Writing in tree structure - The solution to long form writing (Gingko)

Plugins ideas
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Hey guys,
Here’s an awesome idea
that I’d love to hear your thoughts on:

Writing in a tree structure

There’s an amazing app called ginkgo gingko

the concept is to be able to write in a tree structure with extreme ease and excellent shortcuts (using vim style shortcuts)

Here a demo

this is gingko, we can see how text is organized

Reinventing the way we write

The tree structure of writing makes long form writing a great experice.

Users of gingko have even wrote full books with this amazing structure!

Ginkgo Disadvantages that Obsidian could solve

Gingko is a great project and it’s open-source (not fully free though) the biggest disadvantage is that it doesn’t store files in local .md files

Which is a problem because we can’t easily integrate it with Obsidian and other markdown apps.

An Obsidian plugin would fully solve this issue.

Why an Obsidian Plugin

Like we’ve seen in amazing plugins like “Kanban” by @mgmeyers it’s possible to have this modular experience, where a markdown file can be visualized from a custom view, in this case kanban

I made a video on this if you are not familiar:

If gingko could become an Obsidian plugin we could have the best of both worlds

Who is this for?

For anyone who writes long-form content.

The tree structure of gingko is next level, once you try it, you want to be able to use this logic for every piece of content you write.

Making it happen

I’ve been talking with an amazing developer, his name is Artem and he is interested in making this idea a reality.

But first we need your help to make sure that this is something you’d like to use

Share your thoughts below, let’s make this happen

Updates

2022-04-01

It’s great to see how much interest there’s been! A couple of important highlights in case you don’t read all the way to the end of the replies:

@artem the creator of the plugin unfortunately is in the middle of the Ukraine crisis, so as you can understand he is dealing with a lot right now.

Thankfully @hungsu came to the rescue as a contributor and helped to beta published the plugin (with the BRAT plugin). It’s a way for non-techy people to be able to install plugins that are not yet officially published, more info on his instructions here:

For more advanced users that prefer installing it manually here’s the original repo

GitHub - artem-barmin/obsidian-tree-edit: Ginko-style text editing

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@ASommer I discovered Gingko thanks to you.
Let’s make this happen, would appreciate your take on this since I know you’d love for this to happen!

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I’m definitely interested in this, too. I’m an academic and, although Obsidian is great for organizing my thoughts and outline articles, I haven’t quite figured out how to write long pieces fluently in it yet.

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Oh my goodness, this looks amazing! This would be a fantastic feature!

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I’ve played (a small amount) with Gingko, and liked it as a way of forming up thoughts as a second stage after atomic/evergreen notes. But I wanted to do it in Obsidian to leverage quoting, embedded, linking, all the Obsidian goodness - I’d definitely be keen on this.

And related, I was just looking at this New Plugin : a editable Mind map plugin for Obsidian plugin which although it’s displayed as a mindmap, is structurally very similar to what’s going on with Gingko (assuming you’re doing it all in one note, and if a node can be more than a single paragraph/heading/etc as it is in Gingko)

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I am very interested in this, especially the prospect of having it running alongside the Git plugin.

What I especially like about Ginko is how you can quickly assess the ‘scope’ of a parent node and its children, the ability to ‘stage’ documents by reserving empty slots to be filled in later, the ease in which branches can be rearranged and the export feature (e.g. the whole tree, subtree or a column). If this could be translated into an Obsidian plugin, research and writing ability could be greatly extended.

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So happy to hear I’m not alone wanting for this to happen!

I’ve been talking to @artem who is the hero that might help us make this plugin a reality!!

If you have any further ideas or thoughts on this, feel free to add them to this posts, it will help make this happen!

Thanks guys

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This would be awesome ! I totally would use it in order to write my master thesis. For the moment I didn’t find the perfect tool for the writing phase of my process, such a plugin would be game changing !

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I used ginko for awhile and really loved the modularity. I’d definitely use an obsidian plugin that made writing in tree-form similar to ginko possible.

1 Like
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I would use the plugin! This is excelent for collecting news about politics and economics connecting the events to understand the world we live

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I feel like I am missing something. What are the advantages of Gingko over "conventional’ mindmapping?

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I’d say rather than outlining, Ginko enables you to outline, write and rearrange in the same view. Combined with continuous scrolling between panes, you’ll be able to get both a concurrent birds-eye and close-up view of your writing (although the app lacks the ability to minimise panes and subtrees, which is not a dealbreaker for me).

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I´m very keen to see this plugin implemented. I´ve come to Obsidian after a long search for something that would allow me to rearrange text like Scrivener but less clunky, md based and with the ability to sift through thousands of fragments. Obsidian is so fluid, I´ve never been more productive - but this is what would make it perfect for my needs.

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it’s great to see all the interest in this! I’ll talk to @artem to see if this could become a reality. I’ll keep you updated in this post!

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I’d love this as well! I have used Gingko as a first draft writing tool, and it’s been great to get out all the jumbled thoughts in an organised matter.
Id say important things for me would be:

  • clear visual path from left to right so you always know where you are coming from

  • Gingko does a snap-to kind of thing…so when you click on a parent it moves the children of the new parent in line with it (might need a video for that one…:blush:)

  • template function

  • better export than Gingko (no Offenes but sometimes the hierarchy gets messed up)

It’ll be really great if this works! Also, there’s a new plugin that does kind of movable panes, but I can’t seem to find it now…maybe it’s not released yet and I saw it on Discord?

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I’ve used Gingko for some years before I found out about Zettelkasten. I’ve used it for academic texts. Writing in a tree horizontal structure was very helpful for clearing my ideas and concepts. You can rearrange individual cards. You can add color to cards with css… etc. I like very much that each card is one idea, one block, one tiddler (tiddlywiki) or a zettel … you can be creative.
Using Gingko cards horizontal tree in Obsidian would be mind-blowing!

1 Like
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I would be interested too!!! (I’m writing this now because I stumbled upon this topic a few minutest ago…)
I don’t know how Gingko manages footnotes, but I would surely suggest the developer of this plug-in to find a way to:
(a) auto-number notes;
(b) make possible to use a keyboard shortcut to create a new footnote;
© be able to personalize numbering (i.e. continuous numbering or restart numbering on each section
I think in Academic writing this is some kind of must-have, especially if you’re dealing with long form writing as “Gingko for Obsidian” would like to do.

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I’m reading everything and thinking how this links perfectly with breadcrumbs.

1 Like
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Hello everyone. Ginko plugin development started today. I will keep you posted.

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Great to hear! Thanks!!!