Getting started for Roam Users

Learn about unique features that Tana brings, importing your Roam graph and how to map Roam concepts in Tana

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Tana is changing at a rapid pace 🚀 While many concepts remain the same, some user interface and features have changed a lot since they first were documented here! Please keep this in mind while browsing.

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Tana TerminologyIn 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

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