Re: [emacs-humanities] Paper Zettelkasten safety [was: Why Emacs-humanities?]

[Ihor Radchenko]

Göktuğ Kayaalp <self@gkayaalp.com> writes:

> Tangentially, I’m curious about this Zettelkasten thing.  I’ve looked
> into it, quite a bit, but I don’t get the hype.  Isn’t it pretty much
> hypertext with some organisation and automated backlinks?
> Does it really achieve e.g. anything plain Org + Deft/occur/isearch
> can’t?

Yes, it is - when you just look at the notes/cards produced by someone
else. And Zettelkasten can be implemented in plain org (that's what I
do).

However, a big part of Zettelkasten is not about implementation. If you
read the book [1] describing Zettelkasten method, you will see that big
part of the method is specific workflow. Do you regularly dedicate some
time to interlink every headline you have to other headlines? Do you try
to regularly update an "index" write-up on specific topics with a
summary of what you know about that topic? Deliberately keeping notes
unorganised (at the beginning) encourages people to do the linking
because there is no internal feeling that the note can be easily found
later. The same can be achieved without using cards or small files, but
the idea to have the habit of thinking about relations between notes and
summarising the current knowledge on specific topics is probably the
most important takeaway of Zettelkasten method. I recommend reading the
book I referenced and try to find the useful ideas. Specific
software implementations are probably much more a question of
preference. 

> In general it feels like a somewhat rigid system with some
> serious technical debt. Lots of little files, a server, non-Org tags,
> etc. What exactly makes it superior to just putting notes in a couple
> files, and using search and manually linking to stuff?

I think the main advantages of org-roam are quick search and
visualisation of related notes, including higher levels of relations
(related to related). It is very useful when trying to summarise all the
available relevant information on specific topic or question.

The problems you mentioned are probably just org-roam's author
preference. As I remember, the org-roam's author simply does not like ID
links in org. Also, updating state of many small files is simply faster
(or less trivial to implement) in comparison with a need to re-scan one
big org file just because one word was changed in a single note. Though
there is org-ql, which is pretty fast.

> Backlinks look cool, but IDK if they are really that useful as to
> dictate a whole new note taking system and file layout around it.

FYI. There is also org-super-links package providing backlinks in plain
org.

Best,
Ihor

[1] Ahrens [Sonke Ahrens] (2017) How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple
Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students,
Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers