Signin Signup

SiYuan as an Outliner?

This post was last updated for 312 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
    2.3k 192 58 238 1.8k

    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 ...
    • mka •
      PRO

      Trying the lists feature as outliner for some days on. It's far from Workflowy or Remnote experience. The overall behavior is different, feels unfinished. But far most about the search and filter inside the outlines. Very difficult to see the context and zoom through the search out of the box. Maybe with a lot of sql queries you could do the work but the experience is still bad.

    • MiscReply
    • mka •
      PRO

      I've been using Remnote almost since the beginning. Lately the experience has improved a lot. There are still several bugs and small problems with how the app was designed. Performance is good. The community is small and the majority are students. App very focused on flashcards. I'm still testing Siyuan. I've already found some bugs but I don't intend to point out each one here. I prefer to wait for development.

    • 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
    • leolee9086 •

      Actually, I don't use the list function very often. I usually only use it when creating outlines. As for performance testing, I have only done it for normal document formats, and most devices should not experience lag when reading Chinese novels with over one million characters (except for possibly taking a moment to import). I will try to find familiar users who can speak about the performance of lists.

    • Visit all replies
    forestknows
    Reply
    10
     Article
    5
     Point
    502

    Recent hot