I don’t think Readwise will implement a Logseq export anytime soon and Logseq doesn’t have a plugin infrastructure yet, but we could still build something in the meantime.
@Sarah_Arminta what would be the minimal set of features that you’d like to have?
In general what we need to do is:
Extract highlights using Readwise API (or rely on their existing Markdown export)
Convert notes into Logseq markdown syntax
Merge notes with existing Logseq notes
Step (2) should be trivial, step (3) is a bit more work, especially if we want to avoid duplicated highlights (only merge new highlights) and make it flexible enough
I generally agree with @username_0 and @santi. There is value in writing notes myself, in my own words. However, I did find the Readwise integration very useful.
My approach is to have all the Readwise highlights nested under a block on the book’s page. I’d open the block on the right sidebar and take notes of my own as I scroll my highlights.
Hey,
I’m working something along the lines of importing highlights into logseq. Here my idea was to use Github actions to updates my notes into Github repo at periodic intervals.
Highlight Butler’s goal is to source highlights from multiple places (currently hypothesis) and make notes pages with certain highlights. From here my logseq queries will show these highlights when I query tags.
Currently I’m trying to move from using Templates to make documents to AST based note creation because block id created by the logseq is been overwritten all the time.
The principal is to be a middle man, pulling highlights from N places and dump in a certain consistent way. This preserves a consistent structure. I’ll look into readwise API and clippings.io to integrate with this.
I wrote an email to the Readwise developers. Here is part of it:
Right now I use the Readwise Community Plugin from obsidian. This works because I have followed these instructions for configuring Logseq and Obsidian to work together: Making Obsidian play nice with Logseq The Readwise community plugin also lets you modify the template, making the export work a bit better with Logseq, but I wanted even more customization so I went to the Readwise *beta) markdown exporter and tried editing things there, thinking that this would allow me more control. Unfortunately, I was only able to have limited success, prompting this email.
The big issue is that Logseq is an outliner, like Roam, but uses plain text files, like Obsidian. This means that the plain text files need to be formatted in a particular way. Each line should start with a - and rather than using markdown headers ###, it is best to indent the next line with four spaces. Unfortunately, it is not possible to edit this aspect of markdown export files in Readwise. The Obsidian Community Plugin is a bit better, but it has other limitations. For instance, I wanted to adjust the file name to conform to the Logseq page hierarchy structure. Logseq doesn’t use folders, but instead uses periods in page titles. I want pages to be something like this [[readwise/book/book title]] which would require a file named “readwise.book.book title.md” This is possible in the standard download, but not in the Obsidian plugin.
(Note that right now I cannot get “readwise.book.book title.md” to import as [[readwise/book/book title]] but I think that might be a bug…)
The customizable Markdown export is only on its first iteration, so I will forward your feature request to our cofounders to discuss for future updates!
You’re actually one of the first to request an integration with Logseq. I’ve noted your request in our system, so as more users request the integration then it’ll move up in the queue to develop.
If you’re interested, I would suggest you reach out to them for an integration with us by sharing our API docs: Readwise API | Readwise. Our users have successfully convinced many apps to integrate with us already using this tactic!
UPDATE: There is now an official Readwise plugin for Obsidian which works pretty well with Logseq once you adjust the template. Here are some notes on how I’ve done that (from the Discord discussion).
I am a paying Readwise customer and have to admit I abuse it heavily in Notion. Now I’m switching over to Logseq I was actually asking about it today from their support I(since I figured it would be dead easy to integrate since the Obsidian export must be similar.). This was the response from Readwise support:
thanks for reaching out
You’re actually one of the first to request an integration with Logseq. I’ve noted your request in
our system, so as more users request the integration then it’ll move up in the queue to develop.
If you’re interested, I would suggest you reach out to them for an integration with us by sharing
our API docs: https://readwise.io/api_deets. Our users have successfully convinced many apps
to integrate with us already using this tactic!
I’ll pass on your suggestion about internal stats to our cofounders!
This is awesome news! I was just about to ping them too. Honestly Readwise Reader that they are preparing is something that is going to change highlighting. Also all the API exports just make it easy to pull everything in one place.
Based on a recent reply to one of the Logseq users, it seems like the official Readwise plugin may take a bit longer due to how much there is on their plate.
In the meantime, if you are still looking for a native Logseq - Readwise integration, I’ve created one that is on the Marketplace now.
My Readwise integration worked very well at first. Everything came into Logseq, but now, it synchs to a different directory that I can’t access. I can no longer get new information into Logseq. Does anyone else have this problem or can help me start synching all over again. I have tried to use the red button to delete and start over within the Readwise plugin, but I get a message saying that I need to switch to the directory I can’t get to. I agree that Roam and Obsidian work perfectly with Readwise.
Rob
