Mid-Summer Townhall / Live Q + A (Mon, Jul. 25, 19 CET)

News & Announcements
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:loudspeaker: Howdy out there Community, this is not a drill, it’s time for another rodeo! :cowboy_hat_face:

Monday, July 25th, 19:00 CEST :mantelpiece_clock: (1 PM EDT, 10AM PDT, 01:00 HKT)

:studio_microphone:We’re hosting our Anytype Community Townhall / Live Q + A :satellite::globe_with_meridians::artificial_satellite:

:tropical_drink:Grab a refreshing beverage and join the discussion w/ our
Co-Founder & Product Architect Anton Pronkin
w/ support from Community practitioners Enda Crowley & Angelo Tripkovsky
& additions from our Anytype / Community Teams.
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What’s new at Anytype? Which pressing issues do we need to address? What’s on your mind?
Get your questions answered! :speaking_head:

:wave: The chat will be open-format but feel free to comment below what you’d like us to discuss :point_down::clipboard:

This event will take place on our Discord server, we’re excited to see you there!

No worries if you can’t attend, you won’t miss out on the action!
Submit your Q’s now and we’ll share a link to the recording of Townhall in the forum afterward :busts_in_silhouette:

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Will the recordings be available from places others discord? Like in youtube, forum or in telegram?

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Yes @Srinath, without a doubt.

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I would like to be able to separate my AnyType into dofferent spaces to separate my private stuff from work related items. For my purpose spaces which work like a global filter in anytype should be sufficient.

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  1. How does the idea of integrating an infinite canvas / stylus (or Apple Pencil) support look like as of now?

  2. Will you support annotating pdfs within anytype?

  3. Have you decided if you would implement saving changes to files within anytype made in external applications back to anytype with a dialogue saying override changes or sth similar? — that could be an alternative to edit pdfs within anytype (feature request: 💾 Allow overwriting files that were opened from Anytype and modified afterwards)

and can you give an ETA for that and filesystem integration?

  1. Are you deliberating integrating different text styles into anytype (like Notion/Craft etc)?

  2. What does your vision of the new home screen entail?

  3. It was mentioned by Charlotte that formula support was discussed critically, naming a conflict between making a knowledge management tool vs a data management tool. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

  4. Anytype web version — is that on the team‘s horizon?

  5. Full encryption of local files - would it make sense to integrate that or should the user be responsible for that?

  6. The scope of anytype is really broad, so: What are the top three priorities the team has for anytype?

  7. What should the webclipper be able to do that you have planned for anytype? Would it be similar to OneNote‘s?

  8. On the website it says „ Anytype will be an open organization that is collectively owned by its creators“
    Can you explain that?

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Under Anytype Next, spaces are mentioned.

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Maybe the team can elaborate on how they plan to implement spaces.

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Thanks for the reference. I wonder about the implementation style and some elaboration about the teams thought process would be interesting.

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  1. Electron vs Tauri have there been any considerations?

  2. At what point the apps, desktop ones, going to be made native

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  1. What’s the ETA on the discourse chat plugin?

  2. What’s the ETA on backlinks?

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althogh, had a word with @Charlotte on this, would like to know the approximate ETA of databases or formulas if yall can provide (if we are allowed to ask for ETA in this thread)

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I’m curious to how you want this proposed Database feature to work differently from what Anytype already has - Sets and Types. It’s my understanding that databases in Notion essentially work and look the same as Sets in Anytype; the only significant differences are some missing features (such as column counts and formulas, like you mentioned), and the need to create a new Type to make a Set instead of just creating a database, like in Notion. Therefore, what is it that you’re looking in Databases that are missing from Sets and Types?

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I’ve come across this Tweet recently in response to Notion’s announcement that they would be switching some components of their cross-platform web-based mobile app to native:
https://twitter.com/serejahh/status/1550009145197207553

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Tweet in question.

However, what really gets me thinking is this reply concerning the viability of cross-platform vs native development for mobile apps for resource-strapped startups - of which Anytype probably can be categorized under.

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link

Here’s another intriguing set of replies to that Tweet, this time offering the opinion that for startups, it’s best to start nimble and “cheap” with a single multi-platform app, and once the product gains a stable footing in the market, native development then can be done with the newly gained resources. Anytype is still a product in development with no paying customer base yet, so I find this interesting and applicable to the current state of the product.

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link

This reply is also interesting - it offers the opinion that starting native (mobile) app development early on in the company’s development can “end up spreading [it] too thin.”

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I recognize that pretty much everyone here (including me) would vastly prefer a speedy and purpose-built native app for their mobile apps; Notion’s (and in some cases, Obsidian’s) mobile app is incredibly slow and is a pain to use on any mobile device that doesn’t have an logo of an apple with a bite taken out of it - and even on iOS devices, the experience is slow and frustrating. I also vastly appreciate the hard development, passion and work that is going into the mobile apps to make it fast, pleasant, productive (it definitely shows; the Anytype mobile apps are light-years ahead of Notion and Obsidian on aesthetics and speed) and on-par with Desktop’s feature set, but, we do also have to recognize the benefits of cross-platform app development; out of which the efficiency, cost and speed is most notable. Especially feature parity.

I’d love it if I could hear some opinions and thoughts about the ideas raised in the Tweets by the Anytype team (especially the one by user ajexx), alongside the decision-making process that resulted in separate mobile app development being chosen rather than a single, unified codebase, and the problems and benefits that this is causing now, and foresee to cause in the future as well.

It’d also be useful to know if the final “1.0” release will only happen not only once all the planned features (e.g, collaboration, spaces) are released on Desktop, but are also available on mobile. There are a number of successful SaaS products that got away with having fully-fledged desktop apps but half-baked mobile apps (such as Coda, Discord in its early days, and the Microsoft Office suite); perhaps Anytype can launch a bit earlier despite mobile not having full feature parity with desktop and capture more of the market.

Also BTW, I’d also like to give a word of thanks and appreciation to the Anytype team. I’m elated to see that efforts have been taken to improve community<->company interaction after community feedback. I’d also like to send my appreciation to the team for being able to persevere despite the war in Ukraine; it’s fully understandable that there would be a drop in productivity and company efficiency in the midst of such a horrific event. I’m happy to hear that most of the team have been able to escape with their families from the affected countries…

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Actually yes, what I actually mean by “database” is the ability to have those math functions like count all values, sum, average, media and all…not the extra complicated functions like rollups, relations are already linked between all the databases in anytype becoz of their approach so no need of that, and about the formula property, those are too complicated functions and doesn’t require immediate attention, mainly I used that property to write a formula summing the different the values of two or more properties in the same database or linking databases through rollups and then summing the values, but that’s really fine and not a stuff anyone requires an immediate attention too, the only versatility I need is the ability to have sum, average, median and count all values like in the end of the notion database, only that stuff would make me switch here completely

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While we’re on the topic of sets and databases, is the plan still to only limit the source of sets to one type / relation? What’s the reasoning behind prohibiting multiple types /relations or even allowing us to use queries to populate our sets?

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That feature should be coming and it’s not an artificial limitations; you should be able to find the reasoning in the Telegram post by Anton.

You couldn’t see this progress, but you will feel it in the product soon, as we are now able to build a whole park of the most wanted features like in-line sets, simple tables, sets by any relations, etc.

From his words, it looks like the reason was due to technical limitations with the previous-gen architecture, but the current architecture should allow “sets by any relations” once they implement the feature. Please refer to this post for more:

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Once again with another question

I recently heard about databases would be different?

  1. What is databases in anytype would look kike?
  2. Will it be different from sets?
  3. If so, what will be the difference? And what are the potential use case
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And another three questions :smile:

  1. How does the team envision collaboration/multiplayer to look like? Can you collaborate on an individual object within a page (say a simple table), share that object id and have others paste it in their anytype instances to make additions etc.?

  2. Will you be able to share browser links (http) to pages in anytype? Would it then be possible to create websites in anytype like in Notion?

  3. Are you planning a notification system for anytype for reminders, tasks, etc.?

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Is this feature below (perfectly explained by @Oshyan , and expanded on by me and others) planned?

It’s the only thing that would keep me from using Anytype in my day-to-day notekeeping. I need to be able to easily and quickly fold/unfold and nest block trees, using keyboard shortcuts.

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Happy that we’re able to post questions (and get the video recording later) here.

How do you guys plan on tackling these in the call? It’s too many questions to go one by one - you’d end up not addressing most of the questions.

Hopefully there will be some sort if triage to help identify the topics/questions that have the most user engagement (not just here but across forum and discord). That way you don’t risk leaving out topics that are particularly relevant.