Mastodawn

NO, NOT EVERNOTE
🤯 argh!!

I have my *whole* ethnographic material, from all things I've done, since 2012 in there. Was never really certain about it, but it was a visually pleasant environment to work in, it was very well integrated with the phone, the web clipper has been very nice to use, and it has indeed helped me out organise my thoughts…

Has anyone here tried out Joplin or Obsidian and might recommend? Have you imported from Evernote and has all worked well? Any other tips?

@tscriado there's an Evernote backup you can install with home brew.

Then you can look at alternatives. I tried Nix note a while ago and it didn't suck, but I'm looking at other options

https://github.com/vzhd1701/evernote-backup

GitHub - vzhd1701/evernote-backup: Backup & export all Evernote notes and notebooks

Backup & export all Evernote notes and notebooks. Contribute to vzhd1701/evernote-backup development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

@tscriado https://itsfoss.com/5-evernote-alternatives-linux/

But it's probably going to be joplin or laverna I'm trying.

Here are the Evernote Alternative Note Taking Apps for Linux

Evernote is a great note taking app that can be used across Windows, macOS and all major smartphone OS.There is one problem with it though. It is not properly supported on Linux desktop yet. There is a beta version and thanks to that you can install Evernote on Ubuntu

It's FOSS

Tomás Criado Jul 7, 2023

@onepict Thanks! I've spent the whole morning searching for alternatives, and after seeing that it also has the web clipper and that it's open source, I thought about trying out Joplin, let's see - so far the imports are not lousy - the PDF reader could be better…

Simon Brooke Jul 7, 2023

@tscriado the lesson is, never keep anything you value in proprietary file formats, or on storage you don't personally back up.

I feel your pain.

Tomás Criado Jul 7, 2023

@simon_brooke I always kept the enex files backed up (although in a cloud server, same problem, but in a bigger scale: THE problem of online free culture, I'd say), but this particular app was really good

Sjanep Jul 7, 2023

I tried Joplin for a while but had trouble syncing between phone and pc. I use #obsidian for my non-ethnographic data (because I'd want to encrypt it for ethnographic data and haven't looked into that yet). Phone synching is possible I believe either through their subscription or with your own cloudservice. I really love obsidian for its combination of a) a simplistic, non-vendor lock-in system with b) quite a lot of customisation options and a very active online community sharing ideas and creating plugins.
For ethnographic data I use @notesnook. It's a small company similar to standardnotes. All the good privacy stuff you want for ethnography; open source and zero knowledge encryption. They support Evernote import and have accessible plans for education.

Tomás Criado Jul 7, 2023

@sjanep @notesnook super-useful info! Thanks very much!!

Stefan Laser🗜️Jul 7, 2023

@tscriado @sjanep @notesnook Horrible Evernote story. I actually had the same journey moving from Joplin to Obsidian. Joplin always felt slightly too clunky. Obsidian feels more natural and powerful, especially with the new Canvas feature. We use Obsidian for our projects for documentation, excerpts, text drafts, and coding of interviews. We sync via the Cloud or SyncThing.

There are also a thousand community plugins, but I try to use as few as possible. Beware of productivity YouTube.

Stefan Laser🗜️Jul 7, 2023

@tscriado @sjanep @notesnook Oh, and encryption: our interview Obsidian vault is encrypted via Cryptomator (perfect for the cloud). Works like a charm and is free software.

Tomás Criado Jul 7, 2023

@stefanlaser @sjanep @notesnook Thanks, Stefan! I've seen it also has some community-developed web clippers (it's one of the features I use the most, together with the regular notes/interviews/audio files, so this matters a great deal to me): are they working well? Anyone in particular you might recommend?

Ingmar Lippert Jul 7, 2023

@tscriado @stefanlaser @sjanep @notesnook cryptomator works well for me, too

Sjanep Jul 9, 2023

@i_ngli @tscriado @stefanlaser

Thank you for the cryptomator tip, will try!

Sjanep Jul 9, 2023

@stefanlaser @tscriado

Ha I fully agree about productivity YouTube
I am curious to learn more about how you go about collaborating via obsidian - only if you are open to share more in detail of course.
You use one vault? In that case; do you struggle with knowing who made edits? How do you go about coding interviews? I'd be very interested to find out how to do this in obsidian instead of nvivo etc.

Stefan Laser🗜️Jul 11, 2023

@sjanep @tscriado We love sharing our experience. In fact, our research centre (16 projects) has an INF project with this purpose in mind, helping us.

So, we have 1 major vault for our project, 4 people take part. It's organized w/ #Johnnydecimal and #Zettelkasten. Meeting notes, lit. notes, research, articles. Sync via Nextcloud. Sometimes we have conflicts. We add hashtags for todos or authorship.

Coding is in a separate, encrypted vault. Simple yet effective design: https://github.com/LaserStefan/obsidian-qualitative-analysis-environment

GitHub - LaserStefan/obsidian-qualitative-analysis-environment

Contribute to LaserStefan/obsidian-qualitative-analysis-environment development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

Stefan Laser🗜️Jul 11, 2023

@sjanep @tscriado Also tagging @neuezukunft for this: the INF Obsidian master of @sfb1567.

Fabian Pittroff Jul 11, 2023

@stefanlaser @sjanep @tscriado Thanks for adding me – very interesting to learn about your stories. I'm not so sure about being a master, though – let's say gardener. 🌱

Fabian Pittroff Jul 11, 2023

@stefanlaser @sjanep @tscriado In my own research, I use Obsidian for ethnographic field notes and started doing my analysis with it using wikilinks and tags – I think it is going well so far.

Fabian Pittroff Jul 11, 2023

@stefanlaser @sjanep @tscriado At the @sfb1567 we use Obsidian to compile an edited volume – it is a good fit if you aim for a wiki-like product, but both text file-based working and Obsidian do come with hurdles if you are a newcomer.

Fabian Pittroff Jul 11, 2023

@stefanlaser @sjanep @tscriado For me, the primary argument for Obsidian seams to be its open and simple foundation in txt/md files, which not only can be migrated but also edited in place with other tools – text files just travel well.

Tomás Criado Jul 11, 2023

@fabianpittroff @stefanlaser @sjanep you're all almost convincing me to try out Obsidian. I've been the whole week trying to make Joplin work, but the syncing with the phone is driving me bonkers, and I need the phone for a new fieldwork project. Thanks for the input!

Stefan Laser🗜️Jul 12, 2023

@tscriado @fabianpittroff @sjanep Have you tried syncing w/ SyncThing? Should work with any folder. And Obsidian Sync on the phone is also a project on its own (or you buy it).

Tomás Criado Jul 12, 2023

@stefanlaser @fabianpittroff @sjanep the syncing with the phone on Joplin has its own thing, but thanks for the tip!

mace Jul 21, 2023

@fabianpittroff @stefanlaser @sjanep @tscriado indeed... I've used grep, find, Emacs, vi, Python on my notes more than once. Fun!

Sjanep Jul 17, 2023

@stefanlaser @fabianpittroff Thanks so much for sharing, I am excited about this.
I have been trying to set up the vault and I believe it is working. I have one question. Do you add the [['code]] just in the text as in the example below (see pic)? Is there any way to add the code to a piece of text?

Unfortunately all my fieldnotes were in a very long word document, seperated by headers per date. I managed to convert the docx file to a markdown file, seperated by headers again (wow pandoc commandline, new horizons for me!). I'd have to find a way to split this markdown document into multiple files along the header divides. Do you, or someone else of the #markdown folks have any idea how to do that?

Stefan Laser🗜️Jul 18, 2023

@sjanep Yes, I just put the code in the middle of the line, that's a bit hacky, yes. But it's my preferred mode. I never liked the MaxQDA way of doing things, so this is an improvement.

No idea how to split the files, but a simple Python code might work just fine. Find and split and write file is quite common over there.

Sjanep Jul 18, 2023

@stefanlaser
Thanks, time for me to venture into python too then!

Stefan Laser🗜️Jul 18, 2023

@sjanep Haha, sorry, but it's actually fun and rewarding. Perhaps there's an easier solution.

Sjanep Aug 2, 2023

@stefanlaser
It worked!! Well, I eventually had to call in the help of a computer friend because I didn't manage, some weird bytes in the long file. Still, this is a message to all non-tech-savy anthropos; you'll get by with a little help from your friends and other tinkerers! You don't need MaxQDA! Thanks again.

Stefan Laser🗜️Aug 2, 2023

@sjanep Cool, thanks for keeping me in the loop

Boris 🏳️‍🌈🤙🌿Jul 7, 2023

@tscriado +#obsidian, sync with #selfhosted #couchDB

Ingmar Lippert Jul 7, 2023

@tscriado I was so happy once I managed to get a virtual machine running with the complete commercial and proprietary research ecology software that I used for my PhD research.