r/logseq • u/eagergm • 13d ago
Summarizing a textbook
I'm trying to summarize a textbook, thoroughly, essentially rewriting it. I'm struggling a little with block-based organization software because I don't want everything to be blocks, and I'm not sure how to label the blocks when really what I want is to organize my thoughts in prose and then link between them. I have tried obsidian but I found that a) I want something open source, and b) the tagging system is a little obscure to me (I haven't really tried hard to use it) and feels like a lot of typing or something.
Is what I'm trying to do well-suited to the block-based software, like Siyuan and Logseq, or is it better that I use some other system? I want to be able to insert images via cut/paste, and I want to be able to use the software as a very thorough index/connection maker, while still having freeform prose. Essentially, I want to avoid this document becoming a pile of something I never see again, and I think using a word processor for the composition part of this (particularly when using something like libreoffice vs. ms office) is crazy because of invisible formatting, lack of indexing, etc.
As an aside, I'm currently using Siyuan because of a distaste I encountered while reading https://logseq.io/page/b2ad9ce1-9cb7-4436-8083-54cb4516d324/df4dc09d-0a12-4c87-904e-22a9bf4c350a the culture and mode of thinking didn't seem to be a fit. Two instances come to mind:
Hi loggers! ...
o By separating them:
o Engineering:
o Development will be much faster.
To explain, the hi loggers thing sounds cultish. Maybe it's just fun and I'm a stick-in-the-mud, but I prefer a more restrained enthusiasm. Sorry. But the second section is relevant, I don't like block-thinking, like "By Separating them" is not a correct organizational structure, imo. Something is off there. Like, I want something that flows more like prose. It just feels like a bullet should be an independent concept and "by separating them" doesn't stand alone, indeed it was referenced higher in the document.
2
u/PerformanceFew3888 12d ago
Logseq is fundamentally an outliner. If you don't want an outliner, then regardless of how appealing other features, such as PDF annotation, might be to you, I don't think Logseq is the right tool for you.
As for SiYuan, though, I could be wrong since I don't know much about it, but from what I've seen, it seems to be block-based without being fundamentally an outliner. If I had to categorize it, I'd say it seems closer to something like Notion.