Signin Signup

SiYuan as an Outliner?

This post was last updated for 534 days ago, and the information may already be changed

Is it (or will it be) possible to use SiYuan as an Outliner app, similar to RemNote?

At first glance, it seems this might be possible if I keep all my content within Lists. However, I'm not sure if this is the intended use for this feature.

I'm also not sure if this could lead to peformance issues. I noticed that there is always a short loading time (a spinning wheel shows for about half a second) whenever I unfold a header or list item in SiYuan. This happens even if there are only a couple of blocks nested within. I also noticed that most docs in the "SiYuan User Guide" Notebook are relatively quite short.

For comparison, I have documents in RemNote that are a few times longer than the entire "SiYuan User Guide", with deeply nested structures, and there are no noticeable lags. This is essential for my workflow, as it allows me to quickly navigate and restructure my notes, with almost zero friction.

Of course, I understand if you're not interested in focusing on outliner features for SiYuan. The app already looks and works great as a note-taking app!

    1 Operate
    forestknows updated this article at 2023-07-07 00:55:46
    1 Operate
    16 Reply
    4
    3
    2
    2
    2
    3.7k 226 133 366 4 2.9k

    Related articles

    16 Reply
    SiYuan as an Outliner?

    Welcome to here!

    Here we can learn from each other how to use SiYuan, give feedback and suggestions, and build SiYuan together.

    Signup About
    Please input reply content ...
    • Nhan •

      Yeah I vaguely understand how RemNote structure its data. Everything is a "rem", an equivalent to "block" in other apps. And whether a block in RemNote can be a page, a folder, etc. is just a matter of how you designate the identity of that block.

      I think the answer to your question if SiYuan can be used as an Outliner app is that it absolutely can. Block is still the smallest unit here. Though I don't know if it can support your RemNote workflow.

      I do notice a slight lag when unfold a header in SiYuan not matter how large the content within is, so I think it's more like a quirk (definitely should be improved) than a performance issue. However, there is no lag when unfold a list.

      Btw, thanks for reporting about RemNote. I don't hear much about it and was curious about its performance. Glad it's doing well.

      1 Reply
    • MiscReply
    • Nhan •

      Preface with I don't know anything about coding. But yep I believe you can use CSS code to make things more compact. I would prefer that too. However, while waiting for some community effort to make the CSS code, currently using Ctrl + or Ctrl - to zoom in/out the interface works well enough for me.

      Btw, could you elaborate a bit more on why SiYuan "isn't sufficient to translate what Logseq has"? What are the exact features that SiYuan is missing?

    • Nhan • • 1 Comment

      Hi @leolee9086 , I know you're both a long time and a power user of SiYuan and you migrated over from Obsidian, a very performant app (Yes, I understand it's not an outliner, just talking about performance here in general). Could you give some impression on the speed of SiYuan?

      Also when you @forestknows say you "keep all my content within Lists", you mean you have a giant list and everything is just a bullet in that list and you just zoom in and zoom out as needed? I can see that would create a giant document in SiYuan and can be an issue.

      1 Reply
      3 Operate
      Nhan updated this reply at 2023-07-07 02:09:03
      Nhan updated this reply at 2023-07-07 02:08:56
      Nhan updated this reply at 2023-07-07 02:08:43
      Sorry, pinging @leolee9086 again because when I posted I messed it up.
      Nhan •
    • MonkCanatella •

      @88250 That's excellent! You guys are amazing. I love the pace of development and improvement with SiYuan!

      @Nhan I wouldn't say there are features that are missing so much as priorities - logseq has outlining as first class functionality and it's built around it. So while in SiYuan you can have an outline if you like, it's not like logseq where every block is part of an outline. I prefer SiYuan in this aspect, but if you're coming from an outliner based PKMS, it will feel strange. I think in SiYuan there's a default block type, which is the paragraph. If this default block type was customizable to a list item, I think migrating from an outliner would be made much easier! Then the additional functionality of additional block types would show its power as the user gets accustomed.

      I don't think it's possible to change your default block type but I would be willing to bet it wouldn't be a major change - could even be a plugin for new users

      1 Reply
    • Visit all replies
    forestknows
    Reply
    10
     Article
    5
     Point
    502

    Recent hot