branch: externals/denote
commit 5213c9e7af6aed0b279b5f328eabe25aa0ba7ede
Author: Protesilaos Stavrou <i...@protesilaos.com>
Commit: Protesilaos Stavrou <i...@protesilaos.com>
Add section with alternatives to Denote
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#+end_example
+* Alternatives to Denote
+:PROPERTIES:
+:CUSTOM_ID: h:dbb51a1b-90b8-48e8-953c-e2fb3e36981e
+:END:
+
+What follows is a list of Emacs packages for note-taking. I
+(Protesilaos) have not used any of them, as I was manually applying my
+file-naming scheme beforehand and by the time those packages were
+available I was already hacking on the predecessor of Denote as a means
+of learning Emacs Lisp (a package which I called "Unassuming Sidenotes
+of Little Significance", aka "USLS" which is pronounced "U-S-L-S" or
+"useless"). As such, I cannot comment at length on the differences
+between Denote and each of those packages, beside what I gather from
+their documentation.
+
++ [[https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam][org-roam]] :: The de facto standard
in the Emacs milieu---and rightly
+ so! It has a massive community, is featureful, and should be an
+ excellent companion to anyone who is invested in the Org ecosystem
+ and/or knows what "Roam" is (I don't). My understanding is that Org
+ Roam relies on a database to provide some of its features. This
+ probably means that it performs certain tasks with greater efficiency,
+ though a database is inherently not as accessible as plain text and
+ regular directories/folders---you depend on some specialised program.
+
++ [[https://github.com/localauthor/zk][zk (or zk.el)]] :: Reading its
documentation makes me think that this is
+ Denote's sibling or cousin---we have a lot of things in common,
+ including the preference to rely on plain files and standard tools.
+ One general difference is that Denote is trying to not replicate
+ existing functionality, such as by not offering its own "file index"
+ as a substitute for Dired or the minibuffer. Another potential
+ difference is that Denote is not a zettelkasten implementation per se,
+ though I am not sure how ZK interprets or enforces that methodology.
+
++ [[https://github.com/ymherklotz/emacs-zettelkasten][zettelkasten]] :: This
is another one of Denote's relatives, at least
+ insofar as the goal of simplicity is concerned. The major difference
+ is that according to its documentation "the name of the file that is
+ created is just a unique ID". That is not consistent with our
+ file-naming scheme which is all about making sense of your files by
+ their name alone and being able to visually parse a listing of them
+ without any kind of specialised tool (e.g. =ls -l= on the command-line
+ from inside the ~denote-directory~ gives you a human-readable listing
+ of files, while =find * -maxdepth 0 -type f= is even cleaner).
+
++ [[#h:f8126820-3b59-49fa-bcc2-73bd60132bb9][zetteldeft]] :: This is a
zettelkasten note-taking system built on top
+ of the =deft= package. Deft provides a search interface to a
+ directory, in this case the one holding the user's notes. Denote has
+ no such dependency and is not opinionated about how the user prefers
+ to search their notes: use Dired, Grep, the =consult= package, or
+ whatever else you already have set up for all things Emacs, not just
+ your notes.
+
+Searching through =M-x list-packages= for "zettel" brings up more
+matches. =zetteldesk= is an extension to Org Roam and, as such, I
+cannot possibly know what Org Roam truly misses and what the added-value
+of this package is. =neuron-mode= builds on top of an external program
+called =neuron=, which I have never used.
+
+Searching for "note" gives us some more results. =notes-mode= has
+precious little documentation and I cannot tell what it actually does
+(as I said in my presentation for LibrePlanet 2022, inadequate docs are
+a bug). =side-notes= differs from what we try to do with Denote, as it
+basically gives you the means to record your thoughts about some other
+project you are working on, which means that it and Denote are not
+mutually exclusive.
+
+If I missed something, please let me know.
+
* Acknowledgements
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: h:f8126820-3b59-49fa-bcc2-73bd60132bb9
