[HN Gopher] Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash
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Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash
Author : wuldr
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-06-06 08:32 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (erikjohannes.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (erikjohannes.no)
| arp242 wrote:
| Since the page doesn't seem to load: https://archive.is/oRhu0
| jrm4 wrote:
| Again, I'll put up another vote for http://zim-wiki.org which
| I've been using for now almost _decades._ I 've begun to
| experiment more with Obsidian as well, a killer thing for me
| would be for e.g. Zim to support standard Markdown and just make
| the two fully cross-compatible...
| jandeboevrie wrote:
| Does zim support markdown? (no there is a fork but not merged
| yet) and no mobile app...
| mipselaer wrote:
| I wrote a vim plugin which is my daily wiki driver. It uses Hugo
| as markdown indexer.
|
| https://github.com/linden-project/linny.vim
| dicytea wrote:
| For neovim, there's the obsidian.nvim[1] plugin.
|
| There's also zk[2], a zettelkasten-based notetaking tool like
| Obsidian, but the functionalities are provided through a CLI and
| LSP server.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/epwalsh/obsidian.nvim
|
| [2]: https://github.com/mickael-menu/zk
| satyanash wrote:
| for emacs, there is obsidian.el -
| https://github.com/licht1stein/obsidian.el
| sharikous wrote:
| For an open source alternative to obsidian check out Trilium.
| Electron based and with a whole lot of features and possible
| tinkering
| FireInsight wrote:
| Also check out logseq, workflows a bit different but pretty
| intuitive if you're taking notes instead of doing longform
| writing.
|
| https://logseq.com/ https://github.com/zadam/trilium
| singhrac wrote:
| The one killer feature that I wish Obsidian had is CRDT support,
| Apple Notes-style. I realize it's a huge engineering lift and
| they are (appropriately) focused on making the UX perfect, but it
| would be really great for collaboration. I can't really recommend
| it to my team without better collaboration.
|
| I still use it every day though.
| nkit wrote:
| For me the main benefit of Obsidian is live-rendering editor +
| other handy features. Not having to look at two panes side-by-
| side (or having to parse the markdown format in my head) is such
| a QOL improvement.
|
| Neovim might never be able to provide complete live-rendering. I
| don't blame it though, I wouldn't want terminals to become a
| rendering engine.
|
| Edit: Grammar
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Funny enough, Obsidians live rendering has shown me that
| plaintext sucks, and that I want richtext and data structures
| for my stuff. Just that there is no good tool for this. Notion
| and its clones are the best in that regard, but they suck in
| their own regard, mainly because they are online-only. And
| considering how many tried to replicate Notion in obsidian-
| extensions (and failed), I'm not the only one I guess. There
| probably is a market for a modern hacker-friendly offline
| richtext-IDE that no one has satisfied yet.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks
|
| I don't understand. I currently use obsidian and the live
| rendering is great, not exactly sure what you mean.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| That live rendering exists is in itself a sign that we want
| more than plaintext. On its own, plaintext is simple, which
| is why we like it. And it shoves everything directly in
| your face, which is also why we like it. But many of us
| also want more than just plaintext, so we invented markup,
| to add some levels of richness. But this makes it
| complicated again, and the more we want, the harder it
| gets, the less support from the tools we have.
|
| Obsidian is now in a space where many people want something
| more richful, with elaborated data-handling, charts,
| pictures, videos, code-fragments with syntax highlighting,
| execution of code-framgments, and so on. The scale of
| demand is far more than just plaintext, or simple markup,
| and the tooling can't fetch up at the moment, because
| anything becomes very dirty and hacky around the higher
| abilities and more specialized workflows.
|
| And then there is the problem of documentation and
| learning, which with plaintext is always a big problem,
| because everything depends on your input. With richtext-
| interfaces, you have an environment whose whole purpose is
| to support you in inputing and manipulating which ever
| richful text/object you want. So they simply scale up
| better. Which brought me to the realization that a modern
| environment around richtext and objects is what I really
| need. Because it's simple to level down richtext, but hard
| to level up plaintext.
| still_grokking wrote:
| > That live rendering exists is in itself a sign that we
| want more than plaintext.
|
| If people would just finally realize that this especially
| applies to code!
|
| It's imho a complete joke that we're still using plain
| text for source code, and convert it back and forth
| between it's actual structure (an AST) and some limited
| and quirky textual representation.
|
| The text representation of code should be just that: A
| visual representation. Not "the real thing".
|
| Having proper rich data structures for code instead of
| plain text would make so much more possible given some
| proper editors...
| svieira wrote:
| Everyone is re-inventing "show codes" from Wordperfect 5
| and other similar platforms because no one who is
| inventing these things has ever used Wordperfect 5. That
| said, re-solving this problem is turning up some nice new
| U/X patterns that (as far as I know) weren't around in
| the older platforms ("show codes on cursor", "local modal
| editing for format", etc.)
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| What editors have those two new ux's? I'd like to try
| them out ("show codes on cursor", "local modal editing
| for format", etc.)
| dunham wrote:
| Guessing what they mean by show codes on cursor. Showing
| markdown around the cursor is now in Obsidian, but
| previously it was in Typora, FoldingText, and a circa
| 2016 web app called "usecanvas":
|
| https://github.com/usecanvas
|
| There may be examples prior to that, but that's the
| earliest that I recall.
|
| I'm not sure what is meant by local modal editing - is
| that describing what logseq does? It switches a block to
| plain markdown when you're editing it.
|
| I thought word perfect show codes was in another pane,
| but it's been a very long time since I've seen it, and I
| didn't use it personally.
| svieira wrote:
| Obsidian's editor is "show codes on cursor" by default.
| As you navigate through the rich text expression it
| changes to the markdown format that produces that
| expression. You're always in a line / block of Markdown,
| but the rest of the document is rendered.
|
| "local modal editing" is most often seen in richer IDE
| experiences like Darklang v0.2's IDE and the Hazel type-
| directed-holes experiments.
|
| There are more interesting takes as well (Lighttable's
| live forms, lots of Vic's experiments) but I'm definitely
| seeing more instances of the first two experiences these
| days.
| rob74 wrote:
| Probably referring to the limitations of Markdown? Not sure
| what Markdown flavor Obsidian supports, some extensions
| (e.g. tables) are quite powerful...
| pcen wrote:
| One plug-in in beta, but has quite a large following in the
| Obsidian community to achieve what you're describing with
| Obsidian is the make.md plug-in.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| I've become a big fan of LogSeq for these reasons. In LogSeq,
| you have pages and trees of data (aka blocks[1]. All can be
| cross-referenced or embeded between each context. It's quite
| nice.
|
| 1: https://docs.logseq.com/#/page/the%20basics%20of%20block%2
| 0r...
| still_grokking wrote:
| Looks clean and nice, if only it wouldn't be an Electron
| app...
| wim wrote:
| We're working on building an IDE of sorts [1] (but
| specifically for tasks/notes) trying to combine the benefits
| of plain text but with rich elements and structure
| (tree/graph). The illusion of a real editor breaks down
| pretty quickly when you can't easily copy-paste or select
| rich elements as if it was plain text, so that's why we're
| trying to build the whole thing from scratch.
|
| [1] https://thymer.com
| quantumite wrote:
| This looks interesting, I'll take a flyer. Good luck!
| dotancohen wrote:
| Honest question from someone who has been looking at these
| tools for almost two decades. What advantages does Thymer
| have over org-mode?
|
| I assume that anyone seriously R&Ding in this field has at
| least a passing familiarity with org-mode.
| jdvh wrote:
| Thymer has real-time multiplayer with CRDT based
| synchronization. With org-mode you can collaborate, but
| you'd have to DIY with git or something similar. Thymer
| is also end-to-end encrypted. With org-mode you'd have to
| self-host something to sync with your phone.
|
| Org-mode is text based, Thymer has a document graph.
| Advantages of the graph approach is you can nest as much
| as you want and zoom in on any part of the graph. You can
| transclude sections and have references and backlinks.
| With text based approaches you have to sprinkle location
| identifiers (guids or relative paths typically) into your
| document so you can track the location as files gets
| edited. But guids are awkward and paths can result in
| broken (back)links. We built Thymer as a document graph
| from the ground up. Tree mutations don't break
| (back)links.
|
| With Thymer every node in the graph has metadata. Who
| last edited it? When? Where did it move from? Previous
| versions? For text paragraphs this isn't super useful,
| but when you have tasks this metadata is very useful.
|
| org-mode on a phone? I'm sure there are apps for that,
| but I think it's designed with a keyboard in mind. Thymer
| uses the (subjectively) more modern command palette
| approach where you don't have to remember as many
| shortcuts, and it also translates more easily to
| touchscreen devices.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| The Ggraph is another major feature. I wish I had the same in
| form of a widget (a desktup GUI toolkit widget preferably) to
| experiment with. Obsidian is such a great app but still is very
| far from what I want to I'd love to be able to build a similar
| thing from blocks for myself.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| I also only found out about Obsidian recently and I've become
| interested in switching. So far for my notes for the last several
| years I've just been using raw tex files with TexStudio, and
| creating various level subsections with macros bound to key
| combos as needed. It works quite well with the navigation tree
| and MDI, but Obsidian sounds like it might be a better solution.
| the_cramer wrote:
| The great thing about Obsidian is that it still uses plaintext
| (it's not obsidian exclusive, i know). In case of issues with
| the tool, you can view and edit files in an editor. It also
| makes syncing stuff / backups very easy. Since you're probably
| having a kind of syntax already it won't be hard to change.
|
| With a proper keyboard, it's super fast to create and link
| notes. On mobile it sucks hard. Things like
| "[text](linkForText)" are not very mobile-friendly.
|
| One big gripe i have is the table editor. There is an advanced
| table add-in to help, but it still sucks. Create a table and
| put a long link into it.
|
| Well-known keys like "end" or "pos1" don't do the expected.
| "TAB" will add fields... i don't know, this should be better.
| PrimeMcFly wrote:
| I'm familiar with markdown enough, but I don't have much need
| to format my own notes, no need for tables etc. All I really
| need is headings, and sub-headings to various degrees.
|
| I've been wanting to make my own program to deal with that
| since using tex for that seems like overkill even though it
| works well enough. I may still as Obsidian being closed
| source is kind of a bummer and I'm trying to limit the closed
| source software I use as much as possible.
| nray wrote:
| Isn't the licensing an issue? As far as I can tell you can't
| use Obsidian at your workplace without an annual commercial
| license, which is fair enough but maybe too heavy a lift for
| many.
| the_cramer wrote:
| Yes. Professional use requires licensing. Too bad as our
| workplace forces the use of OneNote, which imho is lacking.
| Izkata wrote:
| What, we're talking about wikis and vim, and not mentioning
| vimwiki?
|
| https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
|
| I tried a whole bunch of personal wikis over the years (I see Zim
| has been mentioned, that's one of the ones I remember trying) and
| this is the only one that stuck.
|
| The github page shows some basic markdown, but it also handles
| nested checklists (parent nodes can be partially checked off) and
| understands tables (automatically fixing spacing so columns stay
| aligned). It can also render to HTML (though I don't use that
| feature) and has a whole bunch of other stuff too.
| lervag wrote:
| Shameless plug: there's also wiki.vim [0], which I believe is
| starting to be a real contender to Vimwiki.
|
| Regardless: In my experience, Vim + wiki with some additional
| plugins for fast searching and navigation is a very good combo!
|
| [0]: https://github.com/lervag/wiki.vim/
| [deleted]
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| A couple of those Obsidian features (and more) come out of the
| box with Vimwiki if configured in Markdown mode. I use it rather
| interchangeably with Obsidian since they grok the same format and
| file structure.
| tesdinger wrote:
| Just use one note, or a wiki.
| cl3misch wrote:
| ... _something something you can build Dropbox trivially with
| these existing tools..._
|
| Neither OneNote nor a wiki have the workflow of modern
| knowledge managers like Obsidian, Notion and the like.
|
| Furthermore, how do OneNote or a wiki fit into "Vim and Bash"?
| sudobash1 wrote:
| The last issue listed is the killer. If you rename or move a
| file, you need to update all the links. It's not terribly hard to
| solve with a quick script as he showed, but that is the part
| which has always felt very hacky to me when I've done this.
| teddyh wrote:
| I'm thinking an inotify hook could be created to run the
| script.
| lachlan_gray wrote:
| The obsidian vim bindings can also be modified with the vimrc
| plugin. It lets you hook into obsidian's native features with
| normal mode maps e.g. for pane splitting and navigation.
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