Enhancing Memex with Direct Markdown Integration in the Annotation Sidebar
Memex’s current integration with Obsidian and Logseq is great, yet there’s an opportunity to elevate the user experience even further by providing direct access to Markdown within the annotation sidebar. At present, users must create notes on a page, sync them to Obsidian, and then interact with those notes for the further refinement of ideas. A more intuitive approach would involve assigning each page with its own Markdown file, displaying notes directly within that file & displaying the file in the annotations sidebar. Here’s a proposed workflow:
- User Interaction:
- When a user highlights text on a webpage, Memex stores the note in the database.
- Annotations Sidebar:
- Upon opening the annotations sidebar, a file named
<webpage>.mdis displayed, showcasing a default#webpage-titleand a list of user-created notes for the page. - The annotations sidebar now includes five options: Notes (the proposed Markdown file), Highlights (the current ‘notes’ section, now categorized as highlights under the proposed change), Spaces, Ask, and Feed.
- Note Structure:
- Each note in the list is represented as a code block.
- By default, the code block renders the highlighted text, and clicking it opens the webpage at the highlighted text.
- Users can customize the placeholder text, but the functionality to open the webpage at the highlighted text remains unchanged.
- Users can write Markdown notes inside the code block, retaining the ability to make notes for individual highlights.
- The code block renders additional metadata (e.g., spaces, bin & copy), which users can toggle off using a switch button or by editing the code in the code block.
- Organization:
- New notes are added to the bottom of the Markdown file by default.
- Users can delete notes, and deleted notes remain visible in the ‘highlights’ section, maintaining the current list view.
Advantages:
- This approach enhances creativity at the point of highlighting a page because users can now interact with fully customizable markdown notes without leaving the webpage, this makes each individual highlight much more powerful and readily available for other Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) functions.
Bi-Directional Sync:
- The proposed code block system establishes a bidirectional sync between Markdown and Memex notes, providing users with a seamless interaction.
Future Extension:
- This functionality opens the possibility for a future Obsidian/Logseq plugin, rendering Memex code blocks in Obsidian. This extension would allow users to interact with Memex directly from Obsidian, potentially replacing the current Obsidian integration.
Motivation:
- This feature request aims to make Memex more versatile and closely integrated with Markdown notes, following an offline-first approach where users have custodianship over their data.