[HN Gopher] Obsidian - A knowledge base from a local folder of p...
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Obsidian - A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text
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Author : doener
Score : 481 points
Date : 2021-10-17 06:41 UTC (16 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (obsidian.md)
| rvieira wrote:
| Obsidian is great. I'm a paying supporter (catalyst and sync).
|
| Weirdly I started playing with Emacs + org-mode recently (never
| been an Emacs user before!) and I'm seriously considering making
| it my exclusive "second brain".
|
| Something about org-mode, org-babel, org-jupyter, org-agenda and
| org-roam that just clicks with me.
| jstx1 wrote:
| Emacs is so customisable that as soon as I want to customise
| anything, I get lost searching for solutions online and
| inevitably give up on using Emacs altogether.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Emacs is _fantastic_ for Yak Shaving. You can spend hours or
| days tweaking and modifying its configuration files if you
| 're not careful.
|
| My advice for those seeking to get into Emacs: start from
| scratch. Learn how to split your custom.el from your init.el,
| and make sure you're using git to manage those files. Then
| start _slowly_ and install org-mode from source and go from
| there: 8 | ;; Save customizations in a
| different file. Prevents this file being 9 | ;;
| modified by Emacs. 10 | ;;; Code: 11 | (setq
| custom-file (expand-file-name "custom.el" user-emacs-
| directory)) 12 | (when (file-exists-p custom-file)
| 13 | (load custom-file)) 14 | 15 | ;;
| Before anything else, orgmode: 16 | (add-to-list
| 'load-path "~/.orgsrc/org-9.4/lisp") 17 | (require
| 'org-loaddefs) 18 | 19 | ;; First off, we
| need MELPA and the org-mode repo: 20 | (require
| 'package) 21 | (add-to-list 'package-archives
| '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/") t) 22 |
| (add-to-list 'package-archives '("org" .
| "https://orgmode.org/elpa/") t) 23 | (package-
| initialize)
| bloopernova wrote:
| And some more snippets since I'm copying and pasting
| already. (I'm using "bat" to view files. Get it from
| https://github.com/sharkdp/bat ) 40 | ;;
| Taken from https://karl-voit.at/2017/02/11/my-system-is-
| foobar/ 53 | ;; Check if system is GNU/Linux
| 54 | (defun my-system-type-is-gnu () 55 |
| "Return non-nil if system is GNU/Linux-based." 56 |
| (string-equal system-type "gnu/linux") 57 | )
| 59 | ;; make Linux a bit more mac-like 60 | (when
| (my-system-type-is-gnu) 61 | (global-set-key (kbd
| "s-/") 'comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line) 62 |
| (global-set-key (kbd "s-<backspace>") '(lambda ()
| (interactive) (kill-line 0))) 64 | )
| 362 | (defun newer-than-7-days(file) 363 |
| "Return list of files newer than 7 days old in directory
| FILE." 364 | (> 7 365 | (/(float-
| time(time-subtract 366 |
| (current-time) 367 | (nth 5
| (file-attributes file)))) 368 | 86400)))
| 407 | (setq org-agenda-files 408 | (seq-
| filter #'newer-than-7-days 409 | (directory-
| files-recursively "~/Org/Journal" "\\.org$")))
|
| Yes, Emacs is an operating system that also edits text :)
| rvieira wrote:
| That is true.
|
| I use emacs-mac with spacemacs which works pretty well out of
| the box. What I try to do, to not go into the "hacking Emacs"
| rabbit hole, is to really avoid tweaking it unless something
| is really interfering with my workflow.
| marco_craveiro wrote:
| I think the biggest problem with Emacs is that you cannot
| really make sense of a lot of stuff until you start
| programming elisp in anger. I tried for many years to copy
| and paste snippets etc, but now I realised you just need to
| bite the bullet and learn it like any other programming
| language and be prepared to do "real development" in Emacs.
| Its very difficult to be a "tourist" in Emacs, IMHO, a lot of
| things just don't make sense until you became more of a elisp
| programmer.
| laserlight wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. I used to get annoyed that I had to
| copy and paste code snippets that I found over the Web just
| to configure basic stuff. It got out of control pretty
| quickly. Now I understood that Emacs is supposed to be used
| by programming it. Turns out it was meant to be a feature,
| not a bug.
| Fice wrote:
| I'd go further and say that computers are supposed to be
| used by programming them.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| > Its very difficult to be a "tourist" in Emacs
|
| Exactly. Ironically, Emacs is also the place where
| transition from tourist to resident is the smoothest. You
| can stray writing and evaluating Elisp practically
| anywhere. (Almost) Everything is programmable via Elisp,
| everything is documented in excruciating detail, learning
| about any system attribute is two keychords away, there are
| debugging and profiling tools built in, and source code for
| very built in thing is available. If the target is to make
| average Joe into a programmer with least effort, things
| don't get much better than this.
| Off wrote:
| If you enjoy working in org-mode, you should definitely check
| out logseq: https://logseq.com/
| lindeng wrote:
| Paying user here too, big fan. I've had several adventures with
| Emacs (mostly vanilla, some Doom), but always find myself
| returning to (Neo)vim due to performance and the perceived
| Windows-hostility of the project.
|
| I mention this because I, too, fell in love with org-mode and
| magit, and for a while I kept using Emacs only for those tools.
| Org quickly became a cornerstone of my workflow and made it
| easy to separate notes and tasks for different clients. I think
| Obsidian leaves maybe a bit much up to our imagination, but
| that's part of the beauty of it, imo
|
| Currently sticking Obsidian (because it's discoverable, fast
| and extensible) and Neovim (only because Emacs is too
| antiquated)
| kzrdude wrote:
| What's org-jupyter? Search engines didn't help me there. I'm
| interested in any jupyter related tools.
| rvieira wrote:
| Typo, sorry. I meant org-babel + emacs-jupyter.
| dangirsh wrote:
| emacs-jupyter
| opan wrote:
| The comments here made it sound exciting, but it seems like it's
| proprietary, which is a no-go for me. I'll stick to plain text
| file notes and the occasional org-mode for now.
| __bjoernd wrote:
| It's a fancy frontend for plain-text markdown files stored in a
| folder tree. Nothing proprietary about it.
| tomcooks wrote:
| How do you know, unless you have the source code.
| gala8y wrote:
| Software _is_ proprietary, ie. closed source. I fully
| understand that this might be off-putting for someone.
|
| Almost all plugins accessible from the app are OSS, though,
| and Obsidian has a process of checking them and some kind of
| control, which I don't know details about.
| dm319 wrote:
| You might also want to consider vim-wiki if you want the
| hyperlinks feature.
| tomcooks wrote:
| Or give readable unique names to your files and use gf (Go to
| File) when your cursor is above the filename
| eightails wrote:
| As an open-source alternative, Joplin could be worth a look.
| It's a little different in terms of features, missing a lot of
| the linking which is kind of key to Obsidian's appeal, so maybe
| it's closer to Evernote. Still, they're fundamentally the same
| in terms of being a note-taking app built on folders of
| markdown files. It's quite actively maintained and improved
| too.
| sharikous wrote:
| Joplin is my choice too. I deplore the complicated codebase,
| unfortunately. I would have made the changes to get better
| linking, at least in a personal fork, but I could not find
| the time to commit myself to it.
| jf___ wrote:
| with quicklinks [1] and the backlinks [2] plugins your're
| basically there. frictionless interlinking has made all the
| difference
|
| [1] https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/quick-links-
| plugin/14214
|
| [2] https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/automatic-backlinks-
| with-m...
| physicles wrote:
| I've been using Joplin for about a year now too. My favorite
| feature is the totally seamless cross-platform sync. Honestly
| if Obsidian had better support for sync on e.g. Dropbox, I
| would've taken the plunge.
|
| Joplin has its issues though. For instance, it seems confused
| about the format that it wants to store your notes in.
| Desktop search recently became useless too (no highlighting
| of search terms and ranking is broken).
| Macha wrote:
| Also Joplin's mobile app is poor compared to obsidian's, and
| that's with obsidian basically just shoving the same content
| as in the desktop app into a mobile web view.
| milofeynman wrote:
| Joplin is great, simple, and I love it. I find things like
| connections and tagging to be more work with minor, if any
| benefit. Just folders with markdown works great.
| RichardChu wrote:
| If you want an open source alternative, you should check out
| Notabase [0]. It's like a mix of Notion + Roam Research,
| designed to be delightful and easy to use. The difference from
| Obsidian is that it's database-backed.
|
| [0]: https://notabase.io
| abcd0880 wrote:
| How does this compare to Obsidian in terms of features and
| extensibility? Thanks.
| dopu wrote:
| I'd check out logseq [0]. Closer to roam than obsidian, but
| GPL, operates on plaintext files, and supports Org-mode style
| formatting as well as markdown. It's getting to be fairly fully
| featured by now, and the development team moves fast. It's a
| joy to use.
|
| [0]: https://logseq.com/
| bloopernova wrote:
| Dang, this looks amazing! It's like someone took org-roam and
| org-mode and made them into a fast, slick, electron app.
|
| _and_ it supports saving files as org-mode! pretty freaking
| sweet.
| avinassh wrote:
| This looks great! Does it expose the directory where the
| files are written, so that I can use Dropbox to sync?
|
| Does it support templates like how Notion does?
| dopu wrote:
| Yep, and you choose where logseq files are stored, so you
| can use anything you'd like to for syncing. I will say
| though, I've tried using Dropbox for syncing with logseq,
| and it ended up creating a lot of duplicate copies due to
| conflicts. Have had better luck with iCloud/Syncthing
| (also, many people actually use Obsidian + logseq, so I
| believe you can take advantage of Obsidian's sync if you
| choose to). In any case, having better file syncing is
| something the logseq devs are currently working on.
|
| Logseq does not currently have templates integrated the way
| Notion does, but it wouldn't be difficult to
| programmatically create them since they're just plain
| markdown files. There's a plugin ecosystem for logseq now,
| so I think it's just a matter of time before someone writes
| one to generate templates.
| xmprt wrote:
| I've also heard of Athens
| [https://github.com/athensresearch/athens#athens] which is
| similar to Roam and can be self hosted. I haven't compared it
| to logseq though.
| dopu wrote:
| I actually used Athens for several months and then switched
| over to logseq once I found it. They're quite similar in
| functionality, though logseq is a bit further along in my
| opinion (e.g., the task management and time tracking is
| more advanced in logseq). Which I was fine with not having
| in Athens. What ultimately pushed me towards switching was
| the fact that logseq stores notes in plaintext, whereas
| Athens notes are stored in these difficult to parse .bkp
| files. Having the ability to easily write scripts to do
| whatever with my notes is important for me. Also, not a
| technical point, but the developer of logseq seems like a
| really nice guy! :) (see
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUGV8HL-poQ)
| nonamechicken wrote:
| While Obsidian may be proprietary, as long as the files follow
| standard markdown syntax, it can be opened in any markdown
| editor. I am currently using both Obsidian & Typora on the same
| workspace folder(I like Typora better for editing since its
| WYSIWIG). Not being locked down to any specific software was
| the primary reason I moved away from OneNote.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Markdown, or CommonMark?
| capableweb wrote:
| Obsidian has it's own flavor of Markdown there is bunch of
| stuff other Markdowns (including CommonMark) doesn't
| support.
|
| > We strive for maximum capability without breaking any
| existing formats, therefore we use a slightly unorthodox
| combination of flavors of markdown. It is broadly
| CommonMark, with the addition of some functionality from
| GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM), some latex support, and our
| chosen embed syntax
|
| https://help.obsidian.md/How+to/Format+your+notes
| avgcorrection wrote:
| They should call it Markdown* then.
| capableweb wrote:
| Why? "Markdown" is not a standard, it's a loose
| collection of formats. CommonMark is a standard, and they
| are not calling it that. Anything that is Markdown-like
| can be called Markdown.
|
| It's the same deal with lisps. Lots of languages are
| "lisps", even the ones that are slightly different than
| the ones you're used to. Then there is a Common Lisp that
| is a language that is also a lisp.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| It's just nice to be able to differentiate between
| markdowns that adhere to some existing implementation
| (GitHub, CommonMark or something else) and those that are
| their own flavor.[1]
|
| "Markdown" is marketing speak for "you probably already
| know this". Which yes, sure, but all the little tiny
| differences between all the different implementations can
| act as annoying papercuts.
|
| At least it's not wiki markup...
|
| [1] GitHub Markdown etc. are fine since they can be
| called that (X Markdown) and not just "Markdown".
| yogsototh wrote:
| From the description it looks like org-roam would be a good
| open-source alternative.
| beermonster wrote:
| Indeed org-roam is what sprung to mind when I visited and
| read the OP link
| vhanda wrote:
| If you wish to also edit those files on mobile, GitJournal [0]
| could be useful for you. I've even added basic org-mode
| support.
|
| [0] https://gitjournal.io
| austinvhuang wrote:
| I recently released this which is open source and based on
| sqlite https://github.com/austinvhuang/openmemex
| hn8788 wrote:
| My biggest protip for Obsidian would be to never look at the
| connections graph. If you've got any kind of "completionist"
| mindset, it's easy to waste a bunch of time trying to perfectly
| format your notes so every node has a bunch of connections to
| other nodes. Once I got out of the habit trying to maximize the
| amount of backlinks in each note, it became a useful tool instead
| of a chore.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| Ironically i found the same behaviour in me and immediately
| thought it would be a great idea to further gamify colleagues
| writing docs. There is something rewarding about keeping the
| graph optimal. It becomes almost pretty to look at.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Just add some achievements, XP, levels,
| silver/golden/diamond/epic statuses to notes with pretty
| colors and shiny graphics, and a lootbox mechanism with slot
| machine sound effects.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| For me the act of making connections is part of the review
| process. The connections are really in my head. The documents
| are just part of the memorization and structuring. I don't
| spend much time on it though. Just when a subject is unclear in
| my mind.
|
| The Jiggl extension gives a local network view that is actually
| useful and not overwhelming. You can custom style nodes by
| folder or tags. This makes it intuitive and worth keeping open
| in a frame.
| noja wrote:
| Does Obsidian have a web interface so I can use it from other
| computers (not mine)?
|
| Edit: https://obsidian.md/publish ($16/mo, appears to be read-
| only)
| EleanorKonik wrote:
| Some folks use a remote desktop or put their files on a private
| github repo so they can edit them remotely, but it's not "the
| full experience."
| stewbrew wrote:
| I have just tried the Android version. I'm no Android dev but
| what is Obsidian written in?
| tomcooks wrote:
| Apparently Electron
| tomcooks wrote:
| But how can I trust something I don't have the source code of as
| my second brain? My files are what is most dear to me, literally
| a backup of my brain.
| delaaxe wrote:
| Please tell me this is compatible with Johnny decimals
| https://johnnydecimal.com/
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Sure you can easily implement that in Obsidian. It's simply a
| traditional file directory structure of markdown files.
| MrDresden wrote:
| User of Obsidian here.
|
| I don't see why that would be problematic. You can name each
| folder/note what ever you want.
|
| I guess you could also write a plugin for Obsidian that would
| do this for you.
|
| I don't really see the need for numbering though. Obsidian has
| a very robust system for tagging and linking together notes.
| Coupled with proper search, I can always find what I need.
|
| I do store my notes in a hierarchical context centric way
| (Finances > Loans > Calculations) which also helps.
| gala8y wrote:
| The only thing missing for me in Obsidian is filtering of
| list of tags it tag pane - when I select one, list should get
| filtered to show only tags coexisting in notes with selected
| tag/tags. I write about it too often. Otherwise, it's perfect
| in searching/accessing notes. I use Obsidian every day and
| love it.
| EleanorKonik wrote:
| I use Johnny Decimal style files & folders with Obsidian and
| it's great. I wrote about how (and why) I implemented my Johnny
| Decimal system into Obsidian here, if it helps:
| https://eleanorkonik.com/yet-another-hot-take-on-folders-ver...
| helmholtz wrote:
| Bloody brilliant! Assigning states is exactly how I use tags
| too. With tags, I always find that I'm just adding more
| avenues to be unhappy with imperfection. "Oh, is that the
| perfect tag? Is that tag too obvious? How will I remember
| this tag later on?" I would hate to have to develop an entire
| philosophy of tagging, because I have too many others anyway.
| So I prefer to deal with the one-stop uneasiness of "is this
| the right folder for it?". Still not perfect, but just the
| one.
|
| Thanks for writing that post! I look forward to reading more
| on your website.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Why have I never heard of this before? And I'd really like to
| see some example top-level hierarchies.
|
| And I'd ask, still, is is unnecessarily hierarchical? If you
| only have 10 categories below "20 Finance", why not just stick
| the (maximum) 10 categories under 20-29 in the top level? You'd
| still have the conceptual grouping under 2x, but without the
| indirection.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| It does sound very interesting, but designing the system well
| at the beginning looks quite important (moving categories
| around later on probably causes large overhead) and difficult
| to do without experience.
|
| I would also like to see more examples. I'm an academic, if
| anyone here is also one and has implemented this system I'd
| be very interested in seeing what your tree looks like!
| helmholtz wrote:
| Not seeing real-life examples is the most frustrating thing
| about JD in my opinion. Not John Noble's fault of course.
| In that spirit. My structure is below. -
| 10-19 Documents - 11 Scans - 12 Health
| - 13 Travel - 14 Contracts - 15 Home
| - 16 Visas - 17 Education - 18 Employment
| - 20-29 Finance - 21 Banks - 22 Bills
| - 23 Investments - 24 Taxes - 30-39
| Hobbies - 31 Hiking - 32 Running -
| 33 Climbing - 34 Music - 35 Programming
| - 36 Yoga - 40-49 UNUSED - 50-59
| Work - 51 Archive - 52 Work Project 1
| - 53 Work Project 2 - 54 Literature - 55
| Code in language 1 - 56 Code in language 2
| - 57 Publications - 58 PPTs - 59 Trainings
| - 60-69 UNUSED - 70-79 UNUSED - 80-89
| UNUSED - 90-99 Writing - 91 Drafts
| - 92 Personal Vault - 93 Work Vault - 94
| Website 1 SSG contents - 95 Website 2 SSG contens
|
| I generated this using: https://johnny-decimal-
| generator.netlify.app/
|
| The Writing bits contain my two obsidian vaults as well as
| the static site generator contents for two websites I write
| on. As you can see, pretty much most things of any
| importance are covered, and yet I've got tonnes of space
| free to add onto later. Hope HN formats this danged list
| properly.
|
| I'm far from a strict adherent to it though. Not everything
| is three levels deep. Some things are much more than that
| (like the SSG stuff for instance). But this is real life
| and not an abstraction after all.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I will try this out with work files -
| personal work files so far. If I like it probably also
| for personal files. I suspect lots of personal stuff will
| still be outside the system - like coding projects. I
| don't like to have coding roots to far away from $HOME
| lethologica wrote:
| I'm really liking the look of this but I'm curious as for
| what happens if you have more than ten hobbies, for
| example?
| astro_robot wrote:
| I've been interested in Zettelkasten for over a year and have
| tried all of the apps (Obsidian, Notion, pen and paper, etc.) but
| I still haven't found a good system for using it. I always feel
| like it's either too much information or too little. Any tips?
| brazed_blotch wrote:
| Spent the last week's evenings researching this. Make a list of
| the features you need. For me, using markdown and YAML
| frontmatter was the best solution.
|
| As for traversing the notes, I picked VSCode (I would have
| picked Obsidian but it does funny things with front matter that
| I didn't like, and it lagged a lot on my computer). Primarily
| because it has extensions that update links automatically when
| the filepath to a note changes, and for graph view. You can use
| vim inside VSCode as a text editor. That's all I need really -
| VSCode to traverse, vim to edit.
|
| What's great about this system is it really does stick strictly
| to commonmark and YAML usage isn't restricted at all (you don't
| even have to use the frontmatter if you don't want to), so your
| notes are completely portable.
|
| Edit: typo
| Joeboy wrote:
| What I'd like is an easy way to keep my notes synced on my laptop
| and my android phone. I suppose I could install git on my phone
| and do it that way, but maybe there's a less faffy way I'm
| missing?
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Syncthing is the easiest, cheapest, most reliable way I've
| found.
| boomskats wrote:
| Obsidian Sync does exactly this. Works very well in my
| experience.
| Joeboy wrote:
| It's paid which is a bit off-putting, but maybe I shouldn't
| be so cheap.
|
| Edit: It looks like it's backed by git so maybe it could be
| used for free, with a bit of faffing. Unfortunately I'm cheap
| _and_ lazy.
| input_sh wrote:
| As long as you can sync a folder on your phone (whether
| with Git or any cloud service), mobile app can open it.
|
| Of course, you may experience some conflicts, but that's
| why you can pay them not to worry about that. Totally worth
| the price for me, though I do have a permanent discount
| ($5/month, as does everyone that signed up before Sep
| 30th).
| gala8y wrote:
| Try Syncthing (Synctrayzor is a nice wrapper on Win,
| Syncthing-Fork on Android is better than original
| Syncthing), if you don't want to pay for their Obsidian
| Sync.
| ricardolopes wrote:
| I keep my notes synced on a Dropbox folder. On my Android I use
| Dropsync to keep all synced changes in the local file system
| (the official Dropbox app supports that but only for paying
| users).
|
| Overall this setup Just Works for me.
| nabusman wrote:
| I use simplenote for this. It is basic text-based note keeping
| and free (by the Wordpress folks).
| novirium wrote:
| Syncthing. Been using this combination for a few months now and
| seems to work fine between an Android phone and a few Windows +
| Linux machines.
|
| I had previously been hosting TiddlyWiki from my phone, but
| offline editing + opportunistic syncing when on WiFi seems to
| fit a personal wiki better for me.
| nonamechicken wrote:
| Obsidian in laptop -> OneDrive -> FolderSync in Android works
| fine as long as periodic sync is ok.
|
| Syncthing may be even easier, but I didn't try it since I am
| not sure if I can restrict it to LAN only.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| I've been using it with termux+git on phone. My shell history
| has the full path to the obsidian folder and the previous git
| commands. So I just do up arrows and enter. Not that ugly.
|
| I'll admit it's not as UXy as pressing a sync button
| Joeboy wrote:
| I think this might have to be the winning answer for me.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _With Obsidian, your data sits in a local folder. Never leave
| your life 's work held hostage in the cloud again._
|
| ... says a brochure page for proprietary software.
| capableweb wrote:
| Did you completely misunderstand the text segment you quoted?
| It doesn't say that the software itself is open-source/free
| software, it's just talking about the data it
| produces/maintains/uses, so your comment seems to be way
| offside.
| kazinator wrote:
| "Did you misunderstand the text segment you quoted? Nowhere
| does it say, 'I am ironic'; therefore, you have no right to
| find irony in it. You, you, too-freely-associating nitwit,
| you."
| sofixa wrote:
| Software can be proprietary and local-only.
| yokoprime wrote:
| What is your point? I've moved my obsidian notes to vscode and
| back without any issues. Is closed source software somehow
| incapable of having true statements?
| tomcooks wrote:
| It's by default tricking you into believing you should trust
| it, so yes closed source is incapable of having true
| statements until proven wrong (source: you can't prove it by
| nature)
| kazinator wrote:
| Approximately:
|
| "It's funny to be criticizing user freedom and lock-in issues
| with other programs, above a link to buy your stuff from an
| app store."
| groby_b wrote:
| Closer: "I am incapable of reasoning, except in broad
| generalities".
|
| Having an open and simple file format that is easily
| imported/exported is all many of us want from software. We
| are actually perfectly OK with paying people for work.
| Separating data freedom from access to source code is a
| perfectly meaningful thing to do, even if you personally
| don't like it.
| kazinator wrote:
| I assure you that I'm personally good with the
| separation, which makes sense.
|
| I made a remark about a remark, and nothing more.
|
| Speaking of personal, I don't mind attacks; do go on.
| Well, not that I want to encourage it here, where it is
| not allowed, but you can PM them to me, if you have more.
| [deleted]
| kseistrup wrote:
| The CLI tool nb is excellent for taking notes in an editor of
| your own choice, and for making bookmarks (if readability CLI is
| installed it will make a local text copy of the page you're
| bookmarking): https://github.com/xwmx/nb
|
| It's AGPL'ed.
| gala8y wrote:
| Wow, that is interesting. Thanks for sharing.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Can anyone share their experience using Obsidian in a multi-
| user/team setup?
| ulisesrmzroche wrote:
| If you're a Vim fan you're probably going to like Obsidian. Great
| app for Zettelkasten fans
| jollybean wrote:
| "A second brain, for you, forever.
|
| Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of
| plain text Markdown files. "
|
| I have no idea what that means and a quick perusal of the site
| doesn't really tell me what this is,
|
| If you want more people to download this please do a better job
| of explaining what it is. Is this a tool for Markdown writers? A
| a journaling tool? Does it cache my browsing experiences?
|
| Why can't people write marketing copy in user-centric terms?
|
| I'm going to try in only because everyone here seems to love it,
| but wouldn't bother if that wasn't the case.
|
| Please step back and think about how to introduce new products to
| new visitors, thanks.
| might9900 wrote:
| Which knowledge management apps with backlinks are not Electron?
| I'd prefer non-Electron.
|
| Electron: VS Code (Foam, Dendron), Logseq, Obsidian, Joplin
|
| Not Electron: Emacs (Org-roam), Athens (?)
| submeta wrote:
| What I am missing most in Obsidian is this: It does not show the
| date created of the document. I need to hover over a note to see
| that info.
|
| This is such a basic and super important info, I am wondering why
| it's neglected so much.
|
| Every note taking app always shows the creation and/or
| modification date: Evernote, Bear, Ulysses, and every other app I
| know.
|
| Also the aesthetics is not on par with Bear or Ulysses.
|
| Finally, I tried to import my Roam Research notes into it. Ended
| up with thousands of empty pages that were just tags in Roam.
|
| By the way: Obsidian users aggressively try to convince users of
| other tools how superior it is, on Reddit forums for various note
| taking apps and even on twitter. Haven't seen this behaviour,
| even from vim or Emacs lovers.
| trutannus wrote:
| > It does not show the date created of the document
|
| You could use/write an extension for that! Obsidian is very
| extensible. I think there's template extensions you can use to
| put the datetime in the title, or in the filename.
| lethologica wrote:
| Couldn't you just write the date on your note?
| cratermoon wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that here, half a century later, we are
| finally getting something like the tools that Ted Nelson wrote
| about in his 1965 paper "Complex information processing: a file
| structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate"
| https://doi.org/10.1145/800197.806036 [PDF available
| https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Complex-information-pr...]
| bunsenhoneydew wrote:
| I really love obsidian. Sure it has a couple of wrinkles, the
| mobile app is new still and has a couple more wrinkles, but it
| scratches so many itches I have around note taking. Currently
| using it alongside https://get.mem.ai/ and love the pairing for
| knowledge base and real time notes. I'm working on combining the
| two to come up with my ideal set up.
| dfee wrote:
| Just tried out mem.ai. Unfortunately, very buggy through
| account creation (registering my phone number failed) and the
| layout doesn't work on mobile.
|
| As something that's built and branded for quick release of
| information, I think there's some more work to be done. Worth
| following, but isn't immediately useful for me.
| avinassh wrote:
| I am looking to move from Notion, looking for an alternative.
| Here are few things I am looking for:
|
| 1. It is easy to back up or export my data
|
| 2. Great UI! May be its just me, I care about the UI a lot and if
| it is nice, I seem to be writing more
|
| 3. Support for templates, so that I can write daily
| journal/entries with predefined fields
|
| 4. Support for keyboard shortcuts (or mouse-less operations) so
| that I can link or embed documents quickly
| capableweb wrote:
| Seems you left the comment at the right submission then as
| Obsidian supports all of those things.
| RichardChu wrote:
| Might be worth checking out Notabase [0]. The UI is designed to
| be really clean and easy-to-use.
|
| [0]: https://notabase.io
| SN76477 wrote:
| I do like Notion. I have been a paying customer for the last
| year. But I find that it has too many limitations for how I
| work. Why can I not customize colors? Why is there no plain
| text block? Why is there not a simple table? So many basic
| things seem missing.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| If what you have in your notion is mostly ideas, concepts, and
| thoughts, then Obsidian is a great choice. It is not as great
| for storing facts, because of the lack of something resembling
| Notion's robust database system.
|
| So I use both: Obsidian for ideas, beliefs, concepts,
| explanations, class notes, etc. Notion for Goals, freelance
| client project info, job hunt tracking, to watch/read lists,
| images and links for internet arguments, plans for video games,
| travel plans, technical solutions, exercise and practice
| routines.
| aazaa wrote:
| Odd that there's no video introduction. The first hit I found on
| Google had two ads and was a guy basically wandering around the
| app as if he had never used it before.
|
| > Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder
| of plain text Markdown files.
|
| This doesn't help me. I use a directory of Markdown files powered
| by VS Code to take notes already - ever since Evernote began
| getting bad, which was a long time ago.
|
| What does Obsidian offer beyond that? I can't tell from the page.
| I'm not asking for an answer here. Instead I'm noting that the
| page itself doesn't answer the questions that I have as a current
| Markdown-notetaking user.
| conradludgate wrote:
| I really do need to get started on a personal wiki. I might give
| this a try.
|
| It would be nice if I can get the files into git that I can save
| to a private github repo (I'm fine paying the one time payment to
| support them but $8/month seems too much for a simple sync
| feature)
| [deleted]
| bachmeier wrote:
| > It would be nice if I can get the files into git that I can
| save to a private github repo
|
| It's just a directory of markdown files. Nothing preventing
| that directory from being a Git repo. Lots of people use it
| that way (or with Syncthing, Dropbox, or whatever).
| Tomte wrote:
| Dokuwiki is easy to use, mature, stores its data in plain text
| files (no database needed, or supported). It also shows
| backlinks out of the box.
| jammaloo wrote:
| I've been playing with this app for a few minutes, and it does
| appear to save everything in plain text files, so adding it to
| git would be straightforward.
|
| I'm currently saving into a dropbox folder, which gives me
| automatic syncing.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I do exactly that. git init and git push and you're done.
|
| I setup a cron job to git add ., git commit, and git push
| everyday at 3am, so that I don't have to think about it at all.
| It works great.
| tomcooks wrote:
| Can you explain your setup a bit more in detail? I never
| thought about using git as storage
| Version467 wrote:
| Since it's just markdown files, using a fit repo to sync it is
| trivial. There's even an obsidian plugin to automatically
| commit/push in regular intervals (i.e. every 30 minutes).
| gala8y wrote:
| https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git
| bachmeier wrote:
| Aside from the technical characteristics of Obsidian, they have
| created a great community, particularly on Discord. They sell
| things (I'm a happy customer) but you can use it completely free.
| No nagging to buy or hitting you with ads or anything.
| watrami wrote:
| I can totally recommend this tool. I use it daily and perform a
| sync between all devices with syncthing.
| Datagenerator wrote:
| The Open Source solution which serves me well for years has been
| TiddyWiki (1). Supports Tags and various modes of output. Each
| page one file or all in one, very open so recursive changes can
| be applied on the shell in plain files.
|
| (1) https://tiddlywiki.com/
| kepano wrote:
| TiddlyWiki in many ways is the best predecessor to Obsidian, in
| that it follows many of the same priorities and tradeoffs.
|
| I was a big user of TiddlyWiki but Obsidian has so many UI
| quality of life improvements, and the plugin ecosystem is
| evolving at such a rapid pace that I decided to jump ship.
|
| I wrote a guide on my migration process:
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/import-from-tiddlywiki-5-to-obsi...
| tomcooks wrote:
| I had a lot of problems with tiddlywiki, I never managed to get
| the self hosted html file version nor the php solutions to
| work.
| 1f60c wrote:
| > TiddyWiki
|
| That's an interesting name for an open source project. :P
| rg111 wrote:
| That's a typo. See URL.
| hairofadog wrote:
| I think they understood that. I read that comment as a
| friendly, good-natured way to point out the typo.
| krzyk wrote:
| I just downloaded deb and was a bit worried that it has 60MB,
| quick check on forums and it us unfortunately Electron :(
|
| Oh well, back to vim and cd.
| dangoor wrote:
| Obsidian benefits from being an electron app because it has
| allowed people to create many plugins that provide useful UIs
| and these plugins likely wouldn't exist otherwise.
|
| (That said, there are non-Electron alternatives like Tauri
| coming along that use the native webview to accomplish
| essentially the same thing.)
| capableweb wrote:
| Always fun to see these original comments in a HN thread. If
| you write this on Twitter you can get hundreds of retweets,
| hurry before someone else writes the tweet!
|
| Jokes aside, Obsidian being a Electron application is not a
| issue. The app starts in under 3 seconds for me, barely uses
| any RAM and CPU usage remains stable and low.
|
| If you want to actually contribute anything to this thread,
| feel free to give feedback on specific issues you find, that
| it's using too much CPU or whatever. But as it stands, you're
| not really adding much here.
| tomcooks wrote:
| 5 words contibution: vim runs on my server. 4 words
| contribution: mosh, tmux, vim, rsync 3 words contribution: no
| mouse needed
|
| Jokes aside: if they wanted feedback on what's wrong with it
| they'd have made it free software.
| bloopernova wrote:
| My problem with Electron apps is that they don't seem to
| support window decorations under Wayland on Linux. I'm trying
| Logseq (https://github.com/logseq/logseq ) right now, and
| like any Electron app on Wayland, you have to start it via
| "Logseq --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-
| platform=wayland" but that still doesn't give you window
| decorations (like titlebar, minimize button, etc)
| dotancohen wrote:
| > The app starts in under 3 seconds for me
|
| For me that would be a showstopper. 3 seconds to open my
| notes app? I would have already lost my train of thought.
|
| :wq
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| It takes me about 15 seconds to boot my computer. But do I
| need to start the computer each time I do something on it?
| No, I leave it on.
|
| Similarly goes for other things you use but takes "too long
| time" to open, leave the thing open and you just have to
| switch windows to access it.
|
| And if you think Obsidian is a note taking app, then yeah,
| it's not the right tool for you, continue using Vi/m. But
| once you grow out of it, you'll need a knowledge base
| instead, and for that, Obsidian is lightweight.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I see your point, thanks.
| [deleted]
| krzyk wrote:
| My issue is that I want to run just one browser on my system.
| And one that I choose, Chrome/chromium is not the one.
|
| Aside from that I refuse to support writing desktop apps in
| Javascript, because it is slower than equivalent app written
| in C/C++.
|
| Compare telegram client to slack client. Which one is more
| snappy?
|
| Users are boiled like frogs, millisecond wait here and there.
| And suddenly any action on ui takes 1 or 20 seconds. And you
| get frustrated.
|
| If obsidian is a webapp I prefer to use it as such, not hide
| it in electron.
| dm319 wrote:
| I feel like I'm the only one mentioning vim-wiki here. But,
| vim-wiki?
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Or its lighter-weight alternative, wiki.vim
| metabagel wrote:
| It runs very performant for me. I use it daily at work.
| whyoh wrote:
| And as is typical for Electron apps, it installs in some non-
| standard location (C:\Users...) on Windows, without even giving
| you the option to change it.
| maddyboo wrote:
| Obsidian may be Electron, but it doesn't feel like it to me.
| It's fast, smooth, and I've never noticed excessive memory
| usage. I think its quality exceeds most fully native apps,
| especially on Linux.
|
| Last I heard it was built entirely by two people (and two
| cats). What's a better way to build a high quality native-ish
| application targeting 5 platforms with a team of 2?
| sachin-12 wrote:
| Yes. I use Fedora 34 and I completely agree. Obsidian is very
| smooth. I admire logseq but it is buggy and slow (although I
| will periodically monitor their development) and I can't see
| myself using it atleast for now (Not sure if it's due to OS).
| stevenpetryk wrote:
| I like to use Obsidian on iOS and then Foam on my computer. They
| happen to have a lot of the same custom Markdown syntax, and I
| prefer using VS Code on my computer :)
|
| https://foambubble.github.io/foam/
| abcd0880 wrote:
| What does Obsidian offer that Foam doesn't or vice versa? I use
| VSCode for writing and programming so am trying to avoid yet
| another tool for note taking and knowledge management.
| stevenpetryk wrote:
| Foam doesn't run on my phone. Because VS Code doesn't run on
| my phone. So I use Obsidian to edit a synced folder on my
| phone, just because it is functionally similar to Foam but
| runs on iOS.
| abcd0880 wrote:
| Thanks.I don't need access to my knowledge base from my
| phone so will start with Foam. Any Obsidian features that
| you particularly miss in Foam?
| rodneyzeng wrote:
| To me, the fatal weakness of obsidian, after trying it for 5 min
| to realize it, is sync functionality. It only supports icloud
| sync and its paid sync.
|
| This is turn down 100%.
| DavideNL wrote:
| You can sync the folder (=vault) with any tool you prefer...
| including git.
| rodneyzeng wrote:
| yes but this is not feasible on obsidian mobile app, right?
| rovr138 wrote:
| Curious, what kind of sync are you wanting for the mobile
| app?
| rodneyzeng wrote:
| i am hoping, like onenote, a note taking system that i
| can use on computer and mobile devices and sync to each
| other, easily. This is very natural need.
| drodil wrote:
| Just get the git plugin and create private repo somewhere.
| Problem solved
| rodneyzeng wrote:
| you can do this in obsidian mobile app?
| luxpir wrote:
| Or syncthing. I already had it set up between phone, pi and
| PC, so threw the notes dir into there. Now free to switch
| between desktop and mobile with quasi instant updates.
| JonathanBuchh wrote:
| I'm really grateful to Obsidian for getting me into personal
| wikis. The devs work super quickly and it's amazing to see what
| the two of them have been able to accomplish. I wish there were
| more Obsidian-like communities out there.
|
| Although I mostly use vimwiki these days, I still use Obsidian
| for viewing backlinks. Does anyone know how to do this in (n)vim?
| inferense wrote:
| Obsidian is great, but in a way it's quite limited as it only
| replaces the note-taking app / text editor I used before.
|
| We're building something similar but more capable
| https://acreom.com.
| kjksf wrote:
| Constructive criticism: change the name before it's too late.
|
| The immovable rule for good names is: they should be easy to
| pronounce and easy to type if you hear it from someone else.
|
| Obsidian is a good name. Workflowy is a good name.
|
| Acreom - I wouldn't know how to pronounce it. If someone told
| me "use acreom" I wouldn't know what to typo into google to
| find it.
|
| Also, a non-dark theme is a must.
| Svenstaro wrote:
| I read the site and frankly I can't really figure out what this
| does for me especially over obsidian.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Obsidian is so great. I switched from RoamResearch and have
| hardly looked back.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Just to chime in here, long time "http://zim-wiki.org" guy here.
| I'm still basically sticking with Zim for _most_ of what I do,
| but that 's probably mostly the equivalent of "personal muscle
| memory," for structured things.
|
| But I am moving to Obsidian for anything "non-heirarchical" or
| "unstructured;" which for me is my "bookmarking" system as well
| as my personal Zettelkasten/brain exploring gardeny thing. The
| graph and extensibility is just fantastic, and I like knowing
| that I can export it wherever whenever.
| Havoc wrote:
| I just set this up today using self-hosted gitlab and working
| copy on iphone.
|
| Not friction free (since on phone you need to trigger git
| push/pull) but seems to be working well.
|
| Still need to get used to it, but the combination of git backed,
| self hosted and markdown seems pretty future proof
| [deleted]
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Last I checked there was no good way to do quick capture of
| articles from mobile iOS to obsidian. Scenario -- I come across
| an article on my iPhone, and I just want to dump title + URL
| (maybe even the text content) into obsidian. This is a must have
| for any note taking tool. Anyone have a good workflow for this,
| please share. Ideally an iOS shortcut.
| kepano wrote:
| I made a web clipper bookmarklet for Obsidian that works on
| mobile
| https://gist.github.com/kepano/90c05f162c37cf730abb8ff027987...
| sachin-12 wrote:
| Copy the link. Open Obsidian and quick add. If you aren't aware
| of it, there is a plugin called Quickadd which can be
| customized for these things
| ncarroll wrote:
| Have you tried Markdownload? It's a browser extension that
| saves and downloads web content as markdown. I use it all the
| time on my desktop but it's a browser extension and supports
| Safari, so maybe it's helpful for you too.
|
| https://github.com/deathau/markdownload
| taurusnoises wrote:
| My main gripe with Obsidian. That, and the fact that it costs
| almost $100 to have the mobile app sync with the desktop.
| That's insane to me, and feels vindictive. I'm all for paying
| for the platform. Seriously. These ventures need bottom - up
| support. But, syncing is a basic feature that any mobile app
| should have baked in. Charge for 24-hour support, something
| that actually requires the time of the team.
| gego wrote:
| ...syncthing
| tomcooks wrote:
| try vim on your laptop and VPS, and Markor on your phone.
| sync them up with rsync or syncthing and you have free magic
| digitalengineer wrote:
| Just download the app make a vault. Same it in iCloud or
| google drive. Now use your desktop pc and copy the files
| over. Done and a accessible vault in your smartphone.
| LVB wrote:
| Note that iCloud Drive on the Mac is a bit random about
| when it decides it wants to sync files. I ended up
| abandoning that setup after too many times of being
| somewhere and finding my laptop never pushed up the latest
| version of a file.
| digitalengineer wrote:
| Thank you for the insights. I have not experienced it
| yet, but am moving to another cloud solution for my peace
| of mind ;-)
| helmholtz wrote:
| In the spirit of HN always recommending, to my absolute
| infuration, "Org-Mode" to noobs usisc Windows when it is
| clearly a non-solution, I'll offer my own non-solution. Don't
| take notes on your phone.
|
| My relationship with my phone is the best it has been in a
| decade, because I fucking despise using that thing. It's
| cramped, limited, inflexible, addictive and disposable. It's an
| awful machine to do anything non trivial. So, now my phone just
| serves as a calendar reminder for upcoming meetings, maps, and
| messaging. It is no longer a "constant companion". I use it for
| less than an hour a day on average. I don't even have a browser
| on it. I love this. I love my superior smug face when I'm on
| the bus and every other pleb is buried deep into his/her
| screen, while I ride astride with my zen halo glowing brightly,
| taking in the world, paying attention to squirrels being chased
| by cats and so on.
|
| There is more to life than increasing it's speed. Nature does
| not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. Do fewer things, but
| cherish them more. Throw the phone into the trash, and wait
| till you're in front of a laptop or a desktop.
| vntx wrote:
| This is exactly how I felt when trying to use my smartphone
| for 'productivity'. The screen is so damn small and most apps
| zoom in so damn close there's no space to do anything non-
| trivial. It feels like I'm operating in a workspace for ants.
| It's impossible. So I concluded that experiment and now
| exclusively use the phone for stupid cat videos.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| I actually do all of those things you mentioned but also like
| to keep things simple and take my notes on iAWriter on my
| iPhone which syncs with iCloud and is very conveniently
| available on my iPad and Mac as well. Haven't found a more
| simple and markdown supporting application in years. You
| don't need to dump all functionalities of your phone to enjoy
| life.
| helmholtz wrote:
| Fair, fair. My comment was pretty tongue in cheek anyway.
|
| I was going to suggest to the GP that they take a
| screenshot, and then process it later on, when they do
| their weekly review or something. If the URL isn't fully
| captured in the screenshot (because smartphones are woeful
| pieces of dogshit remember), then they could search for the
| article. Adding that extra friction is a Good Thing in my
| opinion, because it forces you to consider whether
| accumulating all that extra burdensome information is worth
| the friction. But your solution is smoother :)
| zerker2000 wrote:
| I wish any of these projects(obsidian, logseq, Roam) supported
| WikiWord autolinks alongside [[Mediawiki]] ones. See also:
| https://apenwarr.ca/log/20100901
| MikeCapone wrote:
| This 6-part video series by Nick Milo is a great way for newbies
| to get introduced to Obsidian and go up the learning curve
| rapidly:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgbLb6QCK88&list=PL3NaIVgSlA...
| mdu96 wrote:
| Obsidian is awesome. No more words needed.
| bambax wrote:
| I built a simple journal solution for myself two years ago. It
| sends an email every day and I can reply to it, and the response
| is stored in an SQLite database, in plain text. The db is on a
| remote server but copied to Dropbox every day (and in any case
| all the emails also exist in my sent folder).
|
| It is surprisingly effective at storing not just what I did with
| my day, but random thoughts and ideas, solutions to bugs, etc.
| All I have to do is type something every day.
|
| In 2 years I have typed around 150k words. For reading he whole
| thing is just one plain html page, searchable in the browser.
|
| I'm currently experimenting with documenting my reading, while
| the book is being read (instead of a summary at the end). We
| typically forget what we expect while we read, and only remember
| the final impression. Taking notes at the end of each reading
| session, not just about what I just read, but also about what I
| think will happen next, and revisiting that later, is
| surprisingly interesting.
| capableweb wrote:
| Your solution seems to miss the single most important feature
| of Obsidian, the ability to link notes together with references
| directly in the documents.
|
| Obsidian is a knowledge base, what you are describing is a note
| taking solution. Might work for most people who just want to
| scribble things down, but once you start having information you
| want to inter-connect, it'll break down.
| spidersouris wrote:
| But it must be said that Obsidian works perfectly fine for
| simple note-taking. You won't fully leverage all the
| features, but who cares?
| jasode wrote:
| _> the response is stored in an SQLite database,_
|
| I tried using a database for personal notes many years ago and
| the problem I discovered was that I can't do a quick Ctrl+F to
| _find_ previous scraps of knowledge.
|
| Instead, I use plain "notes.txt" and use the editor's text
| search functions (including regex functionality) to locate
| things.
|
| These 2 ways of finding text have very different ergonomics:
|
| - SQL: select * from notes where description like '%ubuntu
| config%';
|
| - text editor: Ctrl+F "ubuntu config" <press Enter>
|
| Yes, one can write a program to "dump" the SQL database to a
| text file for subsequent search by a text editor. The problem
| is that it creates a _read-only_ file that you can 't edit-in-
| place. And one can also write a _custom wrapper program in
| whatever language_ as a GUI for the database but now we 're way
| past your simply "reply to email" paradigm and expending a lot
| of effort in "yak shaving" instead of just taking notes.
|
| Not saying your system is bad for you but I'm guessing that
| most people would find the friction of a SQL database too high
| for freeform notes.
| bambax wrote:
| It would be extremely easy to replace storing in a db with
| append to a text file. (As a matter of fact it already
| appends everything to a text file for added security...)
|
| However I kind of like the fact that it's hard to edit, and I
| (almost) never do it. It's a log -- the log of my brain.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > most people would find the friction of a SQL database too
| high for freeform notes
|
| Something that I find not only true, but inherent in
| relational databases: they require some kind of schema, and
| schemas for freeform text and ideas are notoriously
| difficult.
|
| I created my own software, which doesn't have a fancy gui or
| anything, but organizes my notes sufficiently for me, using
| plain markdown files and dumping the contents into an
| ElasticSearch index configured for text analysis. I can
| easily do a very good full text search on the body of the
| notes, plus I've indexed the keywords for each note in their
| own mapping.
|
| In addition to having good linking together of related ideas,
| wiki-like, it's good to have the ability to fruitfully search
| without the restrictions of exact term matches. Even
| relatively simple things like stemming and common synonym
| matching* can improve the usability of a large collection of
| notes measurably.
|
| *No, I don't think we've really solved the searching by
| synonym problem. More work is needed.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| SQLite has full-text search built-in (including tokenization
| of english words with similar roots). It takes just a few
| statements to enable, and it can even do spelling corrections
| with an optional extension.
|
| https://www.sqlite.org/fts5.html
| exhaze wrote:
| > but copied to Dropbox every day
|
| This seems unnecessarily complex - have you considered
| replacing this with rsync + cron job?
| bambax wrote:
| "Copied to Dropbox" is a copy cron to a folder that is shared
| on Dropbox. No API was harmed -- or used -- for any of
| this[0].
|
| It's also in effect a poor man's backup, because the db is
| renamed with today's date so each copy doesn't overwrite any
| other.
|
| [0] Edit: not in fact true. The email part uses Mailgun's API
| (from when you could use routes with a basic account).
| phreeza wrote:
| I think (though you can never be quite sure on HN) that
| this was a joke referring to initial reactions techies had
| to Dropbox.
| pseudoramble wrote:
| > It sends an email every day and I can reply to it, and the
| response is stored in an SQLite database, in plain text.
|
| Maybe this is obvious to other readers, but I love this portion
| of it. I think it's one of the critical details to making
| things like this work. It's easy to built a tool that you "just
| remember to use" but the issue then the tool is implicitly
| asking the user to modify their workflow, which isn't always
| trivial. So well done.
|
| Another simple example: one of my favorite features in Slack is
| /remind. It can do recurring reminders, reminders way out into
| the future, and is as simple as typing `/remind me "do the
| thing" in 6 months`. Critically, it's in Slack which I'm using
| all the time anyway. It's not tucked away into a calendar I
| won't look at, or in a place I have to remember to get to. It's
| right there, and it's really easy to set another one up. I've
| thought about building a separate tool to replicate this, but I
| know it will never have the same utility without being in an
| existing workflow.
| galfarragem wrote:
| I'm somehow on the same boat as you. I've tried dozens of
| "fancy" tools but they never stuck. A plain text file, kind of
| a "flat wiki", that you can search with your text editor may be
| the grail of note taking. What I consider critical is to "tree-
| shake" it often to remove the cruft. Hints:
|
| - Tree-shake your notes each time you iterate them. You'll
| leverage your excitement and it won't be a chore.
|
| - Maintain part of your notes public, it will be a catalyst to
| polish them. A git repository is perfect for that.
| Serendipitously, I started a related thread a couple hours ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28895647
| bambax wrote:
| > _Maintain part of your notes public_
|
| Personally I like that notes are raw and stay raw. I even
| force me to not use capital letters to remind me of this.
|
| But of course very often they are used as a draft for
| something more elaborate.
| sleightofmind wrote:
| I use gjots2, a hierarchical plain text note taker. If I need
| photos, LaTex, inline math, or such, I use Zim -- a local
| desktop wiki. And of course, I use text files, permanent and
| otherwise.
|
| The nice thing about both gjots2 and Zim, is that their
| source files read almost as easily as text. This is
| especially true for gjots2.
|
| I like the hierarchical arrangement of gjots2. I still have
| Ctrl-F if I want to search, but sometimes in browsing a
| category, I find things I would not have found with search --
| sometimes how I refer to things changes with time -- and I've
| got many years of gjots entries.
|
| I do not, as gjots author Bob Hepple does, keep separate
| topics in separate gjots files -- one big tree in the left
| panel holds all topic headings.
| chheplo wrote:
| Very interesting. Would love to try your application if you
| have your code published. I have been looking for something
| similar for a while.
| austinvhuang wrote:
| Not the OP, but I recently published this which others may
| find interesting https://github.com/austinvhuang/openmemex
| Ginden wrote:
| Did you publish code?
| stonepresto wrote:
| I just wrapped up writing my own. I've been following a lot of
| projects such as Archivy and Obsidian for a while, but neither
| of them were what I needed. Wrote a flask app that does exactly
| what I need.
|
| Obsidian's business model is really smart: creating a knowledge
| management system that applies to the vast majority of use
| cases, add room for a little modularity, and monetize it.
|
| However for those edge use cases, which on HN might be closer
| to a majority, it's important to first hash out exactly what
| sort of features you need.
|
| Do you need to link files as well as notes in a knowledge
| graph?
|
| Do you need to use advanced search filters?
|
| How much data are you dealing with?
|
| Just some food for thought.
| dude4you wrote:
| obsidian, linking files cost extra?
| JonathanBuchh wrote:
| Nope :)
|
| Here's their pricing page for more info:
| https://obsidian.md/pricing
| taigi100 wrote:
| I often see people in this community being fans of note taking
| apps. Yet, I never really found why it's useful, maybe someone
| can enlighten me on that :D
|
| 1. For tech articles / knowledge databases -> tech seems to
| change so fast that research done 3-4 months ago is mostly
| useless (except for a few more high level areas)
|
| 2. For recording / knowledge database purposes -> i never seem to
| go back to them tho, googling (or duckduckgoing?) seems faster to
| reach an answer.
|
| 3. For current note-taking / todo lists / etc they work well, but
| so does a simple notepad. A history of those doesn't seem to help
| me with anything specifically.
|
| 4. Same for book notes / reading notes, i never seem to go back
| to them, actually.
|
| So, in what domains or where do find those apps actually useful?
| dm319 wrote:
| I use it for two purposes:
|
| 1. Useful practical information or checklists on disease topics
| (I'm a physician). Sometimes they are reminders, or useful
| knowledge that is generally gleaned from experience /
| colleagues. Things that can be hard to google.
|
| 2. Notes on general business stuff - i.e. "called such and such
| agency and Wendy said I need to speak to other person next
| Monday on tel xxxx". Or dates my car needs servicing, or who
| I'm insured with.
|
| At the moment I use vimwiki, and it works well.
| krzrak wrote:
| > in what domains or where do find those apps actually useful?
|
| 5. creating your own ideas and making your own connections
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| I am very anti-Markdown now for complex knowledge
| bases/documentation. Markdown is painful for representing
| knowledge in anything other than the most basic form possible.
| Software engineers like it because they can write it in a
| terminal window. But technical writers can't stand how limiting
| it is, and how difficult it is to compose a view of information
| that isn't just paragraphs with bullet points, or the most
| painful-to-edit table format humans have ever fathomed. To
| represent lots of different information to humans in a concise
| view, you need a lot more than Markdown is capable of.
|
| In fact, the whole programmer's fetish with writing everything
| with a plain terminal text editor needs to die. Markdown, YAML,
| JSON, INI files. It's the year 2021 for christ's sake, and we're
| composing documents with tools designed for green CRTs! You
| shouldn't need to _cat_ a document on a terminal in order to edit
| it in the 21st century! Better tools for composing documents
| already exist and are used by everyone who _isn 't_ a programmer.
| Draftsmen, designers, accountants, scientists, engineers, etc,
| they all use real programs that don't use text formats. But
| programmers are still stuck in the 1970's.
| hanklazard wrote:
| Wow, I couldn't feel more differently about markdown. I'm not a
| programmer, but I welcome this useful non-proprietary format. I
| just wish I could get my entire small business to use a Wiki
| full of markdown files (which present very nicely with wikijs
| and other such software) instead of a bunch of folders full of
| MS Word files.
| [deleted]
| anthk wrote:
| >Draftsmen, designers, accountants, scientists, engineers, etc,
| they all use real programs that don't use text formats.
|
| Ah, yes, bioengineers not using text files. Call me when that
| happens.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| There are a lot of tradeoffs to using non-plaintext formats
| beyond not being able to edit them on old-school green CRTs:
|
| - Have you ever tried using git on a docx file? The best you
| have is file history, but good luck trying to merge branches,
| create/apply patches, cherry-pick commits, rebase, or view
| line-by-line history.
|
| - You lose the interoperability of plaintext. Any editor can
| open a plaintext file, and consuming a plaintext file is
| straightforward. Not so with binary.
|
| - You lose a lot of choice about how you want to interact with
| the file. Syntax highlighting, TextMate bundles/snippets, and
| hundreds of editors and plugins are available to both create
| and consume Markdown (and many other text formats).
|
| I agree that rich text editing is great, but may I suggest
| looking into another plaintext format besides Markdown if you
| can't find a wysiwyg markdown editor you like? There's RTF,
| TeX, and others -- each with a great ecosystem of tools around
| it.
|
| More generally, if a particular plaintext format doesn't meet
| your needs, I'd argue the problem isn't necessarily that the
| format is _plaintext_ as opposed to _binary_. Binary can be
| nice for serializing C /C++/etc. objects and for packaging
| resources, but there are tradeoffs.
| bonaldi wrote:
| You are begging the question. Git works well with plaintext
| because it is a product of the 1970s thinking that OP is
| bemoaning. If we built tools to do Git-like things on rich
| text file formats, they'd work just as well. (And Track
| Changes does a subset of those things surprisingly well
| inside Word, fwiw)
|
| And OP didn't specify binary output. The output format could
| be anything we standardised on, just so long as it supports
| rich editing environments. That is, we shouldn't have to
| _write_ in the output format; the two can (and probably
| should) be disconnected.
|
| Markdown is both a terrible output format _and_ editing
| experience, especially when you get complicated. It's the
| worst of both worlds.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| What you call question-begging is really just an assumption
| I'm making - that git's feature set isn't available (or
| practically feasible) for any binary format.
|
| You might disagree with that assumption, but if so I'd
| challenge you to show me (or build) a piece of software
| that (a) uses a binary storage file format and (b) has a
| feature set comparable to that of git for files in that
| format.
|
| I know an argument from lack of existence doesn't _prove_
| anything. It certainly is within the universe of the
| _possible_ to implement git 's feature set in MS Word. But
| I highly doubt MS will ever do that, as that wouldn't make
| sense from a business standpoint.
|
| A great general version control system is most likely to be
| implemented on formats that are the most interoperable.
| Nothing is more interoperable than plaintext. Perhaps if
| someone designs a structured general-use binary format that
| becomes widely adopted, then version control will be
| implemented for it. But I bet if someone does try to build
| such a _binary_ format, someone else will follow it up by
| building a similar or better _plaintext_ format. Plaintext
| is more attractive for non-proprietary software, because
| you get a _lot_ for free.
|
| In fact, I believe the only long-term business benefit of a
| binary format is vendor lock-in.
|
| You might say developers are spoiled -- we enjoy power and
| freedom in our workflows that others don't even know is
| possible. I for one prefer the power and freedom that
| plaintext formats (both data and code) afford. Although I
| do sometimes use MS Word, I almost never commit a non-
| plaintext file to a git repo when there's a plaintext-
| format alternative.
| [deleted]
| bonaldi wrote:
| (Again, rich text doesn't need a binary file format but
| you ignored that)
|
| Word's Track Changes literally does this - you can
| compare/merge/etc. Quark also had extensions in the 90s
| that allowed it. It's entirely feasible for any binary
| format (assuming you understand the format); why wouldn't
| it be?
|
| And it makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint,
| eg for lawyers, which is why they implemented it. Is it
| as rich as git? No, the use-case is different. Could it
| be? Yes.
|
| I'm going to leave "power and freedom" where they lie and
| go marvel at the awesome power of the "Italic" and
| "Table" buttons from Word 5.1.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > (Again, rich text doesn't need a binary file format but
| you ignored that)
|
| I'm not arguing against rich text. I think it's a great
| idea. (My earlier comment suggests using it, actually.)
|
| > Word's Track Changes literally does this - you can
| compare/merge/etc.
|
| Nice, but it doesn't support cherry-picking, creating and
| applying patch files, or any distributed VCS features.
| I'd also venture that it likely doesn't have anything
| like the 4-pane merge UI that tools like kdiff3 have.
|
| ---
|
| If Word covers your needs, great! I'm not sure why you're
| arguing against markdown in favor of it, though. The two
| solve different problems.
|
| I'm not arguing against word, just pointing out the
| practical differences between binary and plaintext files.
| Use what suits your particular needs!
| [deleted]
| TuringTest wrote:
| I've been using MS Word with a heavy reliance on Track
| Changes for years, and I'm converting my technical writing
| department to use Markdown as fast as I can. I have moved
| them to the WYSIWYG-on-Markdown editor _Zettlr_ [1], and my
| non-technical writers have praised it for being "almost-
| not-techie at all".
|
| I can't stand one more MS magic trick to auto-formatting on
| copy-paste (while mangling half of the styles) or figuring
| out why some objects simply disappeared or why Word rejects
| applying some format or layout.
|
| When your job is to keep working on expanding the same
| hundred-pages-long document year after year, you learn
| every trick to fix the random MS Word bugs and protect your
| document from being destroyed by the software 20 times a
| day, and it ain't pretty.
|
| [1] https://zettlr.com/
|
| * I would have preferred to use Asciidoc instead of
| Markdown, as it comes with the full Docbook feature set;
| unfortunately, native support on well-maintained editors is
| much worse with that format.
| bonaldi wrote:
| Why not try FrameMaker or something actually built for
| the job, instead of forcing your poor team into a "still-
| actually-techie" format written to get around the
| limitations of MovableType for formatting weblogs? You'll
| get DocBook support and still be free of the undeniable
| horror that is Word
| swsieber wrote:
| There are a couple of key advantages to textual formats:
|
| * They work easily with Gi
|
| * They are understandable without a specialized program
|
| I'm curious to what you'd suggest as an alternative to text
| (yaml, json, ini) configuration files.
| [deleted]
| gradys wrote:
| Agreed on Markdown's limited expressiveness.
|
| I think the reason for programmers' attachment to Markdown
| isn't just about being able to operate on it in a terminal.
| It's about the general interoperability of plaintext.
|
| Terminal editing is one example, but even IDEs and non-terminal
| text editors also use plaintext. There's also the fact that
| version control tools are designed for line-based plaintext.
| Markdown is especially often used for documentation that gets
| checked in alongside code, so this is an important
| consideration.
|
| I would be very interested to hear thoughts on good
| alternatives to Markdown for technical documentation, even if
| not plaintext-based.
| goostavos wrote:
| >general interoperability of plaintext.
|
| 1000% this. Markdown will be around forever. I'll be able to
| open an old file 20 years from now, _because_ it's just plain
| text. That's a feature, not a bug.
|
| I'm so done with tying myself to rent seeking proprietary
| formats. For something as personal, important, and long
| lasting as notes / writings, I'll take the minor hit on
| absolute feature set.
| [deleted]
| senko wrote:
| > To represent lots of different information to humans in a
| concise view, you need a lot more than Markdown is capable of.
|
| [***]
|
| > Better tools for composing documents already exist.
|
| Such as? Honest question, and a hope you don't mean MS Word or
| Google Doc.
| Torwald wrote:
| Adobe Indesign would be one answer. Or Emacs Org-Mode.
| Affinity Publisher. Apple Pages.
| ropeladder wrote:
| Not the OP but I'm happy to defend WYSIWIG editors. Things
| like font size and bold and italics exist for a reason.
| Markdown tables are extremely clunky. Inline images (or
| pretty equations) are important for many types of writing.
| Bullet lists in markdown more than two levels deep get
| interpreted as code my most syntax highlighters.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love plain text and I do most of my
| writing in markdown, but WYSIWIG editors have their place. As
| do things like spreadsheets (for represent lots of info) and
| LaTeX (for docs).
| b3morales wrote:
| The general problem, of course, with WYSIWIG is
| distribution: what YOU see might not be what someone you
| send the document to sees. Do the people you're sharing the
| document with have the same application, the same version
| of that application, the same fonts installed? You can
| export to a presentation format like PDF (or HTML), but
| then they can't edit it as you did, and it's also likely
| that the translation will change "what you see".
|
| Markdown is a least common denominator for sure, but that
| limitation also gives it a useful universality, which is
| what proponents value in this case.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Agreed. It's a form of jargon, which is effectively never a
| recommended (communications) tool. If it was the best-fit tool,
| sure then so be it. But too often the jargon tools are more
| about being elitist than anything else.
|
| Or maybe I've been at this too long, and too naively still
| optimistic?
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| I thought people liked separating content from representation
| --- isn't Markdown's approach going against such philosophy?
| TuringTest wrote:
| In the end, Markdown is a summarized way to write simple
| HTML; all styling should be done on a separate CSS. If you
| intermix lots of <div>s with class names in your text, you're
| not doing Markdown well.
| [deleted]
| grammarnazzzi wrote:
| > Software engineers like it because they can write it in a
| terminal window.
|
| This is a misleading statement.
|
| Software engineers like it because they can write it in a
| terminal window _and many, many other reasons_
|
| > In fact, the whole programmer's fetish with writing
| everything with a plain terminal text editor needs to die.
|
| While killing the text format might validate your ignorance, it
| would also kill the software industry's productivity.
| kepano wrote:
| One of my highest priorities for a personal knowledgebase is
| that my system can continue to be essentially unchanged for the
| rest of my life (hopefully another 50+ years), just as my
| current archive of notes goes back 20 years.
|
| The Lindy Effect[0] would say that plain text files have
| already existed for more than 50 years, therefore are likely to
| still exist another 50 years from now.
|
| That being said the Obsidian team are making progress towards
| adding WYSIWYG, so you will soon be able to edit visually while
| keeping the files stored in a readable plain text format.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
| obedm wrote:
| This is the reason I switched from Roam Research to obsidian.
|
| If Roam goes bust, so does my data. If Obsidian goes bust,
| I'll just have a bunch of markdown files I can import
| elsewhere.
|
| Not to mention Obsidian seems to try to add as few weird
| syntax as possible
| conradludgate wrote:
| If you struggle with markdown and tables, get a rich text
| editor.
|
| What file format do you suppose we should use instead? I don't
| want to have a heavy client just to render the contents
| bitwize wrote:
| Indeed. Programmers need to learn that Microsoft Word exists,
| and there are reasons why their nontechnical peers use it over
| Notepad.
| desireco42 wrote:
| I don't want to downvote you but I do disagree with most of
| what you said. Tech writers should be able to learn things and
| not just be stuck in whatever single tool they are familiar
| with.
|
| To me, it is clear you don't want to spend minimal effort to
| understand simple tools because it is not the tool you are
| familiar with and like to use.
|
| Obsidian is not perfect, but not for reason of using Markdown.
| vegai_ wrote:
| >In fact, the whole programmer's fetish with writing everything
| with a plain terminal text editor needs to die. Markdown, YAML,
| JSON, INI files. It's the year 2021 for christ's sake, and
| we're composing documents with tools designed for green CRTs!
|
| Alternative take for this same sentiment: It's the year 2021,
| why has nobody figured out better ways to present knowledge
| than simple text files?
| Tagbert wrote:
| Define "better".
|
| There are a plethora of alternate ways to represent
| knowledge. Each has its own set of trade-offs. Which do you
| prioritize?
|
| Ease of editing Interoperability/readability in multiple
| systems Expressive styling Optimized for configurations
| Optimized for readable text Etcetera
|
| Fill out that list, stack rank it and tell us which format is
| better.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I'm slightly relieved reading this. I see markdown everywhere,
| I can't stand it, and I wonder why people are so crazy about
| it. It's nice to know I'm not alone.
|
| Unfortunately I don't think markdown is going anywhere. I think
| I see it far more than ever and there's no sign of it slowing
| down.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I fell in love with Markdown in the early 2010s. My team at
| work didn't have a corporate wiki, and the only alternative
| to documentation was network shares and non-searchable folder
| hierarchies. I installed Dokuwiki, and its editing is all
| markdown.
|
| The alternative became Confluence, which is now a pretty
| decent product(for the end user, I can't speak to operating
| it).
|
| But in 2013, the editor was terrible. WYSIWYG was broken and
| non-deterministic. You never knew how it was going to try to
| "intelligently" format your next press of the enter key, or
| bullet list or table. There was no visual cue on the work it
| was doing for you.
|
| Markdown is very clear, if limited: There is no ambiguity on
| how it will format a page.
|
| I will say, I think there are tools that provide WYSIWYG
| composers that store data in Markdown backend, giving the
| benefits of both easy editing, and a stable, human-editable
| source format.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I have been sent word documents that I've been totally unable
| to read.
|
| I've never been sent a markdown file that I haven't been able
| to read.
|
| I've been sent a PDF that looks correct, but I'm not able to
| easily edit. I've never been sent a markdown file that I've
| been unable to edit.
|
| For a document format to be able to be widespread it needs to
| be interoperable and work on all systems. Markdown is popular
| because plain text works everywhere.
|
| I'm not convinced that markdown is the ultimate format, but
| it has more good properties than most other available
| formats.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I agree with you, markdown is far better than what you've
| described.
|
| It's an interesting thing to consider. How do we get
| somewhere sane between markdown and say HTML for example?
| What would that look like? Can you get the ease of markdown
| with something that would let us do more too?
| cratermoon wrote:
| > I've been sent a PDF that looks correct
|
| But "looks correct" for PDF presumes a certain form factor
| of the device used, because of the fixed page size. PDFs
| are a pain on many e-readers because they are laid out for
| US letter or A4 at a certain resolution. On a smaller
| device I often find I have a choice of either a. seeing an
| entire page at one time, as intended, but needing a
| magnifier to read anything, or b. zooming in to be able to
| read the text comfortably but then having to scroll
| left/right/up/down to read. There's no option in PDF to
| reflow the text to fit the resolution and size of the
| device. I'm not much of a fan of epub but at least the text
| reflow allows for normal reading.
|
| Also, exporting text from a PDF to import to anything else
| is trying at best.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Textile and LaTeX are better, anyway. At least it's not HTML
| or BBCode.
| marcus_cemes wrote:
| Being a mechanical engineer student myself, I can see where
| you're coming from, however, I have to respectfully disagree.
|
| It's true, most professionals use off-the-shelf solutions, the
| Office/Adobe suite, or other proprietary software like Catia,
| Autodesk, the likes. I have been nothing but frustrated by
| these options. I have dealt with gigabyte Illustrator files, as
| the inexperienced user accidentally embeds all linked media. I
| have been increasingly frustrated with "made up marketting
| terms" when saving Adobe proprietary formats, or OneNote's
| "invisible formatting language". I make a new line, then remove
| it, and whoops, the whole paragraph has been reformatted, all
| the equations are no longer in italics (despite this, I still
| use it for all of my study material, it's fantastic)! It helps
| to have a Markdown-like mental model when dealing with word
| processors, you understand the data hierarchy, which is at the
| end of the day underneath all of that GUI, most people I know
| who use Word make an absolute mess of the document because they
| have no idea how to have a consisent layout, they add new-
| lines, paragraphs, tables, fonts and indententations all over
| the place and then get frustrated when they don't get the
| desired results.
|
| While Markdown may not be the best format with the most
| features, it has a fantastically consistent layout and it's
| easy to understand the hierachy of information. _There is no
| obligation to use the terminal_ , you can open it in any visual
| editor. Also, I would not call the fact that it's plain text
| instead of XML/binary a limitation but rather a feature, not a
| "remenant of the 1970s".
|
| There is something amazingly refreshing about knowing that what
| you see is what you get, I can't stress this enough. Instead of
| using buggy program that manipulates a mess of an XML file, you
| describe the layout from scratch and that gets "compiled" to a
| PDF. This is why programmer source code is written as text, and
| not in Word, for example, it's just plain information that any
| compiler can work with to achieve any sort of complexity. There
| is no hidden document metadata, there is no hidden bloat from
| [insert proprietary software here] having upgraded the document
| format several times over the years until it eventually
| corrupts something (I'm looking at you Premiere Pro, every
| major version requires you to upgrade your saved project,
| making a new copy "just in case", it's impossible to go back,
| and I've had it break several times). It's a single source of
| truth that describes a behaviour, and the compiler can get
| better over the years and generate better and better
| executables from that same code as it improves.
|
| This is the worst argument ever, but it's still an important
| one: it's free, and works on any OS. There are definitely
| advantages to using off-the-shelf software, I myself am a heavy
| user, but I cringe every time I have to work on a messy
| document with other students, recently I had to work with
| another student that has macOS and could not get Word to open
| the document and display equations without converting them to
| images...
|
| I find the Markdown/Word comparison similar to my experience
| with Docker and Windows, for those that are familiar with it.
| Windows, macOS and Linux (although Windows is the worst
| offender) get bogged down with bloat over time, dnagling files,
| layers of abstraction, derived from complexity. How many times
| I wish I could start from a base image, and add/remove
| (software) features as I go, like building a new Docker image,
| without losing data.
|
| You bring up scientists, granted, not everyone uses it, but I
| believe LaTeX is more comparble to Markdown than to Word. It
| has a text-based source format that gets transformed and
| rendered as a PDF, but it's way, way too complex for the
| majority of use cases. If there's a better alternative to
| Markdown, I'd be glad to try it out, but for now it's my main
| choice for the long-term storage of information.
| aquova wrote:
| I could not disagree more. I'm very pleased that things such as
| markdown exist and are being widely used. All of the tools used
| by 'other professions' as you say, are in some nonsense
| proprietary format that works in their application and theirs
| alone. Even something as widespread as .docx is still a third-
| class citizen on other applications, due to Microsoft's
| monopoly on it.
|
| Is Markdown perfect? No. I find it rather frustrating that
| there isn't a single definitive flavor, but it's easy to learn,
| easy to read and render, and can be used as a tool in just
| about anything. You can keep your 'real programs'.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| I really don't understand what they think we're missing in
| markdown, as if most of us don't have plenty of experience
| with "better " document software. They also don't actually
| explain what features or tools make that's software "better."
| Most people I know in these trades are using Google or Office
| suites simply because that's what they're the most familiar
| with.
|
| I've been through so many formats and styles of capturing
| information and always come back to markdown. If OP has
| specific critiques of what we're missing out on, I'd love to
| hear them. Mostly it was just vague ranting about "devs love
| old tech."
| bonaldi wrote:
| Markdown mixes formatting and content (in a lossy way - did
| the author mean that asterisk as a format character or as
| part of their text? Who knows). It doesn't support spans or
| ranges for mixing languages. It has hard-to-remember
| syntax, especially around links - Gruber makes mistakes
| with it all the time. And it doesn't easily support the
| sort of powerful visual editing tools like you might have
| seen on a 1980s Mac. And worst of all, developers think
| it's "good enough" and ship it to non-developer users
| instead of making them actually powerful tools for managing
| text.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| 1. Mixing formatting and content is the point. Maybe it's
| not for you, but describing its main feature as a problem
| doesn't make sense.
|
| 2. There are maybe 5-10 syntax elements to get up and
| running with Markdown. Your average excel user has
| probably committed far more keyboard shortcuts to memory.
|
| 3. Most markdown users are fine with importing an image
| from another app if "powerful visual editing tools"
| (which still haven't been defined) are needed. Not to
| mention extra features in this area provided by Markdown
| editors like Obsidian.
|
| 4. Again, I still don't know what you consider to be an
| "actual powerful tool" for managing text. Does your
| definition begin and end at WYSIWYG?
| bonaldi wrote:
| 1. Right, but unless you want a circular argument, the
| "better" you are missing is the ability to separate the
| two. You should be able to type a note featuring all the
| characters on the keyboard without unexpected side-
| effects, this doesn't seem like a lot to ask.
|
| 2. And yet the _inventor of the thing_ repeatedly gets it
| wrong.
|
| 3. Visual editing here meaning more WYSIWYG than the
| inclusion of images, but it raises a good point - the
| bounds of what we consider a document is rapidly
| outstripping what markdown can comfortably capture. Tools
| like Notion are blurring the line between what used to be
| thought of as "text" and "embed" and are making great
| user experiences by doing so.
|
| 4. Honestly, in this context (document editing) I think
| of ClarisWorks as a more powerful tool than any Markdown
| editor I've ever seen.
|
| A ClarisWorks with Obsidian-like features would be a
| rocket ship for the mind. Limiting Obsidian to Markdown
| is like using diesel to fuel the rocket.
| wbharding wrote:
| While Roam has become something of a dumpster fire with its
| unprompted Reddit megaban, losing its whole dev team, etc, they
| do deserve partial credit for awakening the world to the
| possibility that there is much out there worth exploring beyond
| Evernote and Notion. There are now so many promising tools (most
| based on backlinking, as Roam popularized) that we have a site
| https://noteapps.info dedicated to chronicling the differences in
| some 30 viable note apps that now exist. At least half of these
| note apps were created in the past three years alone.
|
| That said, Obsidian is in rareified air among the third gen note
| apps. The pace of evolution is right up there alongside Craft and
| Amplenote, where almost every week there is some interesting new
| wrinkle being added. I can't wait to see how productive we will
| become in the next 10 years as these tools let us leverage our
| brains far beyond what has been historically possible.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| Obsidian really needs to start issuing NFT contributor badges, to
| those who volunteer to pay for the software.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I think I've seen this as a vscode extension, right?
|
| (For now I personally use vimwiki, instead. I just can't quite
| leave the vim keybindings for typing.)
| bachmeier wrote:
| You are probably thinking of either Dendron or Foam.
| kzrdude wrote:
| You're right - dendron. Thanks
| theprotocol wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning these! They look pretty interesting.
| slightwinder wrote:
| No, they have no specific vscode-extension. That would kinda
| defeat the whole purpose of it. But there are a bunch of
| markdown-extension doing more or less similar things. But IMHO
| a dedicated app serves the purpose better so far. VS Code is
| good, as an editor. But it's not (yet) an app-platform.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| This link gives me a 404.
|
| https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/List+of+plugins
| EleanorKonik wrote:
| Try this one:
| https://publish.obsidian.md/hub/02+-+Community+plugins/02.01...
| nmaleki wrote:
| Check out my Obsidian instance for my YouTube channel:
| https://notes.recursion.is
| sachin-12 wrote:
| Looks great! How did you host it in your own domain?
| jiggunjer wrote:
| Can someone explain what's the benefit of having markdown files
| instead of e.g. a mysql database like a conventional wiki?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| interoperability for one. Makes it fairly trivial to move notes
| between apps. I tried out Obsidian because I could just copy my
| logseq markdown files over.
| dunefox wrote:
| A database isn't a markdown file.
| patatino wrote:
| Way easier to backup for most people
| jiggunjer wrote:
| I just run the wiki in docker and take regular snapshots?
|
| I also find the requirement "have internet" is a good trade-
| off against the requirement "install client on every device".
| slightwinder wrote:
| How is docker easier for most people? How does docker even
| work with multiple devices? Mobiles? and how much storage
| does a docker-snapshot wastes?
| jiggunjer wrote:
| snapshots aren't that big. A wiki server just runs on a
| single server? I thought it was pretty common among the
| HN population to have a cloud note solution. Syncing
| files seems more hassle than a one-time docker setup.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This looks great. Downloaded. Jotted down some Sunday morning
| idiocy. Paid for Catalyst.
|
| Question: who decided Moldova [1] was a good idea? Was
| Obsidian.kp taken?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.md
| delta1 wrote:
| md = markdown
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _md = markdown_
|
| Makes sense. Is (EDIT: the use of the TLD) .md a convention
| in the markdown community?
| stphnclysmth wrote:
| Yes. I have seen the .mdown extension also, but .md is the
| default in every editor I've used, and it's a default for
| readme files on Gitlab and GitHub.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| We're talking about the website here, not the file
| format. .md is the top-level-domain for Moldova,
| Obsidian.md exists at that address by the good graces of
| the Moldovan government.
| Socketier wrote:
| .md is the markdown file extension, so having a .md TLD is a
| clever and amusing idea imo as Obsidian is, after all, a
| markdown editor.
| capableweb wrote:
| It's clever until you hit issues with uptime, or breaking the
| specific rules of the TLD. I'm also a supporter of Obsidian,
| but it scares me that the domain is under the whim of the
| Moldovian government and could get shut down/redirected if
| someone who uses Obsidian Publish decides to write "bad"
| stuff about government officials since the TLD doesn't allow
| that.
|
| > Registration restrictions: Prohibited domain names with bad
| taste, foul language, injurious to public order or to public
| sensibilities, with offending character, or with obscene or
| pornographic words
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.md
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _could get shut down /redirected_
|
| The latter is my concern. Until 2020, Moldova had a pro-
| Russian government. They could easily return to power. I
| would see Moscow having zero qualms about requesting _e.g._
| certain visitors be re-directed to a Kremlin-controlled
| server.
| input_sh wrote:
| I'd like to mention some community plugins that extend it even
| further:
|
| - Query your notes into tables/lists:
| https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview
|
| - Templates with variables:
| https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater
|
| - QuickAdd: https://github.com/chhoumann/quickadd
|
| Markdown compatibility is cool, but what's even cooler is
| stringing these together to be able to create a new note in a
| specific folder with a template that contains some variables, and
| having all of that automatically added in an index note.
|
| If emacs scares you and other options are too limiting, this is
| where you'll find that sweet spot between user friendliness and
| extensibility.
| chaoskanzlerin wrote:
| Here's an older HN thread with the author in it:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598
| u-rate wrote:
| Great software, 100% recommend.
| archibaldJ wrote:
| I'm the type most comfortable with taking notes on a physical
| piece of paper (cuz then I can draw stuff and make mind maps).
|
| After many months I'm still learning to use Notion more
| extensively for different things e.g. automating stuff via the
| API
|
| This is my first time coming acrossing Obsidian, just wondering
| if anyone's been using both Notion and Obsidian.
|
| How would doing things in one and not the other differ from a
| use-case perspective, etc?
|
| (I never quite understand this graph thing from a cognitive-
| offloading perspective, and how it should be utilized for domain-
| specific things, etc) I feel like it's often the act of taking
| notes that is benefitial (eg helping us to clear up the
| conceptual space). But maybe that's cuz I'm not in a name-
| intensive field like biology?
| taurusnoises wrote:
| I use both Notion and Obsidian. The main difference is that
| Notion is an entire database _processing_ platform, especially
| once you get into mirroring databases, and getting savvy with
| filters and check boxes. Not to mention the fact that
| everything in Notion is its own page. This makes it wildly
| customizable, and again, programmable.
|
| Obsidian is _a lot_ more static. It 's basic strengthis having
| offline capabilities, simplicity, and markdown. I use it
| exclusively for my Zettelkasten, which I also have on Notion (I
| started my ZK and migrated it over to Obsidian). Obsidian is
| great for ZK in part due to its simultaneous multiple panel
| openings. So, you can see multiple notes at once. Notion can do
| this too, and I've use its Gallery fxn for exactly that, but
| there's something less claggy about Obsidian in this regard.
|
| Notion is great for GTD and project management (again, when
| used dynamically with filters etc). Obsidian is great for note
| storage and retrieval, as well as processing ideas and
| arguments for use later in writing articles, scripts, etc.
| archibaldJ wrote:
| I see! Thanks for the detailed breakdown and comparisons! I'm
| now somewhat convinced that I should definitely get familiar
| with Obsidian and exploring different aspects of it
|
| Zettelkasten has been something that I wanna try out for a
| while!
| rg111 wrote:
| I have switched to Obsidian and I use multiple _vaults_ for
| multiple purposes.
|
| One is for work, one is for personal projects and notes.
|
| One for Books and Movies I watched or want to watch.
|
| And one for Zettelkasten[0].
|
| Obsidian is extremely customizable and user-friendly. And to make
| things even better, which is a must for many people including me,
| it saves the files as .md in the local storage.
|
| You can even sync it among n devices for free using Box, Sync,
| Mega, OneDrive, Dropbox or whatever floats your boat.
|
| Just as a quick exercise, I spun up a fully functional Obsidian
| clone that runs in the browser that works locally, in four hours
| using React- just in case the company goes under in future. It
| works great.
|
| [0]: https://zettelkasten.de
| Macha wrote:
| The one thing I found weird when I looked into Zettelkasten is
| the focus on having relatively hard to read IDs as the primary
| part of the title. It could certainly help in the original use
| case of having to categorise and store physical paper notes,
| but it just feels obsolete in a world where you have digital
| notes, hyperlinking, and search.
| the_fury wrote:
| I've found that to be exactly the case. Once you are able to
| freely hypelink your notes, the ID isn't really helpful. It's
| the first thing I dropped from mine.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| The funny ID thing was necessary when zettelkastens were
| physical cards in a box that you need to keep in order so
| that you can look them up. Digital zettelkasten apps have
| largely dropped the ID systems, you link cards just by their
| name, and you can use folders or internal headers for ordered
| structure when you want it.
| lethologica wrote:
| You don't need crazy IDs any more. In Obsidian I just make
| sure each of my notes has a descriptive title and that's
| enough to ensure it's unique.
|
| Some of my notes are literally just a bunch of links to other
| notes because the title of the notes is descriptive enough
| that stringing a bunch together I can form entirely new
| sentences.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Spoiler: "Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local
| folder of plain text Markdown files. "
|
| Thanks but org mode seems to handle that kind of thing just fine.
| afro88 wrote:
| Does anyone know the name of the note taking tool where pretty
| much everything is a bullet point, and each bullet point can
| expand to show sub bullet points. The website is essentially the
| tool itself IIRC. I've been trying to remember it for ages. I saw
| it in the comments for a different note taking tool on HN...
| sleavey wrote:
| Emacs with org-mode?
| emerged wrote:
| checkvist?
| Hates_ wrote:
| Perhaps https://workflowy.com or https://dynalist.io ?
| afro88 wrote:
| I think it was workflowy, thank you. Looks like they've added
| a ton of features since I first checked it out too, nice.
| dhruval wrote:
| I think you are taking about moo.do?
| peakaboo wrote:
| I think you mean workflowy.
| pchm wrote:
| Roam Research, most likely
| kepano wrote:
| This is an incredible time for knowledge management tools. Just a
| couple of years ago I was pulling my hair out trying to get a
| local wiki to feel like a native app, and now we have a dozen
| great options to choose from.
|
| I started using Obsidian when it came out last year, and it
| instantly clicked for me. I immediately migrated 20 years of
| notes to it.
|
| What differentiates Obsidian from all of the other tools in this
| area, is that they have made extensibility a top priority. The
| sheer breadth of plugins, themes, and other community-driven
| tools that have been generated in 18 months is spectacular. It
| makes it easy to recommend Obsidian because you can shape it into
| whatever you want.
|
| There are a handful of plugins like Dataview, QuickAdd, Kanban
| and Periodic Notes that make Obsidian an incredibly powerful
| environment for thought.
|
| I made a theme for Obsidian called Minimal that attempts to make
| the app feel more native, especially on Mac:
| https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-minimal
|
| ...and published a couple of my own plugins and a Web Clipper
| bookmarklet:
| https://gist.github.com/kepano/90c05f162c37cf730abb8ff027987...
|
| The Obsidian community is just so fun, friendly, and
| collaborative, that you can't help but get involved and work on
| making the ecosystem better.
| smusamashah wrote:
| I made a Windows 98/2000 theme for Obsidian which feels faster
| because animations are disabled and have more Thanks to
| Electron that I could do that. It was mentioned in the previous
| thread by its creator that because it's Electron you could make
| a css to make it look like anything you want.
| runjake wrote:
| Can concur, his Minimal theme is really awesome and looks Mac-
| native.
|
| His theme played a huge part in getting me to make the jump
| from Bear Notes to Obsidian as I try to move away from Mac-
| specific apps to cross-platform (macOS and Linux) options.
| desireco42 wrote:
| Hey, your Minimal theme, that I just installed, pretty much
| solves most of the issues I had with Obsidian. Even without
| that it is a great tool.
| divan wrote:
| Wow, thanks for sharing these. Didn't even know Obsidian has
| plugins/themes community before your comment :)
|
| PS. WebClipper is super helpful!
| rektide wrote:
| the perspective that software is good because it's soft- as in
| malleable- is nice to hear.
|
| i too feel like the more open-potential endlessly extensible
| form of computing is what's interesting & compelling. it's ehy
| computing appealed to me & still is. contrasting to computing
| as mechanization, big systems, & mass market software, where
| focus is on control & usually core, well planned user flows.
| this is boring rigidware. yet it's share of computing has
| radically risen. good to hear of syccessful flexible software
| in the world.
| stakkur wrote:
| Obligatory 'This is a what I use Emacs for and no database
| needed' comment.
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