My question is about why Logseq is designed to have multiple types of dependencies and whether this can be made more explicit for new users.
I started using use Logseq for about 1 month. I love it a lot. When I was learning its UI, one thing very confusing to me was the types of dependency, majorly the indentation (outliner) and page dependencies.
About “zoom in”
The major confusion is that both blocks in an indentation structure and pages can be zoomed in. Then the users will be brought to a new “place”. The new place is visually very similar between blocks originally from indentation structures and pages and. Some other software (except Roam Research) either uses indentation dependency (e.g., Workflowy and other outliners) or page dependency (e.g, Obsidian and Notion).
For the indentation dependency type of software, every block is also a page. For the page dependency type of software, the indentation structure is just a way to format text content. So there will be no confusion.
In Logseq, when you want to add children or move a block to a parent, I have to consider whether to put them in an indentation structure or to make the block a page and then use the page dependency. Both led to similar behaviours and UX (because of “zoom in”).
I am wondering that
- What’s the reason and advantage of adopting both of the two types of dependency to trade a flatter learning curve?
- If the advantage is critical for experienced users, maybe making an explicit introduction about the difference between the two dependencies is good for new users.
- For experienced users, it is relatively easy to identify whether we are in a block zoom-in view or in a page view. But it is not very explicit for new users. Users need to spend additional cognitive resources to disambiguate the current state. I am not sure how it can be more explicit.
- Whether it is better to have an option to enable/disable outliner view.