Getting started for Roam Users
Learn about unique features that Tana brings, importing your Roam graph and how to map Roam concepts in Tana
For more advanced customization of imports, check out
| Tana Terminology | In Roam |
|---|---|
| Inline reference | Page or Block Reference |
| Reference | Page or Block Embed |
| Node in the Library | Page |
| Node | Page or Block |
| Fields | Attributes |
From Abhay Prasanna:
In Roam, [[ ]], #, and :: were all primarily visual distinctions of pages. You could use the same [[page]] as #page and as an attribute i.e., page::
In Tana, you've got more dimensions than pages.
Use @ to reference a node from anywhere. If the node doesn't exist yet, you can create "library nodes" - which are sort of like core entities (similar to what you saw in "All Pages" in Roam) - People, places, names, things, objects etc.
One thing to note is that in Tana "everything is a node" --> i.e., there's no real distinction between pages and blocks. So there's no equivalent of (( )) - you just use @ again.
Use # to define "tags" - these are qualifiers that let you define what fields (attributes) from your schema (list of all attributes) apply to a given node (block).
A great heuristic for when to use a tag vs. a reference is whether a node "is-a" thing. For example, a node is-a book, or a person, or a claim.
Defining fields for tags turns them into "super tags" in Tana lexicon - i.e., these are tags that bring over fields.
The way I'm thinking about it right now is that a tag is sort of like the name of a template of fields. e.g., #book which I could define fields like author and then a dropdown set of options for genre
Whereas a particular book would be a library node. e.g., @The Brothers Karamazov