New user - thrilled but now disappointed

Introduce Yourself
1

HI - I started using Logseq a couple weeks ago and I’ve been mostly liking it. I’ve read lots of info online, watched tutorials, etc. I’ve started using it for some day to day meeting notes and there’s a lot I like. But today, I’m very frustrated and questioning whether to continue with it.
A few examples:

  1. I tried to create my first template and wanted it to insert today’s date and keep it fixed. Apparently there’s no timestamp variable that won’t update. I found instructions for creating a macro but it didn’t work when I tried it.
  2. Creating page properties - learned how to do this and created some, but they’re clunky at best. It seems I can’t go back to a page I created earlier and put the page properties in the first block after the fact - not clear why, but it only seems to work when I first create the page.
  3. Tried to create an attendees property - names are clunky - have to use a dash instead of a space or put them in brackets to create a page. No way to create a tag that differentiates people.
  4. Tried to create other properties in my template - they didn’t work right.
  5. I want to be able to create a bullet list within a single block - I don’t see any easy way to do that.
  6. I tried to use the graph filter it doesn’t seem to work - I can type in search text and it shows me a list of tags - but then I can’t get it to actually filter the graph. I tried to use some of the graph settings such as n hops away - doesn’t seem to work.
  7. I tried hierarchies in tags - they work, but they show up in the graph in a very clunky way.

My feeling after today: I could probably get all this stuff to work eventually if I put in even more time - maybe I will - but I already put in a lot of time. I spent half my day to day trying to figure out the things above and didn’t succeed. And these aren’t super complex functions.Two hours of searching didn’t allow me to just insert today’s date in a template automatically - really? I’m not impressed with the available tutorials and documentation - to be honest, it’s all pretty poor. I looked up the options for setting up my own sync without using the pay version - looks like that will be rife with frustration.

I really like the overall paradigm and I don’t mind the interface at all - but I’m leaning towards cutting my losses before I get in too deep. My biggest motivation to switch from OneNote which is what I use mostly is to have quick and powerful search and tagging. Perhaps if I give up on the rest, it’s still worth sticking with but this doesn’t feel like a great start.

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Welcome.

  • Logseq is beta software, so:
    • it is not production-ready
      • This is true for every beta software.
      • If you risk plenty to lose, better stay away until version 1.0.
    • should keep expectations low
      • Great features and paradigm don’t imply great implementation.
    • it is clunky all over and lacking in documentation
      • Improving those was never a high priority.
      • Logseq doesn’t provide a great experience.
        • It rather tries to stay out of the way.
  • Logseq is very customizable, so:
    • it serves multiple workflows, it doesn’t specialize in the one you have in mind
    • with enough effort, it is possible to shape it to your needs more than most software out there
      • Whether this is worthy or not, it totally depends on you.
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Thank you! That is a very honest and fair response. I hadn’t realized logseq was still considered beta software.

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If you like the experience of logseq and want something a bit more polished there are a number of other outliner options that are quite good:

Remnote
Tana
Workflowy

To a lesser extent:
obsidian
Notion
Etc

And some other heavily in-development tolls I’ve not tried much:
Anytime
Capacities

Logseq has great potential, but if you can’t tolerate a fair bit of jankyness, ( totally reasonable), then it might be better to go elsewhere and check in again at a later date.

Logseq has some features non of those support, and vice versa.

Of those listed, tana and remnote are outliners, but tana has no mobile app and no offline support.

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Thanks very much. Tana seems to be in an early development phase. I used Workflowy some time ago - unless it’s changed a lot, it was a pure outliner without much else. I started working with Capacities yesterday and I’m pretty impressed with it so far. Some limitations I don’t love but it might be a better choice for me (kind of annoying you need to pay for premium to get queries though). Anytype (assume that was what you meant?) looks very powerful and has some advantages over Capacities but it looks like it will be more work to set up.

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6

I’ll try to address some of your points individually…

I tried to create my first template and wanted it to insert today’s date and keep it fixed. Apparently there’s no timestamp variable that won’t update. I found instructions for creating a macro but it didn’t work when I tried it.

In my case, inserting <%now%> into the template will change to the current date when applying the template. Also, the plugin “Interstitial journaling” might be of value to you. It inserts a timestamp by pressing a hotkey.

Creating page properties - learned how to do this and created some, but they’re clunky at best. It seems I can’t go back to a page I created earlier and put the page properties in the first block after the fact - not clear why, but it only seems to work when I first create the page.

Not sure what happens there. It works by inserting name-of-property:: value as first block. The only weirdness is that you have to press enter twice to get into the next block. (Clicking somewhere else works, too)

Tried to create an attendees property - names are clunky - have to use a dash instead of a space or put them in brackets to create a page. No way to create a tag that differentiates people.

Everything that should be treated as an entity needs to be a tag, thats the main concept of Logseq. Tags starting with # or names inside [[ ]] are treated the same. (Except that #-tags cannot have spaces and the tags-plugin treats only the #-tags).
So yes, you’ll need to put attendees inside brackets. Personally, I like having people inside a namespace [[People/Some Person]]

Tried to create other properties in my template - they didn’t work right.

Again, this should work as expected. Here is an example:

- Testtemplate
template:: Testtemplate
	- prop:: value
	- Some Text
	- <%now%>
-
---
- In the next line, I'll use the template with /template testtemplate
- Testtemplate
	- prop:: value
	- Some Text
	- [[2024-10-09]]

PS: It seems, the properties don’t get copied to the clipboard correctly. Seems to be a bug.

I want to be able to create a bullet list within a single block - I don’t see any easy way to do that.

Yes, this is annoying. Especially as checkboxes don’t work as well.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

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Thank you so much for taking the time to respond in detail. I’m liking Capacities a lot so far - but still considering sticking with logseq. My biggest concern with Capacities is that too much is dependent on the SAAS functionality.
Does <%now%> insert a date that won’t change once it’s inserted?

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Does <%now%> insert a date that won’t change once it’s inserted?

Yes, it gets replaced with the actual date when executing the template

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Another thing that seems confusing with logseq - if you want to sync without using the service they’ve set up - can you use any sync service? It seems to be an area where people struggle. I have sync.com, goodsync, filecloud, googledrive, onedrive and dropbox available (although I have very little space on dropbox and onedrive). It’s not clear to me if there are specific requirements or why people are running into issues with sync services. I’d rather not pay for still another service when I have these options already.

10

can you use any sync service?

Any sync service is a lot :wink: So far, I tested with syncthing and it worked quite well.
(While I lost some data with the logseq-sync service - which is admittedly beta)

However, there are two caveats:
When syncing to your phone, you need a sync service that actually places the files on your phone (GDrive does not, syncthing does)
The upcoming database version stores data inside a sqlite db instead of the individuals markdown files. I (personally) expect that to cause trouble with external sync services

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+1 for syncthing. Works very well even when I am working on multiple devices at the same time.

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Syncthing normally handles editing the same page on multiple devices well. (And it handles editing different pages in the same graph great.) But don’t tempt it; I have run across a number of situations in which data was degraded to some degree. I run Logseq and Syncthing on a Windows desktop, a Windows tablet which is sometimes offline unexpectedly, and an Android phone which can also go offline occasionally.

The most common failure mode, maybe 5–10% of the time, is losing the most recent edits in a way that Logseq records in the undo log, in which case I can just hit undo in the appropriate spot and get them back.

Sometimes, maybe 2–4% of the time, I have to dig into Syncthing’s conflict resolution. It’s not always obvious that this is needed, but it does show in the System tray and especially when you open Syncthing.

Occasionally, maybe 1% of the time, I have to go all the way into Syncthing’s versioning, which is not enabled by default (but is easy to turn on per folder, and you really should for Logseq). This may require closing Logseq and perhaps doing some manual text editing of the Markdown files.

I plan to merge two graphs into one in the reasonably near future, which will probably result in a much higher base chance of problems since I can no longer “park” Logseq on any given device on a graph that is not about to be edited. At that point I’ll probably need to get in the habit of manually parking on a specific non-edited page, at least until the database backing store with Logseq Sync is ready.