This whole thread feels like people complaining that Roam, and now Athens, are making $ from bi-directional links, and we aren't, even though TiddlyWiki has had them all along, and then to throw the baby out with the bathwater, they are dumping on bi-directional links themselves, as if they were bad and useless. Even a hipster comment like "I was using backlinks before they were cool" would be more mature than that. Sorry to step on any toes, but that's the most obvious way to read most of the comments in this thread.
In my case, I use bi-directional links to move quickly between source tiddlers, note tiddlers and topic tiddlers in my reading notes TWs. And since I have new-here-with-backlink buttons that add some of that automatically, it saves me a lot of time. Very helpful. The way Roam used bi-directional links opened my eyes to that possibility. I don't find the visual graphs in Roam helpful, but many do, and Roam's bi-directional links make them happen. And TW has the TiddlyMap that can do the same thing. So that is another benefit. Let's get back to the positive... On Tuesday, March 2, 2021 at 3:25:58 PM UTC-6 dieg...@gmail.com wrote: > > Hello all, > > A YC (venture capital firm) backed open-source Roam alternative launched > today on HackerNews: > > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316793 > > Some relevant parts of the announcement (my opinion only): > > > - Athens is an open-source and local-first alternative to Roam > Research. Roam Research is a notetaking application, and *what they > really got right was the "bidirectional link."* > - With bidirectional links, you never have to worry about where you > write a note. Bidirectional links allow you to connect any two notes > together, creating a knowledge graph. > - This is why Athens is about more than just notetaking. *I believe > networked applications with bidirectional links and data could become a > new > category itself.* > - Of course, this *bidirectional idea isn't new*. In fact, it goes as > far back as the origin of the Web. It's the original concept of hypertext > and Xanadu, which Ted Nelson has been advocating for decades. More > recently, aspects of it were attempted by the Semantic Web. *Yet the > adoption never really caught on, until perhaps now.* > - Something else that's interesting about the most powerful networked > tools like Roam and Athens is t*hat you can't really make these apps > with JavaScript or plaintext/markdown.* *For maximum power, you want a > true graph database*. Both Roam and Athens leverage a front-end graph > database called DataScript, which is written in Clojure(Script). > JavaScript > doesn't have a native analog, and Neo4j is only server-side. *This > matters because I believe this is the first consumer use case for graph > databases*. I believe both Roam and Athens are general-purpose > platforms where individuals and organizations can centralize all of their > knowledge and tasks. I believe the graph is the right data structure to do > this with. > > > I find this fascination with bi-directional links without a huge mention > of TW slightly frustrating. > > Also, his point about a graph database is an interesting one to consider. > > What are your thoughts? > > Diego > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/195620e4-6550-4db8-9c70-0162ea688ba0n%40googlegroups.com.
