When comparing Logseq vs Zim, the Slant community recommends Zim for most people. In the question“What is the best cross-platform note-taking app?” Zim is ranked 3rd while Logseq is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose Zim is:
Notes can contain links to other notes, allowing you to reference important information when needed. This way the user can connect and reference many different pages in the app, keeping things clean and structured, unlike Evernote, which makes this a good Evernote alternative.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Privacy-first
Logseq is a privacy-first tool for thought.
Pro Networked notes
Similar to Roam's technique of letting the notes flow with links to each other.
Pro Local-first software
Every topic is its own flat file. Nothing is better than keeping your data in the file system with an option of git source control or online backup.
https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/
Pro Daily journal is capture on Steriods
The daily journal feature allows you to quickly capture disparate topics under today's date and by way of tags make things organized and findable from any topic page.
Pro Open source
Logseq is opensource.
Pro Structured data over willy-nilly formatting
Lots of apps are too graphically flexible in how they allow content to be entered, placed, and formatted. They act like Word when what you want when authoring content is Markdown. Content and semantic structure, not graphical frills.
Pro Org syntax
Logseq support Emacs Org syntax out of the box.
Pro Allows for organized, wiki-style navigation
Notes can contain links to other notes, allowing you to reference important information when needed. This way the user can connect and reference many different pages in the app, keeping things clean and structured, unlike Evernote, which makes this a good Evernote alternative.
Pro Plain text data format rather than proprietary
If/when the app is no longer developed (or if the user simply decides to no longer use the application or view/edit it on a non-supported platform), this can still be done with any plain-text editor.
Pro Automatically manages files and folders
Zim will automatically create a folder structure that fits your page hierarchy and adds/removes files such as images to/from appropriate folders.
Pro Good export options
Zim supports HTML, LaTeX, Pandoc Markdown, and RST. This allows ones documents to be easily used in a wide selection of other apps.
Pro Support for multiple platforms
Windows, Linux, and BSD are supported with their own clients. This is nice for those that use multiple operating systems but still want to use the same app on each.
Cons
Con Keyboard-driven editing/navigating is descent but average
It is only because I was a long-time Checkvist user that I say this. Checkvist has keyboard-driven controls which are in a league of their own.
Con Still in Alpha
Logseq is still in Alpha and is under heavy development.
Con No mobile app support
This is a desktop app and there are no mobile versions available. This can make it more difficult to use on-the-go if using cloud storage to store files from the app, as there is no mobile app version to access those files.
Con No native sync support
Zim notes don't automatically synchronize with other devices or offer built-in cloud sync support. Of course the user can add the files to Dropbox, or something similar, to then open them on another device with the app installed. But this is more of a work-around than a built-in solution.
Con Looks ancient
Zim has a very plain and outdated interface.