Logseq Times 2023-02-19: Fireside chat, Query UI, Sync, Moving to / from Logseq and plugin updates

After a week of sightseeing, I ]never going around to see some sights could be so tiring, here we are together again for another update from the world of Logseq. This week, we have an unofficial fireside chat happening, we have some interesting updates from the devs, some users are joining Logseq, but some users are leaving and general workflow ideas. Lots of very good plugin updates too.  

Logseq News

• @Bader is hosting an unofficial get-together this Sunday (19 Feb) @ 19:00 GMT. You can access the event here.  "Lately, my personal graph 'Pandora' has felt cluttered and disorganized, and I bet I'm not alone. So, I'm inviting you to join me in the voice channel for a laid-back chat about maintaining and improving your graph. This is a casual meeting where we'll share ideas, tips, and tricks for keeping our graphs tidy. No official updates or news — just good conversation and useful insights." If you are around and can join, that would be great.

Releases

No releases for this week, but the devs are cooking up some fantastic things - read on for more details.

The latest release of Logseq can be downloaded here. For Android (Download the latest .apk) and for IOS, you can download or update Logseq from the AppStore.

Logseq In The Wild

Been hoping for a simpler way to build queries? Well, Tienson and the team are working on a simplified UI for queries.

Although I am sure this will take a little bit of time, it is great to see that they have listened to the concerns posted by the users. Can't wait to see what they produce. Thanks Sawhney, for making us aware of this commit.

Obsidian vs Logseq, this seems to be the question on everyone's lips. @TfTHacker presents us with a great article "Battle Royale: Obsidian vs Logseq - Which is Better?"

P.S. @TfTHacker is polishing off a great article about Logseq, so make sure you sign up to his Substack to not miss out.

Ramses and the Logseq team are looking to improve the support offered:

Improvements to Logseq Sync should be on the way "In these two days, we just have some break-through on sync conflict resolution of combining text & db structure (even offline file changes can be considered without breaking db integrity). Hopefully we can ship it to the production environment soon, and the multi-device editing experience & robustness would be significantly improved."

Is there a way to get a page window that looks like a writing editor? Not yet. But we are doing major changes to the architecture to allow split-able editing windows per-page. Link

The Readwise Official Plugin has the option to customise the way the data is exported to Logseq.

With the default configuration of the export, some page properties were not ok in LogSeq. I made some changes to fix that and added a few more nice tweaks.

Readwise Official Plugin export into Logseq: How I fine-tuned the page meta data

A confused user asked:

"Do you ppl use logseq like in the following example Journal Day Y [[Some interesting thoughts]] Some more thoughts about that interesting thought on day Y Journal Day X [[Some interesting thoughts]] Some thoughts about this interesting thought on day X Instead of going and writing the notes inside the [[Some interesting thoughts]] page?"

A (by qwqpwp):

I write them in journals because for most stuff I dump there it's only half-processed. like I would have some comments about the things I read but it's not totally internalized nor is it something of my own contribution. they haven't fit into the grand structure of my knowledge, and I don't think they're worthy of their own zettels. otherwise, it would be a bloated and half-baked zettelkasten that's just parroting what others have said (even if paraphrased) with my convenient thoughts. it was kind of cheap.

but those flippant thoughts are record-worthy. they are the starting point of new thoughts, new research, and it's important to keep the habit of jotting them down. keeping them in journals is fantastic. you can just start writing immediately without having to decide which file it fits. you're not pressured to mould a note into its final form -- so that you know where best to keep it -- when this new thought barely occurred to you.

when I'm in need to have such notes from different days structured, for example, what I wrote about Topic A in Day X is actually a subpoint of that from Day Y; in other words, they're distilled, fact-checked, and ready to fit in my own knowledge of things, I reference (instead of move) those original blocks in page [[A]] (and when Whiteboard is available I will use that instead of page if more spatial relationship is involved). This way I can still see what I've worked on each day, or see which period of my life a zettel comes from.

This isn't alien to obsidian. they have the daily notes approach which is the same philosophy.

(btw in my system a zettel is a block, not a page; otherwise, each file is too short, I end up with too many files, and I can't organize the relationship between pages without creating extra MOC pages.)

A nice appreciation post from a happy Logseq user:

I was typing my notes today and it hit me. Logseq is the most useful thing in the world for me and my ADHD , just being able to accidentally connect 6 or more topics at once through just working and writing away in it. it blew my mind... im sitting here learning from my own notes because of this organizational layout. I just use the basic of the basic, literally just the [[brackets]] and journal.. Thank you Logseq! you keep my ideas from disappearing into the void.

Unfortunately, some users leave Logseq. Whilst users move from one app to another, I love when they leave feedback of why they are taking their notes elsewhere. ItsameMarkus posts I’m moving my main graph away from Logseq. Here are the reasons why.

Overall I can understand OPs reasoning and thoughts but the good thing is that the devs are aware of the shortcomings mentioned and I am sure will do something about it.

Intrigued by Logseq's Whiteboard feature? Check out this Logseq Whiteboards Get Started video.

Omnivore (Read it Later App) and Logseq: A Complete Guide.

There is a lot of knowledge out there on the internet. It takes time and effort to sift through it, retrieve the information that is useful to you, and keep it organized. A web clipper tool like Omnivore streamlines that process — and allows you to pull that knowledge into your digital garden.

Using Omnivore and Logseq together is the most efficient, frictionless way to organize your reading and integrate your saved articles, highlights, and notes into your second brain. Check out the article:

Omnivore and Logseq: A Complete Guide

Our complete guide to using Omnivore and Logseq together

OmnivoreOmnivore

Dendron to Logseq migration: In case anyone else is in the same boat, a quick-and-dirty migration approach and a script to do some of the heavy lifting can be found here - https://matthew-bellringer.ghost.io/from-dendron-to-logseq/

OP recently spent a lot of time thinking about using Obsidian over Logseq. This even made me think that I should stop using my current note-taking and to-do application.

How Tana Made Me Choose Obsidian as My Note-Taking App and It’s Amazing

Choosing the right note-taking application can be overwhelming. I didn’t fail to fall into this trap. Quick look on my decision process before choosing Obsidian

Flavien BonvinFlavien Bonvin

Gives a good insight into many questions asked by the TfT / PKM community. Just be aware that other apps to not have:

1. Local file storage so that you are in control of your notes
2. Mobile app
3. Plugin and theme ecosystem

Not quite Logseq specific, but want a way to create Flashcards using Chapt GPT-3

This is the full prompt:

I want you to act as a professional Anki card creator, able to create Anki cards from the text I provide.

Regarding the formulation of the card content, you stick to two principles:

First, minimum information principle: The material you learn must be formulated in as simple way as it is only possible. Simplicity does not have to imply losing information and skipping the difficult part.

Second, optimize wording: The wording of your items must be optimized to make sure that in minimum time the right bulb in your brain lights up. This will reduce error rates, increase specificity, reduce response time, and help your concentration.

The following is a model card-create template for you to study.

Text: The characteristics of the Dead Sea: Salt lake located on the border between Israel and Jordan. Its shoreline is the lowest point on the Earth's surface, averaging 396 m below sea level. It is 74 km long. It is seven times as salty (30% by volume) as the ocean. Its density keeps swimmers afloat. Only simple organisms can live in its saline waters.

Create cards based on the above text as follows:

• Q: Where is the Dead Sea located? A: on the border between Israel and Jordan
• Q: What is the lowest point on the Earth's surface? A: The Dead Sea shoreline
• Q: What is the average level on which the Dead Sea is located? A: 400 meters (below sea level)
• Q: How long is the Dead Sea? A: 70 km
• Q: How much saltier is the Dead Sea as compared with the oceans? A: 7 times
• Q: What is the volume content of salt in the Dead Sea? A: 30%
• Q: Why can the Dead Sea keep swimmers afloat? A: due to high salt content
• Q: Why is the Dead Sea called Dead? A: because only simple organisms can live in it
• Q: Why only simple organisms can live in the Dead Sea? A: because of high salt content

Please output the cards you create as markdown tables. If you have mastered it, please reply "I have learned how to create cards, please provide me with the text".

Logseq Feature Requests

You can check out the full list of Feature Requests here.

• Embedding for YouTube playlists - I’d like if the YouTube embedding could be expanded to playlists. I feel like it would be easy to implement, since it’s just a matter of recognizing the URL (for example, https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL49CF3715CB9EF31D ), and then the functionality would be mostly the same. For example, for embedding this playlist,
• open a page in the sidebar from the graph view? - open a page directly in the sidebar from the graph view - When I work on my graph, sometimes I see new connections, want to link pages, want to edit something,…however I can only open on page at a time, edit this page, and reopen the graph view and lose the position/order I created before. This is somehow very frustrating
• Make Advanced Queries reusable - It would be nice to make advanced queries or their parts reusable in Logseq. Having that, you don’t need to type them multiple times (adhoc-queries, multiple locations in graph) and can omit redundant query code.
• Add pagename field to the list of table fields in simple query - Changing the query to use a property and not a page-property and the same dialog does not give me the option to choose the pagename. I find this strange as all blocks live in a page so the pagename should always be possible to select. I understand that when multiple blocks on 1 page are valid in this query the pagename will be repeated for those blocks. But that is no problem for me and in fact exactly what I want.
• Better translation system - The problem with Logseq translation system is: It’s complicated to translate and submit (for newcomers, at least). Very difficult to find changes in existing English strings.

Logseq Plugins

• "Awesome Props" v.1.2.x huuuugeeee update! for proper icons work set :property-pages/enabled? true in config.edn * Editable (!) props values for predefined icons * Flat layout added * Layout switcher: grid/flat * Properties icons toggler: on/off * Independent configuration for page/block props style * Toolbar icon added * New icons: repo, repository, docs, documentation + desc, description, theme, outcome (for https://www.themesystem.com/ workflow) * Bugfixing https://github.com/yoyurec/logseq-awesome-props

• Logseq Copilot is available on Chrome web Store. This chrome extension can search Logseq knowledge base when your search on google. You can download here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/logseq-copilot/hihgfcgbmnbomabfdbajlbpnacndeihl

• "Banners" plugin big update from @Sergey Kolesnik! * Quote widget: Improved quote cleaning process and fixed some bugs * Quote widget feature: You can now tag block references as a quote * Fixed: Usage of local URLs for banners in properties and in settings (to load banner from assets use: ../assets/banner_1665526958589_0.png) * Lof of small fixes (edited)
• Block Calendar now supports options to locate calendar to left sidebar or right sidebar. BREAKING: For who use it with Banners plugin, you need to set "alwaysRenderLocation" to "Custom".
• fireSeqSearch 0.1.2 new feature: Read and Search PDF contents! In a logseq page, the links to PDFs will be parsed and appended. Adding --parse-pdf-links to enable this experimental function. https://github.com/Endle/fireSeqSearch/releases/tag/0.1.2

Until Next Time

I hope you found this blog post helpful. If you have any comments or questions, please do just let me know.

Thanks again for reading.