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+title: Switching from GitJournal to LogSeq
+date: July 15, 2023
+---
+<p>
+As mentioned previously on the blog, for a long time I was relying on
+<a href='<%= path_to 'blog_gitjournal' %>'>
+  GitJournal
+</a> for note taking. There were quite a few reasons I really liked it:
+</p>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>It's open source.</li>
+  <li>Syncs with <code>git</code> (which I can selfhost).</li>
+  <li>
+    The underlying format is just MarkDown, which means that I can easily edit
+    the notes on my laptop with my editor of choice.
+  </li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>
+But there's also some issues I kept running into:
+
+<ul>
+  <li>
+    Search is not very good (in particular, there's no in-page search, only
+    searching for notes that contain a certain string)
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    The hierarchical organization of notes is nice and simple, but has its
+    limits, not all relationships between ideas are tree-like.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    The <code>git</code> implementation on the mobile app has its problems. E.g.
+    merge conflicts are not going to be resolved, sometimes leading to forced
+    commits that remove notes. All of this can be resolved on a computer with
+    access to the repo, but it can become a hassle.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    There's no easy way to link between notes, which could have been very nice.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    Some other bugs I've noticed, e.g. sometimes duplicate notes appearing, or
+    others completely disappearing (could be caused by the git issues mentioned
+    above, or the way I was managing notes computer-side away from the app).
+  </li>
+</ul>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None of these issues are absolute deal breakers, and I still think GitJournal is
+a really nice solution that I can recommend, but all the slight annoyances led
+me on a search for a potential replacement. If I didn't find anything better, I
+would have been happy to stick with GitJournal, but maybe there's a note taking
+solution somewhere out there that would suit me better?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you do some research on note taking apps you'll be greeted with a flood of
+content from "productivity" YouTubers, bloggers, etc. Turns out there's a ton of
+options for different types of workflows and preferences, however most of them
+are
+</p>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>proprietary</li>
+  <li>bloated</li>
+  <li>
+    for syncing, require registration with a SaaS startup that you have no idea
+    how long it will stay in business, or how much of their monetization model
+    depends on scraping your data.
+  </li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>
+Enter <a href='https://logseq.com/'>LogSeq</a>.
+</p>
+
+<h3> Enter LogSeq </h3>
+<p>
+Let me start off by saying that LogSeq is not <i>the</i> perfect solution for
+me, but I'll go over my personal gripes with it later. First, let's talk about
+what LogSeq even is and what's good about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LogSeq is an open source note taking application that is privacy-first,
+outline-based, non-hierarchical, and features bidirectional linking. Let's break
+that down:
+</p>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>
+    <i>Privacy-first</i>: all notes are stored as plain-text files on your
+    computer. By default, there's no synchronization; in particular, there's no
+    central server the app talks to.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    <i>Outline-based</i>: each line of text is a bullet point (and these can be
+    nested), there's no plain paragraphs/headings like in MarkDown or basic
+    HTML.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    <i>Non-hierarchical</i>: notes are not organized into a tree-like directory
+    structure. Instead, each note is a separate page, and you organize your
+    notes by linking/tagging between pages.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    <i>Bidirectional linking</i>: these links between pages go in two directions,
+    i.e. when page A links to page B, page B will have a section of
+    <i>backlinks</i>, making it easy to jump back to where B is referred from
+    (be that back to page A, or any other pages that link to B).
+
+    <ul>
+      <li>
+        This feature is inspired by another app, Obisidan, which you might be
+        familiar with. Both Obisdian and LogSeq are touted by some to be good
+        tools for building a so-called "second brain."
+  </li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>
+Some other features to mention:
+</p>
+
+<h4> Journal </h4>
+<p>
+LogSeq automatically creates daily journal pages. These can be used for
+journaling or as a dumping spot of random ideas, links you encounter, notes to
+jot down. Thanks to backlinks, if you include tags or links to topic pages in
+your notes, you'll be able to find these seemingly chaotic daily notes when
+looking at a specific topic later.
+</p>
+
+<h4> Plugins </h4>
+<p>
+There is a plugin interface, and an already fairly large marketplace of
+community-built plugins available. Many are just visual tweaks you can add if
+you like them, there's also a bunch of integrations with various other note
+taking/productivity apps (which I personally don't use, but many find them
+useful, from what I hear, in their workflows). There's really only one plugin
+I'm using currently, more on that in the next section, but overall its nice to
+see extensibility.
+</p>
+
+<h4> Synchronization </h4>
+<p>
+As mentioned, there's no synchronization enabled by default. There is a
+recommended cloud sync option with LogSeq's servers, which respects your privacy
+by end-to-end encrypting all your content, but you know me. I prefer to sync my
+notes with <code>git</code>. Not only does this allow me to selfhost my notes,
+it also gives me all the benefits of version control (history, a way to deal
+with merge conflicts when dealing with multiple devices).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since all of LogSeq's note files are just plain-text on your disk, setting up
+git synchronization is trivial: just make the notes directory a git repo, add a
+remote, and voilá.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here's also where a plugin comes in useful: there's a <code>git</code> plugin
+that makes it easy to commit, push, and pull changes from within LogSeq itself,
+rather than having to switch between it and a terminal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Note: LogSeq does have a separate built-in version control feature that's based
+on <code>git</code>, but I recommend against it. It's based on automatically
+committing every <i>x</i> seconds, so you never exactly know if your latest
+changes are already committed, and you end up with a very messy history of
+partial and/or unrelated changes going into individual commits.
+</p>
+
+<h4> Mobile app </h4>
+<p>
+There is a functional mobile app, with the same look and most of the same
+features as the desktop application. It is missing plugins, so in particular, no
+git plugin. <code>git</code> synchronization on Android is still possible with
+Termux, but less convenient than on a desktop, since it requires you to manually
+go into Termux to commit/push/pull changes (and be very careful of ending up
+with a merge conflict on your phone, that's much less fun to deal with on a
+phone screen than in your favorite desktop editor).
+</p>
+
+<h4> Other features </h4>
+
+Some other features include:
+
+<ul>
+  <li>
+    Aliases: you can create aliases for tags, so that when you tag a note with
+    any of the aliases, it will still point to the original tag. For example, if
+    you have a tag "book", and add an alias "books", you won't have to remember
+    if the tag was in the singular or plural.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    To-do lists.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    Scripting/queries: this is a feature I haven't looked into much yet, but it
+    sounds very useful. You can write queries in a very general syntax to find
+    notes that satisfy particular conditions. E.g. find all articles (tagged
+    with <code>#article</code>) that are about graph theory (tagged with
+    <code>#[[graph theory]]</code>) published in the last year (a date property
+    is within a particular time frame).
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    Embedding blocks: a bullet point (with everything nested below it) can be
+    directly embedded elsewhere (such that editing either instance changes
+    both).
+  <li>
+    Whiteboards.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    <i>The Graph</i>: a visualization of links/relationships between your pages.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    Flash cards.
+  </li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>
+The first two I use regularly. Queries I want to eventually get into. The others
+I don't really find use for.
+</p>
+
+<h3> Problems </h3>
+<p>
+There are a few things I'm personally not a fan of with LogSeq.
+</p>
+
+<h4> Bloat </h4>
+<p>
+The biggest general problem for me is that despite a nice, minimal interface,
+LogSeq is an Electron application. The <code>logseq-desktop-bin</code> AUR
+package is <i>500MB</i>! All for a note taking application. In addition to the
+bloat coming from Electron, I think a lot of it is also features that I have
+absolutely no use for (like the aforementioned graph view and whiteboards, which
+go way beyond basic text editing and markup).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many people these days brush bloat under the rug, saying that on modern machines
+it doesn't matter, and frameworks like Electron are good because it means
+faster, simpler development. But these problems do end up having consequences.
+For example, LogSeq struggles with large files.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The full text of Shakespeare's <i>Othello</i> (around 160KB) takes several
+seconds to load, and the app displays a bright orange warning message that
+"Large blocks will not be editable or searchable to not slow down the app."
+<code>vim</code> opens the same file in a fraction of a second, a web browser
+takes maybe about a second.
+</p>
+
+<h4> Not exactly MarkDown </h4>
+<p>
+The LogSeq team say that the underlying text files are just MarkDown, but that's
+not exactly true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The notes have to be all organized into bullet points, you don't have plain
+paragraphs or headings. Furthermore, additional markup is inserted, e.g. for
+block references. All of that makes the text less human-readable/-editable, a
+core feature of MarkDown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which leads to the next very sad problem...
+</p>
+
+<h4> It's not <code>vim</code> </h4>
+<p>
+Once you get used to <code>vim</code>, all other text editing options are just
+inferior. Bram's gift to humanity is both a blessing and a curse, since there's
+no getting away from sometimes needing to edit text outside of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, there's a "vim" plugin that implements some keybindings, but I tend to stay
+away from those, as they're always disappointing: they implement some of the
+most basic keys, but others I'm used to relying on are not supported. So I'd
+have to remember which plugin for which piece of software implements which ones,
+and it just becomes more of a hassle than a convenience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As mentioned above, using <code>vim</code> directly on the text files is also
+not a solution, since the notes format is not exactly standard MarkDown, and
+either way you'd lose all the benefits of LogSeq, especially links/backlinks.
+</p>
+
+<h3> Conclusions </h3>
+<p>
+So, with that ranty section above over, what's my final verdict on LogSeq? I've
+been using it daily for the past several months, and until something better
+comes along, I don't plan on switching. Despite all its shortcomings, I really
+like it, it helps me organize my notes and thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was actually aware of Obsidian before, and it had piqued my interest, seemed
+like a useful tool.  However, I didn't want to jump onto a proprietary
+note taking solution. When doing my recent research on these apps, I found
+LogSeq, which is a FOSS alternative. I was reluctant at first, for all the
+reasons stated above, but after just a bit of test running, turns out the
+benefits outweigh the trade-offs I have to make, and LogSeq has replaced
+GitJournal for me.
+</p>
+
+<h4> The pipe dream </h4>
+<p>
+To finish this post, let me go on a little fantastical journey into what my
+ideal note taking solution would look like.
+</p>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>
+    Given my <code>vim</code> addiction, it would be a <code>vim</code> plugin.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    Given my newly-found backlink addiction, the plugin would implement
+    backlinking (e.g. displaying backlinks to a note in a separate pane, with
+    links that can be followed VimWiki-style).
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    Plain MarkDown syntax for notes.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    An easy-to-use query syntax.
+  </li>
+  <li>
+    An Android application that supports backlinks, queries, and
+    <code>git</code>.
+  </li>
+</ul>