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Re:Howm: Personal Wiki for Emacs by _huayra_ on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @01:31AM (#41442204)
Does anyone have a "lab notebook" style of PKM in Emacs?

I used to use Org-Roam in Emacs, but fell in love with Logseq [0], primarily because

1. it has a "daily journal" default workflow (though individual pages are supported)

2. the support of datalog queries

3. templates

This basically allows me to make templates for things I need (e.g. meeting notes, etc) and to write a few key queries (that are also templated for reuse) to do things like get the most overdue tasks, upcoming, things I promised to others, things I'm waiting on, etc. I can even drill down and get that stuff for an individual "page", e.g. "Emacs" or "C++".

The lack of a "lab journal" format + flexible queries makes going back to other solutions not as enticing, as the "perfect artifact" of wiki-esque editing (and not being able to easily see backlinks) is not as easy. I can open my Logseq folder, make a "meeting" template, then #tag the people and topics discussed, and be able to go back later and make a query to see when I discussed #topic with #person.

I would love to move this back into Emacs, as I hate having a separate tool for PKM, so if anyone has a similar workflow (or at least flexible queries on "tags" and task status, backlinks, etc, even without the daily journal thing), I'd be grateful for any tips.

[0] https://logseq.com/

Re:Howm: Personal Wiki for Emacs by setopt on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @04:14AM (#41443117)
I also used Logseq for a couple of years during my PostDoc and it is an excellent product. I also got into the habit of writing everything in the daily journal (with things like [[emacs]] in each top-level bullet so that I could read it under the Emacs page). I tried replicating this workflow in other system, including Obsidian and Org Roam and Denote which all support back links and journals – it works but it wasn’t as smooth as Logseq’s transclusion.

Currently, I’m using Howm, and am quite happy with that. Its motto is “write fragmentarily and read collectively”, which summarizes well what I liked about Logseq.

It’s however a slightly different workflow: I launch “howm-list-all” (I bind it to F12) to see a list of all notes, which I use similarly to Logseq’s journal. To read recent entries, use arrow keys or n/p to move between recent notes (which I use like top-level bullets in the Logseq journal), which are instantly previewed in a pane below. Or press “c” (create) to create a new note, which is automatically date stamped. Whenever I in Logseq would create a new top-level journal bullet, I in Howm create a new datestamped Org file. For sub-bullets I use Org outlining. But it largely has the same feel to me as Logseq’s journal system although it maps to different files on disk.

Instead of Logseq hashtags, I use Howm’s comefrom links. So say I am working on a project called “Foo Bar”. I’d then make a new note that contains a Howm link of the form “<<< Foo Bar”. This note is analogous to Logseq’s pages in my workflow. Now, whenever I write the exact phrase “Foo Bar” (without any link syntax) in another note, it automatically becomes a clickable link pointing to my Foo Bar page! I find this more efficient actually than Logseq’s approach since “typing the backlink instead of the link” feels like less cognitive overhead. (Logseq has “unlinked mentions” but it somehow felt less reliable.)

I hope this helps, and would encourage you to give Howm a try. It doesn’t help with templates and queries, but as the sibling post touched upon you could try using org-capture for templates and either org-ql or org-super-agenda for queries. Howm and Org work well together, so there’s no reason you can’t use different packages to replace different parts of Logseq in Emacs.

Re:Howm: Personal Wiki for Emacs by evertedsphere on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @01:38AM (#41442239)
org-roam has a daily journal feature, which i use extensively: https://www.orgroam.com/manual.html#org_002droam_002ddailies

for querying: https://github.com/alphapapa/org-ql

for templates, see org-roam-capture and its templating system (https://www.orgroam.com/manual.html#The-Templating-System), which extends the capture templating system of vanilla org. for nicer capture templates, see https://github.com/progfolio/doct

Re:Howm: Personal Wiki for Emacs by artsi0m on Wednesday September 04, 2024 @08:55PM (#41452428)
> lab notebook

I write down my uni's lectures in howm using org as markup, so maybe yes, probably.

howm has two types of links, both are search for all your data it howm actually, but the second type (<<< links) work as a tag, that would be highlighted everywhere.

I thing creating templates can be done with one or another emacs snippets packages. Or just by your own elisp.