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Markdown GUIs

‘Organizers’, ‘wikis’, ‘note-taking apps’, et c. - these apps are mostly Markdown with an attached GUI. Today, I’m trying each of them out for twenty minutes apiece.

AnyType

Site: anytype.io[a]
Size: 383 MB
AnyType comes encrypted, meaning you can’t easily grab the raw markdown notes and stick them in a Git, or do much else with them.
It comes with its own synchronizing feature, so you’re discouraged from using your own.
It recognizes various ‘types’ of things very well, with

bookmarks for youtube links (with an icon), along with the ability to leave notes in the bookmark,
task lists

[a]

It may be encrypted, but it starts up and just starts synchronizing with…the broader internet. That’s still a little spooky for me.
Onboarding goes quickly, as the task-list is pre-populated with notes on how to learn the app, and the knowledge-base is populated with knowledge about the app.
Pressing Alt+F does not open the ‘File’ manager, which I take as a personal insult.

Zettlr

Site: zettlr.com[a]
Size: 383 MB
LaTeX support works by integrating with other LaTeX programs, which warms my heart, but also confuses me. Who uses LaTeX but computer science nerds?
Very FOSS-friendly,

with a link to a Mastodon feed for the project.

[a]

The split-view lets you view many notes at once, and reminds me of vim.
It seems to use pandoc, and the integration looks sensible.
Under the hood, there is no markdown, so once again, no easy way to integrate git.

But apparently you can make or open Markdown anywhere, so that all works fine.
I should have tested that function with AnyType as well to make the tests equal. cba

Once again, Alt+f fails to open File at the top bar.

LogSeq

Site: logseq.com[a]
Size: 473 MB
The name LogSeq sounds too nerdy.
It opens in light mode, unlike the others.

Selecting a theme gave me the options:

Light mode

[a]

This made me think it was a bar of options to click on.
It kept burning my retinas.
I really hate this.
When I found a more general theme option, it merged with my local system theme, and now looks amazing. All is forgiven.

It’s so minimalist it looks like nothing but a wrapper for Markdown, with no options or abilities. Top score.
It has an option for when to ‘re-index’, which tells users who don’t know what that means that this app is not for them.
When renaming a whiteboard, a popup asks ‘Are you sure?’ I think I hate it again.
Whiteboards feel like a CLI-user’s idea of what GUI users want, but then again I make maps in vim so what do I know?
The onboarding assaults you with random animations. I don’t like it.
All settings are in plain text, which is obviously a much-needed feature, but comments are made with ;;, which is weird.
The standard notes display as simple markdown, and on startup LogSeq asks where it should save information. This isn’t an ‘app’, it’s a program.
The automatic graph of pages shows how each links together.
Everything confuses me.

Why is everything a bullet point? Where is the normal text?
I realize I’m typing this from an all-bulleted post, but that’s beside the point.
The bottom of the page says ‘0 Unliked References’: what does this mean?
I can make links because I know markdown, but it has no buttons to do this as far as I can see.
With no File bar across the top, I can’t see how to access menus and discover the abilities. I just have to click buttons with random unicode symbols.

It’s been 40 minutes and I don’t know what I’m doing. Time to stop.