markdown descriptions to bookmarks. It can also store tagged notes in Markdown, which are just bookmarks without a URL. It's private by default, but you can expose part of your bookmarks as public. Your friends can follow your public bookmark feed over the built-in RSS feed.

RemNote

RemNote is a tool for thinking and learning, with flashcards, PDFs and backlinks.

Graphics

Knowledge can be illustrated by various tools such as Freeplane, Graphviz and more, but will quickly run into the problem of connecting lines piling up like mats.

Decker

Decker is a multimedia platform for creating and sharing interactive documents, with sound, images, hypertext, and scripted behavior, and builds on the legacy of HyperCard and the visual aesthetic of classic MacOS.

Synchronisation

Often it is useful to sync data between devices. This is often a paid for feature in freemium products. Free alternatives exist, such as Syncthing.

Tools

MarkDownload - Markdown Web Clipper is an extension to clip websites and download them into a readable markdown file. It is not guaranteed to work on all websites. The extension is available for Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Safari.

Breadcrumbs is a plugin for Obsidian that lets you add hierarchical metadata to your notes and then leverage that structure.

Unstructured text can be analysed in many ways, but keep in mind that some may monetize what you give them to process in ways you might not have expected.

Organizing Files

It is not always convenient to store all files inside the KMS, some times the file system is better. That still leaves you with the problem of how to do that and importantly how to structure the dirfectories and sub directories. Once upon a time we were promised that fast sorting would solve all problems, and just for most other grandiose and overly generalised claims, also this collapsed. The problem is that now we have a generation that does not know you can add sub directories to your messy /Documents catalog. Some notes:

• Start early. Sorting out a mess after it has started festering is time consuming
• Define a structure. The entire purpose of it all is to retrieve data

Johnny Decimal

One scheme is Johnny Decimal number system with a 10 x 10 numbered structure. There is also a collection of zsh functions to work with Johnny Decimal.

Colophon

This is a start. We need a lot more.