Post @post@social.cleverlibre.org

@ellane @EpiphanicSynchronicity

Congratulations, you have rediscovered as a user one of the principles of Unix philosophy, "Everything is a file".

FYI Unix is the family of operating systems where Linux and MacOS comes from.

The success of Unix is related to storing everything as plain text files and use a composable set of commands to manipulate them.

#EverythingIsAFile

@EpiphanicSynchronicity

What if there are no other apps that meet your needs?

What if your productivity depends on a very good plugin for Obsidian and the same experience can't be reproduced with anything?

Also what alternatives to Obsidian do you currently have?

@EpiphanicSynchronicity

You are replying repeating what Obsidian team says without actually reading what I said... this is exhausing but for the last time:

If I actually care about a piece of software I can improve it by myself or pay someone to do the work.

This is the key piece you keep skipping: in this world when you want someone to do some work for you you pay them.

Would you buy a house knowing that can be repaired only by the company that sold it to you? Would you risk see that company disappear and you having to abandon your house?

Why would it be different with software?

FOSS projects even have the advantage that fixes and improvements can be made once for all users, present and future, so you will have more people in the same situation as you willing to contribute or support (a portion of) the development.

@ellane @EpiphanicSynchronicity

#Logseq is #FOSS, that means:

- it's not only the product of a company but also a tool that belongs to all the users.
- if the company give up on Logseq the development can be continued by others even by re-organizing a new team of developers eventually financially supported.
- it can only "die" if there are better alternatives and the users move to them. As soon as it is relevant, it won't die.
- I will always be able to modify it to fix bugs or improve it by myself and even if I have not the skills, I can pay someone to do the work.
- tools to export data from it can benefit from knowing exactly how it works internally.

Additionally, Logseq:

- has HTTP/JSON APIs to power external tools including the ones to export data.
- it uses Datalog for queries that is a very powerful query language, much better than SQL and very popular in some fields.
- it's written in ClojureScript, a Functional Programming language, that makes easy to take a specific portion of the code and use it in other tools, again to export data to other formats without writing everything from scratch (there is already a CLI tool called logseq-query that let you query your graph without Logseq actually running).
- you can use HTML in it (as mentioned in Markdown specification) but also Hiccup that is a Clojure-friendly way to write HTML/CSS, basically allowing the user to remodel the application by adding buttons and even mini-apps in blocks because it can even evaluate ClojureScript.

Now, Obsidian is supposed to be just a Markdown advanced editor but its plugins need special syntax like Dataview's, that is not standard in any way, to provide the same functionalities shipped by Logseq by default and involving more standard and enstablished technologies.

Logseq on the other hand is the convergence of outliners like Org-Mode, a graph database to power a flexible and performant data structure, Datalog query language, everything exposed as HTTP API for max interoperability and to run it over a network and this unique approach of the user remodelling the UI with HTML/CSS/JS, blurring the line between users and developers and between an app and a framework.

Logseq was born as a personal project to provide a modern UI to OrgMode, that 20 years later its first release is still very popular, gets new releases and has a huge ecosystem.

Thinking in terms of "will it still be around?" is something that belongs to the realm of proprietary products and services. Logseq is a piece of that huge amount of software that belongs to humanity known as FOSS. And this is also the reason we are discussing this on Mastodon and not on Twitter.

@EpiphanicSynchronicity

### About Markdown:

- I can write a page in Document Mode in Logseq using first level blocks as paragraphs and indented ones as lists;
- if I remember to press `t,o` shortcut to expand all collapsed blocks the `collapsed:: true property` is removed;
- if I don't reference any of those blocks I am free from `id::` properties too;
- I can remove the first two columns of characters from the file to turn first level blocks into paragraphs and get more "standard" Markdown files with a simple Unix command;
- I can concatenate that command to Pandoc that I use to export to PDF so I don't need to actually edit the MD files;

This is more complex to explain than practicing, so for me there is not a reason to split data and workflows between two apps that would be a huge disadvantage.

### About folders:

- Logseq frees me from having to choose a hierarchy, to stick to it and to decide where to place something;
- I can have as many hierarchies as I want to organize pages (and blocks and whatever) and the same element can be in multiple hierarchies;
- I can still organize MD files in folders independently from Logseq that will just respect my folder graph organization; this is useful if there is a set of pages I want to share between graphs (I can symlink a folder) or share a specific folder with other people etc.

@EpiphanicSynchronicity

I don't remember if I already asked you, but what's the difference between Logseq's Document Mode and Obsidian? I don't see why one would open another app when in Logseq you can just press `t,d` to hide bullet points and write paragraphs of text in blocks like in any "longform writing" app.

#PKM proprietary/online products: *exist*

#Obsidian users: "better keep notes local and in a standard format!"

#Logseq users: "right, but also using #FOSS tools is important for the same reasons, Obsidian is not FOSS, on the other hand there is this new app called Logseq..."

Obsidian users: "it's nice that everyone can use what suit them the best :)"

🤷🏻‍♂

@lwriemen @lightweight

Actually OpenOffice (whose Libreoffice is a fork) predates MS Office.

@davidslifka

It's ironic that you mention the Fediverse and decentralization but then suggest to improve Mastodon ecosystem with clients and tools: this is a form of centralization for the Fediverse.

The Fediverse started way before Mastodon with other federation protocols, Mastodon supported one of them, then ActivityPub was introduced as the latest iteration and Mastodon moved to it.

Then a new generation of AP-compatible services were introduced including PeerTube, WriteFreely, a WordPress plugin (posting on Medium? Another paradox if you ask me), Pleroma, Misskey, Lemmy, PixelFed and so on.

Then there are other federation protocols that are still considered part of the Fediverse by many, for example Matrix mainly used for instant messaging.