It’s been over two years since the inception of Org-roam, and with the year coming to an end I think a review is timely.
The Org-roam Rewrite
In the earlier half of the year, I’d worked on and released version 2 of Org-roam. I’d touted it to be more performant, easier to understand and tweak from a power-user’s perspective. I think the feedback for version 2 was mixed with a slight positive lean. Some faced difficulties during migration, others were not fond of property drawers, which crowded out the main content. There were of course many others that embraced the shift towards the concept of nodes, and enjoyed the new completion interface.
From a maintenance perspective, I think version 2 was a huge win. There are fewer reported bugs, with a good portion of issues stemming from upstream libraries (sqlite + Windows being an annoyingly common one). It has also been significantly easier for me to navigate and maintain the code-base, and I’ve also received more contributions from the community.
It is also easier to build extensions for Org-roam. @ThomasFKJorna was able to write the fabulous org-roam-ui basically with no supervision on my end, which suggests that the API provided is understandable and sufficient.
No Change is a Good Thing
The bulk of the updates to Org-roam in the later half of the year were bugfixes, refactoring, and performance improvements: the only major feature introduced was support for Org 9.5’s citation syntax. Perhaps it appears that development on the project has stalled, in contrast to other software in this space where new features are constantly being released.
I’d like to think that this is a positive sign, and a big differentiating factor for Org-roam. Complexity is the enemy! Keeping your workflow simple allows you to focus on knowledge work. This is also why I find plain-text notetaking much more effective: you’re forced to express the idea you have in words. While not an easy task, it is a helpful one for building understanding. Org-roam forces you to be deliberate in how you construct your slipbox: it only helps you create notes and insert links, but what notes you create and what notes you link to is key, and this is where the true knowledge work happens.
A bit of a spicy take, but I think it is madness that people are creating custom plugins and themes for certain web applications in the name of productivity. The only real benchmark of productivity is by measuring actual work output, and you’ll find that the most brilliant and productive people always have simple workflows using simple tools. If Tiago Forte can build his second brain in Evernote (no offense), then are all these fancy plugins really necessary?
The Goal of Org-roam is not to Emulate Roam
The name “Org-roam” is much more a historical relic than a depiction of the objective of the software. Org-roam certainly began as a crude implementation of what Roam Research had, but that was never the goal. I was simply exploring the space of note-taking software, figuring out what worked. There has been a lot of discussion on a name change, but I think the name is fine, and pays homage to its origins. The goal of Org-roam has always been to enable a streamlined Zettelkasten-like note-taking workflow. To this end, I think version 2 of Org-roam has been extremely successful. Ironically, I think many of the features that Roam Research has works against this goal.
The Community
I’ve admittedly been less present than I should be in the communities around Org-roam. There’s a lot of fragmentation here: there’s the original Slack channel, a Matrix channel, r/emacs, r/OrgRoam, and the Discourse page, and perhaps some I don’t even know of. I’d like to take this opportunity to give yet another shoutout to Noboru, who has done a tremendous job in tackling queries here. I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that Org-roam would not be where it is without him.
A big part of my absence is because I thoroughly lack the expertise in answering many of these questions. I use only a small subset of what Org-roam provides, and I don’t have a Windows computer, so I can only provide insight into project meta (roadmap, direction etc.) and answering basic queries where there is overlap with my own usage, without a significant investment of effort. So many users seem to have such complex, demanding workflows! I’m going to keep saying that this is an antipattern, and this is a hill I’m willing to die on.
I want Org-roam to encourage simple workflows. Subsequently, I’ll publish a
detailed guide on how I use Org-roam, and the rationale behind my choices. I’m
hoping this will answer some of the questions the community may have. I often
forget that not everyone in the community has a technical background, and other
tools for handling plain-text (such as grep) are not as commonly known as I
thought. The guide should provide a solid, simple starting point for using
Org-roam, even for newcomers to Emacs. Since 2022 should theoretically be better
on me, I’ll also commit to being more active on Discourse, at least. On that
note, if you’d like to provide any direct feedback, you can email me privately,
or write up a post on Discourse.
How Do I Use the Notes I Take?
This is the question I’m still trying to wrap my head around. I think Org-roam has already nailed the part on creating and linking notes, but it could certainly do better in surfacing notes for review. I’m not sure how I’d approach this yet, but this is the area which I’m looking to tackle. I’m currently reading the literature for this, and also playing around to get some ideas, but suggestions are welcome. My hypothesis is that this should also be a deliberate practice and not something trivialized through code, but surely Org-roam can provide some value here.
This is an example of how Org-roam will evolve. It always begins with a personal experiment based on literature, and once I’ve concluded that it works, I extract it in its minimal form and make it available for all to use. This process takes time but at least it comes with a certain quality guarantee.
Org-roam’s Future
Org-roam to me is near-complete software, at least for the functionality I’d originally scoped out. Feature introductions will likely be few and far-between, depending on my experiments. I’ll continue routinely fixing bugs and optimizing various things, but I’d say chances of it seeing large changes are near zero. I’m not sure how that makes you feel, but I think it’s a good thing.
It also isn’t clear to me whether there’s anyone who’d like to step up to maintain/steward Org-roam. Perhaps now that you’ve learnt about my radical desire for simplicity, you think that I’m holding the project back. Let me know! I’m happy, excited even, to see where other people can take the project to.
That’s all I have, here’s to a great 2022!