Tana mostly works as an outliner now, but they're planning a document mode.
Using "supertags" you can tag a node in the database as being a certain kind of thing (eg an article or, one of my uses, a library for a programming language). You can then specify certain fields that are always (or optionally) part of those things. And you can right queries to display nodes that match a bunch of different criteria and then display those fields in columns in a table or create a board of cards.
This looks super interesting as a concept... but has massive issues for me, despite the fact I feel like the product was practically made for the way my mind works... I genuinely want this, or something like this, and how I use Obsidian plugins is to try and work like this but clearly not as slick as a dedicated product... but despite how much I want this, I can't adopt a product that has not just one red flag but three. One red flag might be worth learning about to see if its just that good I can stomach the risk/pride/disgust/etc... but two or even three is just a complete non starter.
My massive red flags:
1st - It currently requires connecting a Google Account. I don't care about the encryption at rest and in transit, thats nice, you've still forced Google in between Me the customer and You the proprietor. My Google Account is my oldest, least wanted account. I've been slowly trying to purge it from my life, but its been growing since the day I got a gMail invite in the closed beta days. It's too personal it has way too much junk leftover from 16+ years of use across dozens of google services.
2nd - They promise that the data will always be exportable, yet I see nothing about formats or methods.
3rd - Its obviously a cloud SaaS ... all the stuff I think and put into something like this, a second brain if you will... should always be accessible. Offline functionality is mandatory
It's worth noting that Tana is currently early access. IIRC, it just opened to public beta on September 30th. I believe the Google account thing is specifically noted as a temporary thing (and I suspect it's because they appear to use Firebase, so Google account would have been trivial to get started).
You can export to some kind of JSON format. I haven't looked at that yet, personally.
Offline would be good and they definitely need a better mobile story, but for such a new product it's still really great.
It really does look great, it’s managed to stick in my mind for more than an hour which is an excellent mark of a product that I really do want to have in my life.
Firebase was my thinking too, and without Documentation I have no way of knowing if the exported JSON is even remotely readable, let alone able to be converted into other formats like even just to markdown or html… and not having anything offline is just such a dealbreaker after months and months of magically always local and fast access to everything with my notes in Obsidian.
I’m going to be following it eagerly hoping they fix/change some of my dealbreakers.
I haven't used Logseq but have been a heavy Obsidian user for a couple of years. Obsidian can also do much of what Tana can do via plugins (like "dataview"), but the _way_ it's done in Tana is really nice.
Tana mostly works as an outliner now, but they're planning a document mode.
Using "supertags" you can tag a node in the database as being a certain kind of thing (eg an article or, one of my uses, a library for a programming language). You can then specify certain fields that are always (or optionally) part of those things. And you can right queries to display nodes that match a bunch of different criteria and then display those fields in columns in a table or create a board of cards.