A small [elisp] script to migrate from org-roam to denote

I've been eyeing denote for a while now, finally decided to spend a few mintues (ended up being hours, but hours are also made of minutes, so my estimation wasn't technically incorrect) to convert my org-roam notes do denote. It works well enough for me, thought I should share in case someone else might be interested as well. Time to see how well denote fairs now; I have my concerns that it might not perform well with too many notes.

Thanks for sharing your script! > I have my concerns that it might not perform well with too many notes. In the manual, Prot mentioned that someone tested it with thousands of notes and that it held up, so that should be OK. https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote#h:863f812a-aac7-42ea-83b3-fbbdb58e08d7

>ended up being hours, but hours are also made of minutes You have earned the "inquisitive brow look" for this. Spock eyebrow

What’s the advantage of denote over org-roam (for you)?

Right at this moment, none. But vice-versa is true as well. And denote is (apparently) much simpler in implementation, and conceptually as well; overall less moving pieces. Over time however, org-roam's database sync-ing has cost me hours before; although for several weeks now I haven't faced a problem. It used to break every now and then and needed me to delete the org-roam-db and trigger a sync again. Denote is bound to have its own pain-points, so I am trying it out to see if it is worth the bargain. If it isn't, I'll move back to org-roam (hence I've kept the scope of linked repo a bit broader than org-roam-to-denote-migrator.el), or something else perhaps. This is trying out something new/different as much as it is an investment in simplicity.

Nice one, will definately check that out. For work, I have been eyeing with migration functions (denote -> logseq), so that my non-techie colleagues can profit from my note-taking habit :-)

Thanks for the feedback. I’m using org-roam as well and thought about going over to something much simpler since I’m not really using most of its features and neither am I building “my second brain” with it. It’s fine if it works for people but I can’t get around it so now I’m just using it to take meeting and project notes etc. which I could also do with something much simpler.

I feel you. Good note-taking can be so helpful at work, so many problems (all the frustrating problems?) are because of bad/miss-communication. Since I already take notes for all the calls/meetings/research, sharing them would go a long way; and perhaps encourage my colleagues to adopt the habit as well. Please feel free to raise an issue in this repo. I've never used logseq before, but if you want it we can work on denote->logseq sync together (I assume that's what you want, repetetive sync instead of one-time migration). Although you'll have to take the lead, I will give a hand whenever I can. --- PS My approach to achieve this goal (of sharing my notes with colleagues) was to share a read-only snapshot of subset of my notes (since I put all my notes under a single system; work-notes and personal-notes aren't different). I am utilising most recent incarnation of this approach for blogging these days. You can check [this repo](https://github.com/bitspook/cl-ownpress) for the code I am using for that if you're interested.

That's a splendid idea. I quickly checked the source and fortunately, it seems grok-able for me (non-cs, selftaught). Also it makes perfect sense to bundle efforts and literally have a general-purpose notes migrator instead of a number of special-purpose ones. Will open an issue in the coming days (I hope).

Is there a way that denote and org-roam files can be compatible? So instead of writing the notes to a new directory, modify them in place so one can easily switch between the two packages?

That's a good idea (for someone who want to use both org-roam and denote at the same time). There are two pieces to the compatibility: 1. File names of notes 2. Linked notes in note body Content of org-files themselves other than links is already compatible as far as I can tell. org-roam don't care about the file names I think. Linked notes in org-roam are `id` links, but in denote they are `denote` links. This can be handled by overriding `org-link-parameters`' `:follow` param for either of them, and ensuring that you link new notes with either `id` or `denote` links. This will make them compatible for the most extent. Next would come showing backlinks, I have only guesses about how either of them do backlinks (I don't use this feature often). Overall I think it is possible to achieve what you suggest. --- That said, I have no interest in using both of them at the same time. Keeping them both seems counter-productive to me (because one of my objectives is to reduce complexity).

Good points. I had some similar frustrations with org roam. I tried denote for a short while but howm with some tweaks works better for me. The ZK package is also very close to howm But I think howm works better for freeform and mostly unstructured notes.