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SiYuan as an Outliner?

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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!

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    forestknows updated this article at 2023-07-07 00:55:46
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    SiYuan as an Outliner?

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    • 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

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    • forestknows •
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      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.

      That's it. They do have the concept of Documents, though that's just a Rem that shows in the sidebar (plus some other small differences). Even Slots (their equivalent to Attributes) and tags are Rems! It's very elegant and powerful.

      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.

      You are right! I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. That completely changed my view. I updated one of my replies above to reflect that (I tagged you). With that, I think SiYuan might be fully able to support my RemNote workflow, and much more! Will investigate further.

    • forestknows •
      Author

      Yeah I also think it seems to be a potential "quick win" to invest in outliner features. The thing is maybe this isn't their priority...

      One think to note is that, although SiYuan has block-level granularity, the files themselves are actually at document level. In this sense it's more similar to an app like Obsidian, rather than Remnote. This might be an obstacle for full outliner capabilities...

      At least that's what I understood!

    • forestknows •
      Author

      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?

      In RemNote, yes. Though I rarely zoom in/out. Usually I'm just folding/unfolding, so I can focus on the branches that I'm interested in. Keep in mind that in RemNote everything is essentially a bullet list (you can choose to hide the bullets themselves, but the blocks always behave the same way - they can be freely nested, folded/unfolded etc).

      Edit: to add an example.
      I just grabbed the full content of Elvis' wikipedia page (supposed to be one of the longest), pasted to RemNote, then did a bit of nesting (not too much). Runs slower than a normal-sized page, but still quick and smooth (quicker than unfolding Headers in SiYuan).

      Edit2: oops!
      After reading @Nhan 's comment (explaining that the lag only happend with headers, not with Lists) I just did the same with Siyuan (pasted entire Elvis wikipedia as a List, then did some random nesting) and... it's faster than RemNote. Much faster. Pasting was instantaneous (on RemNote this took a minute). After that, folding/unfolding was super quick. So I guess it's totally possible to do this in SiYuan in technical terms. I'll probably do a Feature Request soon for a few features that would allow an outliner workflow (not much would need to be added, to be honest).

      By the way, I deleted the images I had added here because they didn't add much to the discussion.. It was just screenshots of the content within RemNote.

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      forestknows updated this reply at 2023-07-07 03:57:16
      forestknows updated this reply at 2023-07-07 03:56:23
      forestknows updated this reply at 2023-07-07 03:21:11
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