LogseqTimes 2023-06-24: Logseq Updates, Onboarding handbook, Habit Tracking, Logseq vs Others, Weekly Review and much more

Hi Everyone,

With the Summer Solstice been and gone, our days now start to get shorter. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, hope you enjoy the increasing daylight hours.

What is not impacted by the daylight hours is the great content being published by Logseq users, so let us see what we have in store this week.

Next Logseq Version

For those wondering whether the next Logseq version will be 1.0.0, 0.9.10 or 0.10.0, I am afraid I have no news to give you. Whilst with the previous versions, it was possible to tell what was coming next by reviewing GitHub, it seems that the Devs are playing a little game with us.

We will have to wait a little longer, but that does not stop me from hypnotising something.

The Logseq project was first made available / open-sourced on GitHub on 23 July 2020 - could it be that v1 will come out on its 3-year anniversary?

Logseq Logo Rebrand Ideas

With the extended Friday deadline gone, we now move to the Voting Phase. This will run from 26 June to 30 June 2023.

After 5 weeks and over 100 submissions, we will officially close the submissions thread! A huge thank you to everyone who participated, who decided their time and creative energy to our project

I’ll leave the thread comments open this weekend, but will launch a voting thread on Monday with our teams top picks. At that time, we will close comments on this thread.

And if you’re just skating in after the deadline, you can still try posting late submissions.

P.S. - if you have a last-minute idea, I think the above means that you can post your idea until Monday.

Be sure to check this thread on Monday to cast your vote.

Logseq Onboarding Handbook

The new Logseq Onboarding Handbook is nearing completion. Ramses posted:

We're very close to completing the Logseq onboarding guide. This will be part of the new Handbooks feature (in-app documentation), and it will be an automated series of emails that (new) Logseq users can subscribe to for free.

You can find the finished draft here (has been edited three times already, but more is welcome): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nSzmXyb-k9T9NFKwEUxgxyn-x-knQfPb4_uRwbN5Wzc/edit?usp=sharing

Please read through the articles (1-5) and comment on anything that you find:

• Confusing
• Repetitive
• Boring
• So good that we should emphasize it more

On Monday, June 26th I close the commenting option and we'll start producing the assets (screenshots and gifs). If you have any comments after that date, please send me a DM.

Habit tracking in Logseq

Recently came across this post from September 2022 so wanted to share it.

I had to move away from Obsidian to Logseq because I learnt I couldn't keep work notes on it without paying an annual subscription fee. Obsidian was the first tool I actually stuck with for a while - so it was a bit of a bummer. But Logseq seems perfectly reasonable as a replacement. While the UX still lacks a little polish, it is just as powerful and has better-outlining support.

Check out this post to see who you can easily create something like this:

What’s so great about Tana? Do Logseq-users use it

Nothing like a catchy headline,  but a Reddit user posted: "I saw OneStutteringMind’s channel has a new episode about he uses Tana now. I didn’t get what was so exciting or unique about Tana. Just want to see if any other Logseq users are using it and found it complimentary. Would love you to shed light on that."

Some of the responses that caught my eye:

• Really not a fan of how everything in Tana lives under a node instead of at the global level and is referenced where it's needed
• No offline access or full ownership of notes and data is an immediate no-go for me. Otherwise, it seems nice.
• In my opinion, most of these guys who blog about knowledge tools are chasing something that will never exist and are so paralysed with hyper-analysis they can't get actual work done. Something about the forest through the trees. If a tool is meeting 80% of my needs, I don't lose sleep second-guessing my choice.
• Hosted product. Way better when working with multiple devices. But also possible that it is sponsored content.

Check out the post in full here.

Where do Deleted Pages Go?

If you delete a page and then regret your choice, is there a way you can get the page back?

In short, yes. How - "It should have a .recycle folder in the Logseq folder. But the dot indicates that it is a hidden folder, so that’s why you probably don’t see it.
I don’t know anything about Macs, so not sure how to make hidden folders visible. On the command line, I do ls -a to show it."

Thanks for the simple explanation Siferiax.

3-Step Information Capture Workflow

Check out this very insightful post on capturing data.

To begin using Logseq and transition from a traditional personal wiki system, I've decided to adopt a 3-step information capture workflow, as the basis for building upon. I currently have no workflows or no real ideas for workflows that pop into my mind. So I decided the best thing is to focus on information capture and the rest will eventually come to me:

• Step 1: The brain dump
• Step 2: Level 1 processing
• Step 3: Level 2 processing

In step 1 the most important thing for me is keeping my focus on the current task that I am doing. That means being able to enter information into Logseq without losing my flow, at all. So I chose to have this stage as a simple brain dump step. No structure, no indenting, not even thinking about tags or links. Just getting the information out of my mind in whatever format it comes in.

In step 2, I call it level 1 processing because it's essentially just tidying up those dumped inputs. Linking them, tagging them, fixing grammar and spelling, but when I have more of a moment to be able to spend a few mins doing that. I'll go back over the thoughts I added and add tags and links and indents.

Step 3, is level 2 processing. Or otherwise called daily processing. At the end of the day (or the next morning) I will process my previous notes further. This is where I decided if pages should be made, if block properties should be added, and if the information should be structured more than how it was inputted during the day. I might even add or remove information from those notes. For example, if I started a new project in the day I would move all notes related to it into a page during step 3. If I made notes on an existing project during the day I would move it to the project page if it's deemed permanent info. It's also the perfect chance to combine it with a daily reflection.

Thanks for creating this great post.

Idea for Quick Capture

For my Fellow Brasilian Friends

Diolinux Labs posted their thoughts on Logseq and how it can help to not forget anything. Thanks for the video.

Weekly Review?

A user posted, "I plan tasks per week, so I would link to automatically insert a link to a doc of the current week at the bottom of my journal page. e.g. [[2023-W25]] (YEAR - W WEEKNUMBER)"

Check out the Show Weekday and Week-number plugin which is about to be released. It is still at a stage where further improvements can be made. It can be loaded with a template for Weekly Journaling.

Filter blocks in the current page with a tag?

Is there a way to filter blocks in the current page with a tag? Just like the linked reference filter feature but for the main page

I have this template query to filter tasks in current page. Hope this is a good example of what you were looking for: {{query (and (task TODO DOING) <% current page %>) }}. Thanks Rueda.

New to Logseq - What Plugins Are a Must?

I’ve only started with Logseq in the last few weeks and watched a number of videos. So far my graphs are all connected which is great, I’m attempting to keep everything good from the start, if that’s possible.

Looking at plugins and I wondered if these were the best to use or if other people would recommend them.

• Agenda: I want to sync teams and my personal calendar with this. Does this allow that?
• logseq-power tags-plugin
• task completion
• pdf print

What plugins would you recommend? Have you found others that work better?

Check out the responses below:

Thoughts about Note taking programs (and a question for advice)

To close this section off, a User post:

In my view these programs at first may be daunting and complicated for the “common user”. If you are like me you will ask yourself what is the optimal setup for my program? What would need to be tweaked, adjusted or set up to make me productive to my maximum level? Usually there are many options, making it difficult to try them all and decide. There is also the risk of falling into a “plugins pit” where even more features, facilities and options are being offered. I hope that I’ll avoid this with Logseq.

Another issue that a new user has to cope with is a choice among folders (where applicable), pages and tags. This is a never-ending debate, but it raises my stress level! What I’ve come to realize is that there is no single tool for every job. That’s a pity because I, as a user, will have to make some compromises in choosing a particular program.

I decided to become a Logseq user because in contrast to Obsidian I find it easier to think in blocks. I believe that I have been doing this for most of my life. When I first read about the outliner nature of Logseq I was skeptical. However, as I read more about it I became interested, then intrigued and then curious to try it. I’ll continue to keep Obsidian up to date in the interim period until I feel comfortable enough to transition to Logseq.

I would appreciate learning about other Logseq users’ suggestions on how to move from another program to Logseq. I’m not particularly interested in data transfer, as I could start from a new page (no pun intended). What was the major approach that you adopted at first to make using Logseq a success?

Check out the full post and responses here.

Logseq Feature Requests

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

• Quick Capture to Today’s Journal Page - Currently, the Logseq protocol allows users to add a block to the end of the day’s journal page, but this functionality is unavailable within Logseq itself. To address this, I propose enhancing the search feature (Mod + k). When users search for a string that doesn’t exist, they are currently offered the option to create a new page or a whiteboard using that string as the title. Logseq should offer a third option; append the searched string to the end of today’s journal page.
• Embeds like workflowy mirrors - I like that Logseq has transclusion support, but it’s a little sloppy: First, the indentation is very very severe. The content of your embedded page or block starts 3 levels in! Secondly, the collapse state is shared across all instances of an embed. So if I collapse an item in one area, it’ll collapse everywhere else embedded. The way Workflowy has done it with mirrors is about perfect and the projects are similar enough that I think this would be an excellent option for folks who desire this type of transclusion.
• Support logseq:// links in the PDF viewer - In the PDF viewer only the http:// URLs are recognized and clickable, not the logseq:// ones. Other PDF viewers like Okular let me click logseq:// links, ironically Logseq’s built-in PDF viewer doesn’t support its own URI scheme. It would be very useful to have this because one can create its own PDFs of notes or even mindmaps and illustrations that can be viewed everywhere with links to open Logseq notes when installed. Of course, being able to do so without an external PDF viewer is better.
• Dual-view of blocks in whiteboard: Structured / Tree / Framed - I want to suggest a feature that would make the whiteboard much more versatile. This is to allow each block to be displayed in one of three ways: Structured (current visualization, just an embed page) Tree, which is like a mind-map, with each block connected to its parent by a link. Frame, with the parent block rendered like a box surrounding all children.
• Please make it possible to toggle (disable) auto-completion or parantheses expansion - Please make it possible to toggle (disable) auto-completion or parentheses expansion. This feature is more of a hindrance for some people than a feature and, for me, it completely ruins working with an external text expander (Espanso). Please let us know if we can modify a file somewhere to disable this manually.

Logseq Plugins / Themes

• logseq-audio-memo - A plugin capable of recording in Logseq and inserting into documentation
• logseq-bear-cub-theme - The Bear Cub theme is minimalistic and functional. This theme doesn't distract you with an explosion of colour and graphical elements. Instead, it helps you stay focused. It creates a clear distinction between different structural and functional elements, which helps you see the bigger picture at any time.

• TOC Generator got an update. I extended the original functionality of going back to the top of the page on page jumps, now you can also choose to go back to where you were when you left the page. Level information is added to the generated TOC items, you can use this to customize your own CSS styling. (data-level attribute)

Until Next Time

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

Thanks again for reading.