WYSIWYG Tables and a few other questions

[nighto]

Hi,

Loving the app so far, thanks for creating something so wonderful.

I have a few questions though:

1. Are there any plans for WYSIWYG table editing? It’s something I’m missing from Obsidian, Standard Notes, etc and would love to see in SilverBullet at some point.
2. Are there any plans for E2EE or zero knowledge encryption like in Actual Budget where you don’t have to trust the server? Example of a use case would be hosting on a VPS service you don’t necessarily trust. That would be most VPS providers for any sensitive notes.
3. Is there a way to create nested notes like in a conventional sidebar? As an alternative, I hoped there would be Tab Completion for folders in the navigation switcher to make it easy to create nested notes but it doesnt seem to exist. The treeview plug does make hierarchical navigation but it doesn’t support creating notes within folders. Is there any easier way to create nested notes without typing out the entire path?

Thanks

[i_am_dangry (Dan)]

@nighto

Are there any plans for E2EE or zero knowledge encryption like in Actual Budget where you don’t have to trust the server? Example of a use case would be hosting on a VPS service you don’t necessarily trust. That would be most VPS providers for any sensitive notes.

It looks like it was added as a POC, discussed in this issue. It’s something I’ve thought about too, but I don’t think it was implemented.

@nighto

Is there any easier way to create nested notes without typing out the entire path?

Kinda. I only learnt about this the other day in this post. Specific quote below:

@zef

To do this more efficiently, you can open the Page Picker and then hit space (also works on mobile), which will complete the path of the current page excluding the last path segment (so basically prepare you to create another page in the same folder).

Edit: that last point on reflection might not be exactly what you are after. But it is a way to “auto-complete” filepaths. I do see a lot of people turning to tags to create structure rather than folders. I’m from Obsidian and use a folder structure and did initially rely on treeview heavily. But I’ve found myself moving away and creating a flatter structure as I get more comfortable in SB

[nighto]

@i_am_dangry

It looks like it was added as a POC, discussed in this issue. It’s something I’ve thought about too, but I don’t think it was implemented.

Yeah, I saw the issue too. I don’t think it ended up actually being implemented.

@i_am_dangry

But it is a way to “auto-complete” filepaths. I do see a lot of people turning to tags to create structure rather than folders. I’m from Obsidian and use a folder structure and did initially rely on treeview heavily. But I’ve found myself moving away and creating a flatter structure as I get more comfortable in SB

I would gladly switch to tags too but I can’t seem to find a way to autocomplete tags, navigate quickly, etc. So it effectively ends up being the same.

I also already use tags in a different way in Obsidian and Standard Notes. For example, “#guide” is an example of a tag I use across different folders, where folders usually signify either different areas of interest or life.

[zef (Zef Hemel)]

@nighto

• Are there any plans for WYSIWYG table editing? It’s something I’m missing from Obsidian, Standard Notes, etc and would love to see in SilverBullet at some point.

Honestly my skillset is not very strong in building things like this. Also I don’t use tables at all myself, so I personally have no plans. However, if there’s somebody out there who would be willing to take up this task, I’d be happy to take the contribution.

@nighto

• Are there any plans for E2EE or zero knowledge encryption like in Actual Budget where you don’t have to trust the server? Example of a use case would be hosting on a VPS service you don’t necessarily trust. That would be most VPS providers for any sensitive notes.

I implemented this at some point and in fact that implementation is still there, just not documented. I stopped the development because I pivoted away from the use case where I was slowly moving to a potential SaaS version of SilverBullet. This is where I saw a solid use case: if I’d offer SilverBullet hosting to random people, they may not (and perhaps should not) trust me with their data security so end-to-end encryption makes sense. However, when I decided not to pursue this, the use case kind of died.

What you’re saying is an untrusted VPS provider. Perhaps this is still valid, the question is if you cannot handle the encryption at a lower level. Perhaps you can somehow implement disk level encryption, would that be a solution?

The problem with implementing is that from a development it adds a lot of complexity in the code base (which I haven’t removed yet, but maybe will). From the user perspective it means disabling some features, like server-side indexing (because the server wouldn’t have access to the keys) which means that 100% of the processing needs to happen in the client so effectively you get Sync mode only and not Online mode. Then, on disk your space becomes a folder of blobs that you cannot decrypt, whereas one of the selling points for SilverBullet is “it’s just markdown files on disk and you’re not locked in”. With this, you would be, unless you explicitly export your files and decrypt them somehow.

Interested on people’s perspective on such a feature, though. Maybe I’m missing something.

[nighto]

@zef

Honestly my skillset is not very strong in building things like this. Also I don’t use tables at all myself, so I personally have no plans. However, if there’s somebody out there who would be willing to take up this task, I’d be happy to take the contribution.

Understandable, no worries

@zef

which means that 100% of the processing needs to happen in the client so effectively you get Sync mode only and not Online mode.

I might be the wrong person to hear from since I configured my server to be sync-only. But I would be totally fine with both the client-side processing and the blobs issue as long as there is a simple export option. Kind of like Joplin. My VPS is on a reputable service and i should technically be okay trusting them but I would much rather not have to. It could also just be that I’m not part of the target audience for SilverBullet, as much as I’m loving it.