Roam Research: a new note-taking tool

We’ve been getting some requests via email and PIM for Notion support, which we’ve been handling piecemeal – I just realized we haven’t updated the forum on the subject.

Notion is electron software with no AppleScript or JavaScript wrapper. When we checked last time, it did not seem to expose requisite UI scripting commands. I notice there’s a “copy URL” command. However, its URLs are of this form https://www.notion.so/<title><id>; i.e., their protocol field is set to https. If used (unchanged) with Hook’s “Link to Copied Address” function, by default they would open in a web browser. I don’t think there’s a way to feed them back into the Notion app (again, they have no AppleScript , JavaScript or other API as far as I know). Moreover, there does not seem to be a way to programmatically access the title of the document. (There’s no Copy Markdown Link).

I’m not a Notion user myself except for testing. Based on my limited testing with the web service , I htink a user could use “Copy Link”, Copy Markdown Link, and “Link to Copied Address”. A user could also paste said links anywhere, including in Notion. When Notion links pasted in NOtion docs are accessed via their app, they do seem to open in the app.

That is far from what Hook can do with apps like Bear; but it appears that Hook might already be of some value to Notion users.

I can’t tell right now whether one of us at CogSci Apps have contacted them about adding support. If not , we will reach out. Notion users who want to use Notion in an automated / integrated fashion might wish to contact its developers per Contacting developers of other apps.

In Hook 1.4, we fixed issues with linking to Roam notes, by treating # as a significant part of URLs in the roam domain (not as a URL fragment). (Later we intend to make this type of treatment automatic and transparent for various websites that need it.)

@Conaw, is there a URL scheme Hook could use for Link to New , so that users could create new Roam notes automatically for Hook? I think all we need is for Roam to provide a URL pattern we can use, assuming that the user is already logged into Roam. I think you would see a lot of new notes being created in Roam, and they could then be linked to anything.

What’s your timeframe on this? I’m on the edge of investing in Roam, but work security policies wouldn’t allow me to use it in the cloud.

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