First Impressions of Anytype As A Research Academic

[fmksr2007]

1. Hi, the base concept of the service is revolutionary, to say the least; there are several second-brain/networked thought services out there, but none of them is as clearly structured and immediately intuitive for the first-time user. I feel qualified to say this because I’ve tried at least a dozen similar services, but none of them come close to Anytype’s well-defined, intuitive and user-friendly structures. Anytype already is what Notion, Obsidian, Logseq et al. should have been in the first place.
2. Another thing that should be highly appreciated is that Anytype is geared towards and built specifically for the individual end-user. Most of the other similar services are purposefully built and overwhelming cater to the corporate sectors and large teams and regarding individual person’s use, they are like ‘We guess, you can use it as an individual, too, but we don’t care about that.’
3. All that being said, several features are missing in Anytype, which is completely fine, given the alpha status of the product. Below are some of the things from the top of my mind that must be included in Anytype for it to become a daily driver:

• Support for formatted academic literature citations.
• Export to .pdf and .docx formats
• Native highlighting and annotations on PDFs and extraction of those items as a text note with liquidtext service (liquidtext.net) as a reference.
• Support for converting an outline into a mindmap and vice versa.
• Support for concept maps with labelled connections.
• Support for font and font size selection.
• Support for underlining.
• Support for “wide mode” like Notion.
• Support for “local graph” of page/object showing only its links, with reference to Obsidian.

4. Last but not least, thank you for providing me with this platform for me to express, document and preserve my authentic self. Keep up the great work.

[sambouwer]

Hi @fmksr2007, thanks for your feedback!

1. I’m happy to hear that you find the base concept clearly structured and intuitive. Could you share what information from where you used to get to know Anytype’s concepts? Often heard feedback is that Anytype’s concepts (Objects, Object Types, Templates, Blocks, etc.) are complex to learn and grasp at first sight.
2. I could not agree more! This feels like a more bottom-up approach where the features for individuals are put first, and collaboration for teams and other features that would be must-haves for corporations are coming later.
3. I’ll post some links to existing feature requests to make sure everything in your post is covered.

• Support for formatted academic literature citations.
  I know this is your own topic, but linking it for future reference:

Academic Literature Formatted Citations Support

We should be able to insert academic literature formatted citations natively as an object. Formatted academic citations support is critical for academic research use cases. There are two ways that I can think of for implementing this: either anytype builds its own library of academic reference materials and produce formatted citations from that or by outsourcing that work by integrating with a external reference manager like Zotero. The current alternative is to input the citation in an externa…

• Export to .pdf and .docx formats
  I don’t think there is a request for export to Word, so feel free to create one! I did find a request for PDF export (improvements to the current implementation)

Better PDF export

Yeah Im aware how big this effort would be. But I think its worth it, because it opens a new marketing segment, the office replacement. Many users are not really happy with it. If anytype allows not to use it not only for note taking but note exporting, it would help me to easier convince people around me to use anytype. Bc’s of that, Id call it a basic feature, otherwise you almost lock in the users, not able to share a document from an amazing app to non users

• Native highlighting and annotations on PDFs and extraction of those items as a text note with liquidtext service (liquidtext.net) as a reference.

I think the most important feature requests for this request are:

Multilayer text annotation objects

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Text formatting is not sufficient to explore and study a text. Describe the solution you’d like I would like to make a selection and create and annotation object, in almost the same way I can format a text background color. But there would be possible to create layers of annotation. Each layer have non-overlapping annotations. On the top of the page the annotation layer could be checked one at a time. By pressing Ctrl and hoveri…

PDF annotation with Anytype

Describe the solution you’d like Logseq has this super cool and Utility feature, where PDF is opened within the app with a viewer built in it and annotations can be made in the viewer all without leaving the app (i.e No PDF is opened using something like adobe). And takes the annotation in outline area as a reference ( currently it a manual process it is super cool). After annotation of pdf within Anytype, the annotations and notes should be available on a note separately, like Logseq does. I…

• Support for converting an outline into a mindmap and vice versa.

Do you mean something like https://mermaid.live? If not, could you elaborate on this request? It does sound interesting!

• Support for concept maps with labelled connections.

Please check out the Graph view on Anytype for Desktop (not yet implemented for mobile yet). Connections in the graph are labelled but there are many requests for improvements to the Graph view, so I’m adding a search query instead of specific topics.
https://community.anytype.io/search?q=graph%20%23feature-requests

• Support for font and font size selection.

Add options to change font size and style

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. On desktop, it’s more of a preference. On Android, it’s frustrating having that small font size and not be able to change it. Describe the solution you’d like Like notion, i’d like to have the option to change to different font types like “mono” and “serif”. Also to have the option to change the font sizes. Describe alternatives you’ve considered No alternatives considered. Additional context [image]

https://community.anytype.io/t/font-type-and-options/5327/2

• Support for underlining.

Ability to underline text on mobile

It’s not the most used, but essential feature when needed. Single, double any type of underlines for page text I’d personally need it for academic work and note-taking. that’s it.

• Support for “wide mode” like Notion.

it is possible to configure the width of an Object using the Layout options:

Does that do what you’d need, or do you mean an option to toggle between a (configurable) narrow and wide (full page width) mode? I think such an option would be a good addition to the current option to choose the width.

• Support for “local graph” of page/object showing only its links, with reference to Obsidian.

I’m not sure what you mean, but it might be requested already . see link above with a search query for feature requests related to the Graph view.

[Jeroen]

@sambouwer

I’m happy to hear that you find the base concept clearly structured and intuitive. Could you share what information from where you used to get to know Anytype’s concepts? Often heard feedback is that Anytype’s concepts (Objects, Object Types, Templates, Blocks, etc.) are complex to learn and grasp at first sight.

I am currious myself since in general the concept of object types and sets is seen as complex and counter intuitive compared to simular programs such as Notion, Airtable and the likes. It requires a bit of backwards thinking compared to what we are used to.

@sambouwer

• Support for “local graph” of page/object showing only its links, with reference to Obsidian.

I’m not sure what you mean, but it might be requested already . see link above with a search query for feature requests related to the Graph view.

Local Graph is a version of the graph view which only shows the pages linked directly to or from the current page you are currently viewing. It is a very powerful graph view in my opinion, one I use in Obsidian more then the complete graph view!

So it only shows the highlighted pages as shown below in a seperate view/panel in the sidebar.

Example from Obsidian with local graph in the sidebar showing only the direct links, not the other thousands of pages in this account:

[sambouwer]

@Jeroen a bit of a late reply, but thanks for sharing your thoughts and the example of the “direct/local graph” in Obsidian.
I think this request is quite similar, but maybe @fmksr2007 you can confirm this?

Support Inline Graph view of Object content as Block

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. If an app were to become my second brain, I think I’d need such a feature (I need to visualize things a lot, and I guess I’m not the only one in this situation - or am I ? ^^) Describe the solution you’d like An “Object graph view”, turning the hierarchy of its content into a “Mindmap”. If modifications are made to the text, the graph syncs automatically. It would be great if pictures could show too ! Describe alternatives you’ve…