A PKM System with Quarto #6789
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One way to transform a .bib file into a .yaml file is to run it through pandoc: A question: Am I right in assuming that you modified an existing ejs listing template? If so, which one? I could only find https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/53bf5f4b8b50b6c8d28b80a01cee012626c180a4/src/resources/projects/website/listing/listing-table.ejs.md?plain=1 , which looks very different. I can sort of understand your template's code, but can't quite understand how |
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Hi @neeldhara I am trying to set up something similar, I have a fairly basic question. Is your PKM basically a massive quarto website or blog project? Or do you use a default project or a custom project template you developed yourself? |
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Have you noticed in Quarto homepage the mention to "Knowledge Repos"? I wonder if there is a repo template for a Knowledge Repo using Quarto. I am in the process of creating a Knowledge Base that I see the need to integrate with Quarto. |
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Description
For those who are not in PKM-land, PKM = Personal Knowledge Management, and of late there's been a lot of interest in tools designed to manage personal knowledge - these tend to be either super-visual/WYSIWYG (e.g, Notion, Craft, etc.) or markdown-based (e.g, Obsidian, Logseq, etc).
I've been going back and forth between a few tools, with my personal priorities being:
For example, as someone who teaches undergraduate courses frequently, a common use-case for me is the preparation of assessments (quizzes, homework, exams, etc). I mostly use the exam class in LaTeX to generate these. I am aware that LaTeX has some packages that let you build a question bank, but this does not come with a nice UI to filter and sort though problems based on either difficulty or theme.
A lot of the popular PKM tools will allow me to do this with a nice UI, as will several LMS-es, but then I have a lot of duplicate work as I port them over into my LaTeX files.
Meanwhile, I have been using Quarto for my website for a while now, and I run a puzzles group, and it's been pretty seamless for me to maintain my collection of puzzles and have them filtered by topic: and it looks great!
So I setup a local repo for tracking exercises, and so far it's working out quite nicely:
By using an appropriate filter, I am able to generate a PDF of an exam by including the relevant questions on a separate quiz page via Quarto's support for including files. I do have some details that I am still figuring out, since I am not really familiar with how pandoc/lua filters work, but I hope to sort them out in due course, likely with help from here :)
This is the PDF file that was produced from this setup, and I am quite happy with it :)
I am slowly transitioning my projects into this system as well:
I maintain a separate list of papers (I'm still working on automating some parts - I think a script can transform BIB to YAML, and that would be nice), and I tag each paper with the projects that they are relevant to, and they get pulled up in the project page with a custom listings.ejs setup like so:
I extensively use Hookmark URLs in the metadata, so I can open relevant files immediately - whether it's PDFs, videos, or the qmd files themselves - if I am looking at a note that I want to edit, it's super convenient to do it by clicking on the hookmark URL that's a part of all the templates.
Since quarto render on individual files works incrementally, I hope this will scale up well - I anticipate adding hundreds, and eventually perhaps thousands of files (I am throwing in time logs, journal entries, and the rest of my life into this gradually).
The fact that I can customize exactly how it looks is a big win for me, as is the fact that I can do reliable PDF publishing without having to duplicate my work. Since my website is also on Quarto with the same theme, I anticipate doing rough work on my blogs and lecture notes within the personal local repo, and transitioning without too much difficulty once things look good.
As of now, I am not sure how to work out access on mobile devices, infinite canvas, and handwritten notes. However, the fact that I output HTML implies that there's promise in terms of being able to perhaps embed things I need. As for mobile, I plan to use Drafts for quick capture... also, if I just want to see my notes, I think I can do a protected server deploy on Netlify eventually, but I am yet to work this out.
I just wanted to give a shout out to the Quarto team - it's a wonderful tool that is superbly documented! ❤️
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