Among the networked-thoughts app like Obsidian, Logseq, and many more, RoamResearch has the least appealing graph view. Hope everyone agrees.
Obsidian graphs (also Logseq’s) are pleasant to the eyes, bubbling around when interacting, highlighting connections of the hovering nodes, ability to filter the nodes with few parameters, etc. It’s nice to have the UI touch in the graph views of these bi-directional linking note-taking apps.
But the graph view should be useful rather than appealing. Before jumping in, there are two graph views. One is an overview (includes all the nodes) and another is a ‘page-graph’ that shows connections between the current note/page to others.
Let’s see how Overall View (Graph Overview) scores. Definitely, Obsidian’s graph view is better than any other app, while Logseq is giving a better user experience when searching and browsing within the graph view and RoamResearch’s graph view is not quite good.
I like the way you can interact with the graphs and filter the connections using tags and other parameters in Logseq. Obsidian allows you to move a node away from the graph and put it out of the clutter to get a clear view of the connections.
On the other hand, RoamResearch presents you with a boring graph view (in Graph Overview) section. A strict bordered, brick-like graph is what you can see at the first glance. Not much to play in the view, zooming and zooming out just shows the connection, and the connected nodes (notes) are distributed all over the graph. The nodes preserve their position even when you interact with them using a mouse.
But I like the highlighting of links when I click a node. The same is available in Logseq and Obsidian, with a better aesthetic feel and better implementation.
Let’s talk about Page Graph View
This is where RoamResearch beats all the other apps. Roam makes the page graph extremely useful. The pages that mention the current pages are aligned neatly on the top, while all the links to the current page are aligned at the node’s bottom. Arranged neatly in a straight line with variable size nodes imitating the density of links (number of connections).
RoamResearch’s graph is better readable in terms of connections and contextually sound than any other app’s graph view.
In the case of Logseq, it gives a dial-type graph that is almost useless for me, except to show off my notes connection in a fancy animated graph that nicely bubbles around. Don’t mistake me, it shows the connection between notes well, but not that much contextually like Roam.
Obisidian’s graph view is similar to that of Logseq. So In my opinion, Logseq’s overall graph view is the best as it gives the ability to filter the graph with tags and other parameters. RoamResearch’s Page-view-graph is what I rely on heavily to understand my note’s connection.
What’s your opinion?
