[HN Gopher] Why I Like Obsidian
___________________________________________________________________
Why I Like Obsidian
Author : ddanieltan
Score : 246 points
Date : 2024-01-17 13:11 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ddanieltan.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ddanieltan.com)
| jimmytucson wrote:
| > allows structure to grow organically > powerful feature
| ... Internal Links. > plain text files
|
| Well, they're not _plain_ text - there is some markup. So that
| invites the question - why not HyperText Markup Language?
|
| Doesn't HTML have all of these features - hyperlinks, folder
| structures, "plain" text? Isn't HTML also future proof? It's been
| around long enough. And doesn't it also work offline? There's a
| bunch of different apps out there that support viewing these both
| on and offline.
|
| So, do people just use Obsidian/Markdown because they like
| dislike "<em>HTML</em>"?
|
| edit: I'm not saying it's "wrong" to dislike HTML. I'm 50%
| trolling and 50% saying none of these are features of Obsidian.
| They're features of HTML (and Markdown is its shorthand).
| el_oni wrote:
| they like it because
|
| # title
|
| this is the paragraph
|
| is more natural to write than:
|
| <html> <head>...<head/> <body> <h1> title </h1> <p>this is the
| paragraph</p> </body> </html>
|
| when you're just jotting some thoughts down.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| So the answer to my original question is - yes :)
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| Eh, the em example is reductive and makes it seem like
| markdown doesn't have much advantage.
|
| If you rewrite your comment with lists I think your
| question becomes self-explanatory.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| But you don't need the head and body stuff. This renders
| perfectly fine in a web browser on my local machine:
| <h1>My Title</h1> <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
|
| For sure, you need an end tag, and Markdown doesn't. But
| for simple note taking, are you really writing deeply
| nested HTML?
| davisoneee wrote:
| The main benefit is that markdown is really readable
| _without_ rendering. You don't need to edit and then open
| in a browser.
|
| You can comfortably read plaintext that has a little
| structure, while HTML adds some ceremony that makes it a
| bit harder to glance at the material as the tags are much
| more in your face.
| putsan wrote:
| Totally agree
| skinnyarms wrote:
| Markdown is so much easier to read and maintain in its raw
| form. I can't imagine trying to take meeting notes in html.
|
| ``` - [ ] Item 1 - [ ] Item 2 ```
|
| ``` <ul> <li><checkbox> <label>Item 1</label></li>
| <li><checkbox> <label>Item 2</label></li> </ul> ```
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Pretty much. You want to optimize for fluidity in writing, and
| angle brackets just get in the way too much.
| aeonik wrote:
| The main point of Markdown is that it's easy to write and read
| without any extra rendering processes.
|
| https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#philosop...
|
| Here is a nice article of many light weight markup languages:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_markup_language
|
| I like Markdown a lot, though I prefer org-mode due to the
| extra features it comes with.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Org-mode
| wooptoo wrote:
| HTML was not really meant to be generated by humans. Just like
| XML, it's supposed to be machine readable first and foremost.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| This has to be factually wrong, no? The first web servers
| just served documents from a directory called `htdocs`.
| paxys wrote:
| HTML is (1) a lot more painful and verbose to write and (2)
| impossible to decipher in source mode. Markdown fixes both
| these problems.
| infecto wrote:
| Do you write your documentation and notes using HTML? Serious
| question because if not not, why even ask the question? Why
| does this invite the question? One can easily see that markdown
| requires less characters and is a quicker flow for jotting down
| notes. You can open up a markdown file in any file viewer and
| easily read it without any view processing...not the same for
| HTML. Silly question.
| mdhb wrote:
| You're getting smashed for no particularly good reason in my
| opinion.
|
| I am in the camp if I like the _idea_ of Obsidian but I have a
| bunch of other stuff I want to include and do stuff with like
| JSON-LD data for example.
|
| But the idea of writing raw HTML is in fact a huge pain in the
| ass as everyone was all too eager to point out here.
|
| We have had markdown to HTML converters and visual editing
| experiences for a long time now and I don't know why the
| argument has to be "write in raw HTML" I barely even want to
| write Markdown when taking notes, I just want to write.
|
| So in that spirit I think HTML and and in browser experience is
| in fact the right answer I just need to put an editor on top of
| it and a way to run code when I hit publish to update the graph
| visualisations and statistics that people seem to really like
| with Obsidian.
|
| I actually think this might be a really good usecase for the
| built in IndexedDB API built into browsers so long as you can
| also back it up and sync across devices.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| Yeah, clearly I touched a nerve :)
|
| But I still don't know what Obsidian gives you besides
| letting you write in Markdown instead of HTML. And that is
| basically a Markdown to HTML converter, as you pointed out.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| It's hard to overstate the flowstate Obsidian enables with
| live / wysiwyg editor view -- enjoy the clean look of
| rendered HTML while typing simple markdown and kbd
| shortcuts -- "the whole is greater than the sum of its
| parts". There are many other reasons I love Obsidian, but
| most of all it's the core function -- the editor interface,
| atop my local, private markdown files.
| mdhb wrote:
| Yes but this is the exact point.
|
| We could have that exact same workflow and user interface
| with HTML.
|
| I (presumably along with the person you're replying to)
| don't understand what value Markdown as the storage
| format is providing here exactly but I can think of many
| limitations it imposes.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| simpler, lighter, less verbose, more portable, much more
| readable "in the raw",....
| mdhb wrote:
| Right, but the scenario we are describing explicitly
| makes the "in the raw" part not particularly relevant.
|
| I'm not against markdown as an idea of file format, I'm
| just saying that it has some pretty clear limitations
| that I think are very much within the scope of what I
| want out of a tool like that and that weird MDX format
| they have as a substitute is a step backwards in my
| opinion.
| antiframe wrote:
| You are dismissing what people are telling you. Several
| have pointed out that Markdown is easier to read and write
| when taking notes. For example, lists where each item has
| an additional ~14 keystrokes per item, links which have an
| additional ~20 keystrokes.
|
| Your answer was that that doesn't matter. If that's your
| view, you are welcome to it, but that's why /other/ people
| choose Markdown over HTML for notes.
| jimmytucson wrote:
| Not dismissing it at all. My original comment asks that
| very question. I was just wondering if there's anything
| else that Obsidian offers besides Markdown syntax, since
| hyperlinking documents and application-agnostic data
| formats are also features of HTML.
|
| I don't understand where all the feelings are coming
| from. :)
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| Because you're not actually caring to listen to what
| people are saying.
|
| People do not find writing SGML-based formats ergonomic
| for focusing on the content of their writing. SGML-based
| formats are _great_ for formats that need to be both
| human-readable, but also unambiguous and extensible for
| machine parsing, but _awful_ when the task is purely just
| producing writing.
|
| If I need HTML from my writings in Markdown, there are a
| plethora of tools to handle that; I don't need to waste
| vital brain bandwidth on writing perfect spec-complaint
| HTML when Markdown handles _only_ the task of writing
| structured text and does it well.
|
| Markdown does not handle layout, and barely handles
| tables. It is the technological equivalent of HTML 1.0,
| and does not contaminate itself with the task of
| presentation like how the evolution of HTML over the
| years has.
| atrus wrote:
| Well, markdown is a lot easier to read "unrendered". It's a lot
| more accessible to non-technical people as well, since with
| html sometimes you need to put the content between two matching
| tags (h1), sometimes it needs to go between a tag _and_ inside
| a tag (a), and sometimes there isn 't even a matching tag!
| (img)
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I disagree that markdown is a shorthand for HTML. It's a plain
| text doc with standardized ASCII stylistic features, that is
| basically exactly the way you would _want_ to write a plain
| text document most of the time. It 's not really markup. It's
| markdown.
|
| I agree the noted features aren't really special to obsidian,
| but they might feel special when you consider markdown first
| and foremost as a plaintext format, and only second as a style
| convention
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > Well, they're not _plain_ text - there is some markup.
|
| Markup is still plaintext.
|
| > why not HyperText Markup Language?
|
| Why not json or yaml? If you remove the users ability to write
| the text directly, then why limit yourself to the unstructured
| mess that HTML is?
|
| > Doesn't HTML have all of these features - hyperlinks, folder
| structures, "plain" text? Isn't HTML also future proof?
|
| Markdown is human-friendly. There is a whole ecology around
| using it for those usecases. And you can create HTML from
| markdown anyway.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I love Obsidian for being a dead simple UI for managing my
| markdown files. I've found that the cloud features are not for
| me. What I need is to wire it more organically up to a GitHub
| repo.
| abelaer wrote:
| I've done exactly this, and set up a cron job to sync
| regularly. Still very sub-optimal imo.
| midasz wrote:
| I used the git-sync plugin, worked fairly well.
| have_faith wrote:
| I'm just using the icloud sync, do you use git repo feature
| with your notes? or is it just a dumb store.
| adbachman wrote:
| I use this setup. My notes folder is a git repo, I have a
| private repo on GitHub as backup. Then two moving parts.
|
| a backup.sh script, which boils down to: `cd ${obfolder}; git
| add .; git commit -m "auto backup $(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)"; git
| push`. Give it a `chmod +x` and it's ready.
|
| a crontab entry: `1 17 * * * ${obfolder}/backup.sh`, which is
| "at 5:01pm every day, run the backup script.
|
| ${obfolder} is the actual path of the vault directory and I
| haven't had to think about it in years.
| inferense wrote:
| obsidian is awesome.
|
| I'll go ahead and do a shameless plug for an alternative built
| with similar philosophy around privacy & data ownership aimed at
| developers https://acreom.com
| outlore wrote:
| I love the design of acreom! When I tried it, I was impressed
| with marking notes as Active/Done etc.
|
| Do you support collecting individual checkbox items into a
| unified view as well?
|
| Would you also consider adding an outline view/toc? Tysm!
| inferense wrote:
| > Do you support collecting individual checkbox items into a
| unified view as well? yes, acreom is pretty flexible when it
| comes to creating views over your pages, you can create views
| with pages with tasks and save it with all tasks surfaced.
|
| > Would you also consider adding an outline view/toc? already
| supported!
| px43 wrote:
| Super weird IMO that they refuse to release source code. Hard to
| trust something as important as notes to an opaque app.
| drakenot wrote:
| But the notes are maintained as plain markdown files?
|
| I don't find it weird they would want to keep the source for
| their commercial application closed when there are so many
| copy-cat apps in the same space.
| cpach wrote:
| If you want something open source there's a bunch of
| alternatives out there. Logseq, Joplin, Zettlr, Standard Notes,
| etc.
|
| I prefer Obsidian since I like the UI and they offer a
| subscription for sync, which is very convenient.
| iCarrot wrote:
| It's built with Electron so not entirely opaque.
|
| Car manufacturers don't release their source code either, yet
| people trust something as important as their life to it daily.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > Car manufacturers don't release their source code either,
| yet people trust something as important as their life to it
| daily.
|
| I personally find it _extremely_ disturbing. Two bads don 't
| make a good.
| rubymamis wrote:
| What's so disturbing?
|
| The incentives are aligned -> If a specific car model won't
| be safe, people won't buy it. Also, there is regulation in
| place.
|
| I think we need exactly the right combo in software too.
| Obsidian is not open source, but you can gauge what they
| track in their privacy policy. You can try to confirm it
| using apps like Little Snitch. Also, all their notes are
| just plaintext so your data is portable.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > If a specific car model won't be safe, people won't buy
| it.
|
| The world is not this black and white. This assumes the
| customer actually knows all of the pros and cons of
| available options and is able to take the time to make a
| decision that best aligns with their values. In practice
| (at least in the US) we have and infrastructure that
| makes it practically impossible for many people to live
| their lives without a car, and purchasing decisions are
| based almost exclusively on marketing materials and
| social forces.
|
| > Obsidian is not open source, but you can gauge what
| they track in their privacy policy
|
| A privacy policy is a pinkie promise. Why depend on
| something so fragile for such an important function in
| your life, when there are much more trustworthy options?
| Logseq, Org Roam, and Joplin immediately come to mind.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Obsidian is my IDE for Markdown, if that makes sense.
| midasz wrote:
| I really like Obsidian but the long startup time (on mobile) has
| stopped me from using it as a daily driver.
| drakenot wrote:
| Are you on Android? This is me launching from a cold open on
| iOS and it was near instant.
|
| https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/90sbrx0esggnsmbsva2hg/Video-J...
|
| Did it progressively get worse over time? I only have a couple
| hundred notes.
| pityJuke wrote:
| iCloud Sync does hurt the initial startup sporadically.
| readparryrepost wrote:
| I don't know if it helps but disabling sync plugins and then
| turning off all the ones I didn't need massively sped up my
| load times. (~10x increase)
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Perhaps, perhaps, this is something for you to look at. I use
| Obsidian on the Desktop but I don't do much work/editing on the
| Mobile, so I just use iA Editor (you an choose any editor of
| your choice). As the files are that -- files, I just browse and
| open the file I want to edit. I get to the files with Obsidian
| on the Desktop and iA Editor on the mobile to edit/read it.
| tester457 wrote:
| I tried out iA writer on android because Obsidian's loading
| times are bad but was disappointed to see you can't set a
| folder in iA writer android.
|
| Editing files is even slower since you have to pick a file
| from the android file search.
|
| It's a well designed app otherwise.
| kepano wrote:
| This is a priority for the Obsidian team over the next few
| months. This should get a lot better soon.
| zschuessler wrote:
| The killer feature for me is how extensible the software is made
| to be. It truly lets you operate how you know best, making very
| few assumptions on how you use it.
|
| Case in point: one of my favorite productivity plugins is a full-
| fledged Kanban board. It has deep integration into Obsidian
| features:
|
| - https://github.com/mgmeyers/obsidian-kanban
| rubymamis wrote:
| You might like my own note-taking app, Plume[1] that's built
| with Qt C++ and QML. You can integrate a Kanban board (with
| underlying Markdown text) right within your document[2]. It's
| still a work-in-progress, so this is why it's not featured yet
| on the website. But I'll finish implementing it very soon.
|
| Unlike Obsidian, Plume's editor is a block-editor. That gives
| it the flexibility of Notion (to put advanced blocks like
| Kanban within the same document, to do drag & drop, etc.) with
| the performance of native apps by utilizing Qt C++ and QML
| (actually, Plume is 4x faster than the fastest native block
| editor on macOS - benchmarks on the website).
|
| EDIT: Also, Plume is opinionated compared to Obsidian. That
| means much better ease-of-use at the cost of extensibility. I
| believe this is a trade-off worth to be making. I know first
| hand the intimidation of starting to work with something as
| complex as Notion or Obsidian. Plume is taking the block editor
| abilities of Notion with the familiar Apple Notes UX/UI while
| all the data is still plaintext underneath.
|
| [1] https://www.get-plume.com/
|
| [2] https://imgur.com/NIgDLOU
| ghosty141 wrote:
| Will it be open source?
| rubymamis wrote:
| Plume is built on top of my open source note-taking app
| Notes[1]. Since Plume is based on Notes, I'll of course
| comply with the MPL license and release all existing files
| that were changed (and must stay MPL licensed).
|
| But I recently discussed my reasoning to go close-
| source[2]. I've been working night and day (every day)
| converting 4 cups of coffee into code for the last 4.5
| months to create Plume. I don't want to risk not being
| rewarded sufficiently for it. But, I'm 99% sure that I'll
| either open source the core block editor or the entire app
| in the future.
|
| [1] https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38584960
| ayewo wrote:
| > But, I'm 99% sure that I'll either open source the core
| block editor or the entire app in the future.
|
| Why withhold the remaining 1%? If you aren't so confident
| about your decision to open source, there's no need to
| commit to that decision _now_.
|
| It's good that you are leaving the door open, but keep in
| mind that if some folks suddenly become successful with a
| service that can turn any GitHub repo into a nice looking
| SaaS, at the click of a button and _for a super low fee_
| , I'm pretty sure you'll be hesitant to open source all
| your hard work so it can harvested.
| rubymamis wrote:
| Because I'm very much still a believer in open source.
| And you're right, that's a horror scenario I want to
| avoid. I'll only open source it in a way that won't
| compromise the sustainability of my work. I've yet to
| come up with the right model, so until then, it will stay
| close source.
| ElongatedMusket wrote:
| I'm going to give it another try, I had no idea the only
| feature I like about jira could be added to a notes app. Thanks
| for link
| pyrophane wrote:
| That being said, there are a great many apps with support for
| kanban-style boards that one could use before resorting to
| jira. Notion, for example, can do it.
| mofosyne wrote:
| Anyone tried Dendron (https://github.com/dendronhq/dendron)? It
| feels like it could almost become a competitor to Obsidian and
| plus is essentially a vscode plugin, so you get the benefit of
| using vscode as your code editor as well.
|
| Too bad the project has ended as there is no clear approach for
| the Dendron team to make it financially sustainable (with their
| cloud sync subscription, much like Obsidian Sync). But it's
| basically opensource now so hopefully can be forked and the
| lessons learnt from Obsidian be applied to it (e.g. Any folder of
| textfile should be openable under Dendron. Unfortunate at the
| moment you have to initialize a separate repo and then port it
| over)
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I used dendron with vscode and the extension really screwed up
| vscode for me. It seems to hook into a lot of things within
| vscode and created quite a few annoying prompts and added some
| weird markdown previewing issues.
| jddj wrote:
| Interesting. Maybe codium for notes and code for code?
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I used it for a while but I started to have issues of it
| becoming slow. I'm not 100% sure dendron was responsible of it
| but I switched to Joplin. The interesting things was is
| integration with VSCode that I use for coding
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I quickly switched to Dendron from Obsidian because I preferred
| it being open source, and I liked the creator's views on the
| hierarchical search and categorization instead of just a tangle
| of wiki links, and liked the idea of it being a VSCode
| extension and then other extensions would also be available.
|
| I think Dendron is high quality, and encourage everyone
| interested in markdown notes and Obsidian to check it out, and
| watch some of the creator Kevin Slin's introductory and
| overview videos or read the blog posts. He worked for Amazon
| and had to remember too many things and find them quickly, and
| that drove the Dendron hierarchical layout and features for
| managing lots of notes.
|
| But personally, I'm not a big fan of VSCode or markdown; mostly
| what I want is to take quick screenshots and stash them for
| later - "here's how it looked before", "here's where to find
| this option" - and markdown is not great at that, you need to
| open 'markdown preview' to render your notes and see images. So
| you get a VS Code interface, and the editing window and the
| preview window. It's computing pre-WYSIWYG. And no way to draw
| on images like in OneNote. Similar with snippets of code and
| command lines, having to write them in markdown fiddling with
| word wrap and then preview the markdown to see them rendered
| properly in monospace isn't very convenient.
|
| And of course hierarchy isn't free, it depends on me organizing
| and categorising (does this command go in "computers.aws.s3" or
| "software.amazon.s3.cli" or "tickets.12345678-Amazon-s3-client-
| weirdness" ?) which I'm not very committed to.
| hannofcart wrote:
| My notes system is:
|
| On desktop: Nvim with some markdown plugins plus Goyo
|
| On mobile: Obsidian
|
| Syncthing for sync (though previously I've Dropbox as well for
| the same)
|
| On desktop I find Obsidian's vim mode slightly uncanny valley-
| ish. Close enough to be able to emulate my vim flow. But not
| _quite_ right.
|
| On mobile, I've found Obsidian to be just top class. Though
| admittedly most of my real note taking happens on desktop, on the
| few occassions I've had to jot down something quick on mobile,
| Obsidian app has been perfect.
| twiclo wrote:
| Why not use VimWiki on desktop?
| Loxicon wrote:
| I used to use vimWiki and then changed to normal vim because
| I like netrw and vim-vinegar + Goyo + netrw makes for a
| simpler workflow.
| jbstack wrote:
| I used VimWiki for a couple of years and build up a sizeable
| set of notes with it. Although it seems to have most of the
| features you'd want, in the end it feels a little clunky to
| use in practice. A huge minus for me (at the time; perhaps
| this is fixed now) was the lack of ability to open multiple
| windows / notes simultaneously. I'm not aware of any other
| text editor which lacks that feature.
|
| I since switched to Emacs + Org Roam, and I'm much happier.
| If there's something I don't like or a feature I feel is
| missing, I can either find a plugin for it or just change it
| myself.
| Loxicon wrote:
| +1 for Goyo and markdown.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| So your notes are sprawled across different apps?
| hannofcart wrote:
| Sure, I suppose that's one way to look at it.
|
| From my perspective though, I like that my notes are simple
| plain text files in a single folder whose backup and sync is
| entirely under my control.
|
| This often lets me run grep on my notes to quickly find old
| note topics.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| Can obsidian render and edit the same files you edit with
| nvim?
| BoxFour wrote:
| Obsidian just works on markdown files so seems like it
| shouldn't be a problem
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Yes
| crimsontech wrote:
| Both apps can edit the same notes because Obsidian is just a
| folder with markdown notes in it.
| minzi wrote:
| How are you using syncthing on mobile? I didn't know that was
| even possible.
| cybert wrote:
| It's available on Android but not iOS unfortunately
| pomatic wrote:
| There's a paid (and lite version) available for iOS - I
| just installed it yesterday as it happens! It's called
| Mobius Sync.
| proxycon wrote:
| hey, this is exactly same as my notes setup too!
|
| For neovim markdown plugins my recommendations are SidOfc/mkdx
| and dbridges/vim-markdown-runner.
| mrpotato wrote:
| Mine's close to yours also
|
| desktop: nvim + syncthing + vimwiki (md markup instead of
| default)
|
| mobile: syncthing + Markor[1]
|
| On mobile I have a todo.txt[2] in addition to the vim wiki
| files which are all synced.
|
| All this works pretty well for my personal needs. For work I
| use OneNote because the whole company uses OneNote.
|
| [1] https://f-droid.org/packages/net.gsantner.markor/ [2]
| http://todotxt.org/
| drio0 wrote:
| Which mobile app do you use for todo.txt?
| ta988 wrote:
| Markor does that really well.
| ta988 wrote:
| Give a try to Markor it is much more usable than the mobile
| Obsidian.
| hannofcart wrote:
| Strong disagree.
|
| I have indeed tried Markor and used it for quite a while.
| Atleast several months if not a year. It doesn't hold a
| candle to Obsidian.
|
| Just two things off the top of my head among plenty of
| others:
|
| 1. No live edit mode in Markor. You can either edit or see
| the live preview. (Not sure if that's changed in recent
| times).
|
| 2. Here's the most thoughtful killer feature IMO of the
| Obsidian mobile app: it let's you configure the order of
| formatting tools that appear on the toolbar above the
| keyboard. This let's me put the checkbox edit and indent as
| the most frequent actions on top left. This makes my life so
| much better.
| fsiefken wrote:
| I prefer Obsidian over Logseq as it performs better in lower RAM
| conditions. It would have been nice if it could work with
| AsciiDoc instead of Markdown as I like the syntax better.
| twiclo wrote:
| I decided to start note taking with VimWiki. It's organization is
| the same and has full vim support where Obsidian has partial
| keybindings. I still feel like I'm missing out. Can anyone opine
| on if it's worth switching over?
| taopai wrote:
| Just try it.
|
| Also consider trying Emacs org mode.
| pprotas wrote:
| Don't fall for the trap of note taking tools. At the end of the
| day, if you can write down your thoughts then it does the job.
| Spend less time on thinking about tools and more time on
| writing notes.
|
| At the same time, in my opinion you should feel comfortable in
| your tool. If VimWiki does not suit your needs but you still
| want to use vim (like I do), you could look into
| https://github.com/epwalsh/obsidian.nvim to edit notes in
| neovim, and then view them in Obsidian using :ObsidianOpen. I
| like to have my terminal and Obsidian open side-by-side for
| this workflow.
| logtempo wrote:
| Keep complexity monster away, and don't fear the fear of
| missing out. Does VimWiki suit your needs? If yes, work on real
| problems.
| tester457 wrote:
| Try it. You tried vim which was a large time investment and it
| paid off.
|
| Try Obsidian too, for a week to write down your thoughts. Don't
| even commit to it, just use it to journal for a week to see if
| you like it.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Obsidian is great.
|
| For those looking for an open source alternative (or don't want
| to pay the Obsidian fees for professional usage) check out
| Logseq: https://logseq.com/
| kstrauser wrote:
| Search for "Logseq data loss $current_year" and you'll see
| horror stories of people who did everything exactly right and
| still lost a bunch of data from it. The most recent one I saw
| involved someone getting on a plane and thus losing Internet
| access to the paid syncing service. They did a bunch of work as
| they flew across the country. When they landed and the
| connection resumed, it synced everything back to the pre-
| takeoff state and erased their work.
|
| Logseq is so very close to being exactly what I want, but there
| are way too many tales like that for my comfort. Yes, I could
| come up with something involving Git or rsync or whatever, but
| at that point I've conceded that I don't trust the tool. And if
| I don't trust the tool, I'm not going to use it.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Ouch - I hadn't heard of that so thanks for raising
| awareness.
|
| I'm trialling both with syncthing across multiple machines
| and so far no data loss but I'll make sure backups are in
| place!
| iamjkt wrote:
| Logseq's native sync now has smart merge which I have found
| prevents issues like this.
| rchaud wrote:
| Logseq really needs the ability to add YAML frontmatter
| (title:, date:) to the text files. Every text file created by
| Logseq has a starting bullet point (" - ") because it is an
| outline. But this makes it impossible to render the file as a
| web page in a Markdown-friendly CMS as they all require
| frontmatter at the start of the file.
| recfab wrote:
| It's been a while since I've used Logseq, but IIRC you can
| use yaml front matter. The very first block in the page is
| special and if you enter YAML there, the underlying markdown
| will have that yaml block without any bullet points. It
| renders just like the `foo:: bar` properties.
|
| There was a limitation though that it didn't handle nested
| YAML. (Obsidian has the same problem I believe though I
| haven't tested recently)
| basedrum wrote:
| I prefer logseq over obsidian
| olenczyk wrote:
| Can you elaborate? I need to chose one among those two
| rabbitofdeath wrote:
| Just last week I fully committed to Obsidian with the git sync
| plugin. It took some fiddling and a bit of trust to sync 4 years
| of notes. (Previously I was just using Sublime Text and my notes
| folder as a project hooked up to my gitea instance.) But now, its
| like second nature and I'm looking for neat plugins that you cant
| live with out.
| TSiege wrote:
| Can you share a link to the git plugin you're referring to?
| llimllib wrote:
| I use this one, and I presume they do too:
| https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git
| rabbitofdeath wrote:
| This is the one - it works great. I also use it in iOS, but
| I needed to use the Working Copy workaround to get the
| initial sync complete. https://forum.obsidian.md/t/mobile-
| setting-up-ios-git-based-...
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Obsidian is a killer app and I've moved all my note taking to it
| over the past few months. The app is top notch in my opinion and
| with git integration you basically get a free Evernote with no
| restrictions and control over your data. I would say the one
| downside is that it's only "free" for those that have the
| technical knowhow to setup git sync. I tried converting my
| stepfather to using it but he didn't like that you had to pay for
| sync and wasn't technical enough to setup git integration and
| maintain it.
| dustincoates wrote:
| I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years
| of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote
| notes helped a lot).
|
| The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my
| mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users."
| I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten
| seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just
| checking out the app. And, please, don't buy one of these $500
| Obsidian courses. It's just not necessary.
|
| With that said, I have started extending out my own setup, and
| one of the plugins that I like the most is DataView, which allows
| me to automatically link to other notes, or pull in tagged text,
| or to-do items. It has allowed me to really take daily recaps
| reliably for the first time ever, because, even if I have nothing
| to write, I at least have a repository of what I was doing for
| that day.
| rthkljlkrj wrote:
| The plugin ecosystem for obsidian is _insanely large_ , and I
| say that not in a good way.
|
| I agree, just ignore all of that. Plain files and internal
| links, that's it.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| More specifically, Obsidian shows me, at this moment, 1382
| plugins available from the app itself. Some more are probably
| not available there. And an insanely large amount of them
| also seems to be already broken, abandoned or having a rather
| poor quality or just duplicating each other's features with a
| slight twist in flavor.
|
| I guess, it's now big enough, that having some pre-selection
| of high quality-plugins accessible from within the app, would
| make sense.
| rchaud wrote:
| It feels like WordPress. Core product is solid but minimal in
| features, expectation is for plugin developers to provide the
| rest. WordPress was FOSS though.
| jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote:
| Because who doesn't love running random github repos in a root
| process?
| aosaigh wrote:
| No mention of Github repos in the parent comment.
| jdksmdbtbdnmsm wrote:
| All Obsidian plugins are just cloned github repos
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Really? Shit that's terrible. I need to review what
| plugins I'm using.
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| 100% agree. The barrier to using Obsidian can seem
| intimidatingly high before jumping in. I tried and failed a few
| different systems before I just started using the daily notes
| as scratch pads. From there, I figured out more and more slowly
| over time. I'm now at a kind of system that works for me, but
| probably won't work for anyone else.
|
| This is the way.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Obsidian has the sama problem as Bullet Journaling does.
|
| It's really simple and not complicated unless you want it to
| be, but then you watch a video about one Mega User who is
| _really_ into the System and get demoralised by the amount of
| crap and whizbangs you see.
| ssgodderidge wrote:
| yeah exactly. The problem is that the Mega Users are the
| ones who are most likely to share their system. People who
| say "I just use X as a notepad" aren't as likely to share.
| rchaud wrote:
| Why would anybody get demoralized? Does the tool get the
| job done or not?
|
| Your goals are not the same as the person making a Youtube
| video. Nobody's going to put down "Highly Proficient with
| Obsidian" on their resume in hopes of it giving them an
| edge in the job search.
| klum wrote:
| Agreed on the power-user stuff and the courses. I use Obsidian
| in a simple way, but it's nice that the extensibility and the
| community is there.
|
| Unlike VS Code, Obsidian is (for me) an _actual_ example of an
| Electron app that feels fast. The quick open /command palette
| features are more responsive than similar features in native
| Mac apps I've tried.
|
| As mentioned elsewhere, users frequently ask for Obsidian to be
| open source, but the fully transferrable file format is enough
| for me. I don't think most of those drive-by open-source
| commenters have thought about the work that goes into running
| an open-source project.
|
| In other words, on some theoretical plane I'd like Obsidian to
| be an open-source native app, but in reality those things
| haven't bothered me at all. The app is as simple as I want it
| to be, as complex as I need it to be, and it's regularly
| improved in a thoughtful way.
| georgejfrick wrote:
| You can paste images now as of the latest version; it was
| driving me crazy as well. Even in older versions you can drag
| an image in but that was an extra step.
| rubslopes wrote:
| > users frequently ask for Obsidian to be open source, but
| the fully transferrable file format is enough for me.
|
| Completely agree. Not everything needs to be open-sourced. If
| I'm looking for a framework/library to build something upon,
| sure, I'll prioritize open-source. But -- and this may be a
| hot take -- for a consumer-oriented software, sometimes a
| great vision trumps community development.
| behnamoh wrote:
| > Unlike VS Code, Obsidian is (for me) an actual example of
| an Electron app that feels fast. The quick open/command
| palette features are more responsive than similar features in
| native Mac apps I've tried.
|
| Dude, VSCode is a freaking IDE, running all sorts of
| processes in the background (at least one terminal, language
| servers, type checkers, linters and formatters, possibly
| extensions, etc.) whereas Obsidian is just a text editor.
| klum wrote:
| Not arguing with that. In discussions about Electron, there
| are often comments along the lines of "Electron apps can be
| fast if done right, just look at VS Code" and that just
| doesn't hold true for me.
| packetlost wrote:
| You definitely can't just jump into zettelkasten, but it is
| actually used in various modified forms. I've been doing so for
| years and know of a number of others that do as well.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| On the other hand, I'm a professional academic, and I haven't
| ever met a highly productive scholar who uses ZK.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| As a heavy OneNote user, I was stymied by Obsidian for a long
| while as the mental models are different. OneNote is best
| thought of as an actual paper notebook, where pages can
| inserted, re-arranged to one's liking, images pasted into the
| page, etc.. Obsidian is better thought of as a sophisticated
| overlay to the file system. It's ultimately more powerful than
| OneNote, but does have some frustrating limitations for the
| OneNote/Notion/Scrivener user as not being able to manually
| sort notes. For now I'm using both but ultimately will switch
| to Obsidian as it develops (hopefully) further.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I tried it a few times but had to stop because:
|
| 1. Obsidian imposes its own take on Markdown. For instance, why
| can't we disable "indent using the tab key"? It's so annoying
| to accidentally indent/quote text while pressing tab to do
| something like "accept autocomplete suggestion". Obsidian's
| response to users' complaints about this was not reassuring:
| https://forum.obsidian.md/t/option-to-disable-tab-to-indent/...
|
| 2. I had to install tens of plugins to give Obsidian the
| features I needed, which felt too hacky and unstable in the
| long term.
|
| 3. I don't want to learn a new set of keyboard shortcuts for
| simple things like expand/collapse the sidebars. You can
| customize lots of things but at that point, why not stay in
| your IDE (e.g., VSCode) and simply add Vim Wiki extenions?
| awill wrote:
| Agree. I generally dislike relying on a bunch of third party
| plugins. Over time they don't get updated and you're left
| with a mess.
| behnamoh wrote:
| This, and also since they're not built by one team/dev,
| sometimes they don't play well with each other.
| woleium wrote:
| sounds like we need an opinionated supported remix
| version? Seems like there are a few folks here who would
| get involved...
| dsp_person wrote:
| For #2 could you share some of the plugins you needed?
| behnamoh wrote:
| Off the top of my head, things like "Paste URL into Text"
| (which VSCode Markdown supports out-of-the-box), an
| extension for being able to define shortcuts for heading 1,
| 2, etc., connecting to Zotero, converting links to Markdown
| before exporting PDF, exporting PDF using pandoc templates,
| "Zoom" in sections while hiding the other sections (it was
| a neat extension), etc.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > I don't want to learn a new set of keyboard shortcuts for
| simple things like expand/collapse the sidebars. You can
| customize lots of things but at that point, why not stay in
| your IDE (e.g., VSCode) and simply add Vim Wiki extenions?
|
| This is what I used to do with Vim, but I had two problems:
| (1) I would often forget to `git push`, (2) I wanted to
| easily access notes on my phone.
|
| Importing into Obsidian and paying for Sync made both issues
| go away.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Could write your notes to a dir in your iCloud folder or
| equivalent; bind keys to the dir in netrw or whatever your
| choice of filetree explorer plugin
| singhrac wrote:
| What were the features that you needed from Obsidian?
| muwtyhg wrote:
| > Obsidian's response to users' complaints about this was not
| reassuring
|
| This is my main worry about choosing Obsidian for the long
| run. The devs seem very opinionated about a system that is
| meant to be customizable to each user's workflow.
|
| Their Vim implementation does not support setting hard line
| breaks, making modal editing a little funky (every paragraph
| is just one long line and any action working on a line will
| work on the entire paragraph, such as "dd").
|
| Came from Vim-Wiki (and Org-mode and some other short-lived
| note-taking systems) and I think the plugin hell of Vim/Emacs
| (or VS Code) is much worse than Obsidian. You can get by
| without any addons in Obsidian as it's built to be a
| notetaking system first, not a general text editor. You can't
| do the same with Vim (hence needing "Vim-Wiki" plugin).
| rchaud wrote:
| I've also noticed that Obsidian hides text automatically
| inside of <div> or other HTML elements if they contain the
| property "markdown='1'", thereby blocking you from writing
| perfectly valid HTML inside of a Markdown file which was
| designed to be HTML-compatible.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Is the markdown=1 attribute part of the HTML spec? I
| can't find any indication that it is.
| akkad33 wrote:
| What note taking system do you recommend ?
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I don't use Obsidian, but I use wikilinks in markdown.
|
| Recently I wrote a lightweight alternative to Dataview, which
| renders directly into the markdown itself. It's a lightweight
| standalone script that embeds any references and builds those
| "recaps" in a more portable way.
|
| In case anyone is interested, let me know:
| https://twitter.com/matteing/status/1746598313745371263
| JHonaker wrote:
| Yea, throw the link to it out here. I was about to write
| something similar, so you'd save me the trouble! ;)
| ddanieltan wrote:
| OP here. Absolutely! I didn't want to go too in-depth into
| plugins because I wanted to emphasise Obsidian's basic features
| but DataView is also a plugin that I love!
| nullandvoid wrote:
| If you want to setup a zettelkasten like system for free, with
| minimal effort / requirement on any plugins (just "templater"
| will be helpful) I highly recommend
| https://reasonabledeviations.com/2022/04/18/molecular-notes-...
|
| No affiliation, just a happy user for over a year now.
|
| If you take kindle highlights when you read, the
| https://github.com/hadynz/obsidian-kindle-plugin plugin is
| amazing for auto generating source files with those highlights
| in (and other templated sections you wish to include in a
| review).
| bloopernova wrote:
| I tried zettlekasten and found I just didn't _use_ it enough to
| justify the effort involved.
|
| Instead I just have an org-mode folder that I dump documents
| in. I search across them with Deft in Emacs. Sure, the links
| between documents can be incredibly useful to some people, but
| I've found I'm more chaotic than that.
| safety1st wrote:
| I have read a bit about Zettelkasten and watched a video
| explaining it, and to me it feels like a pretty random
| collection of mostly good ideas on organizing information.
|
| Right up there with drinking coffee on exactly two specific
| days per week... https://zettelkasten.de/posts/practical-
| integration-deep-wor...
|
| I think this stuff is esoteric and personal enough that we
| are under no obligation to follow it to the letter.
| jslakro wrote:
| Esoteric and personal are both adjectives I didn't find
| before to describe what Zettelkasten represents. That kind
| of thing that you need to visit again and again until you
| realize it doesn't fit to your own way of thinking
| kstrauser wrote:
| I've written off Zettelkasten. It's not for me. It seems to
| be optimized for turning notes into publications, but that's
| not my own goal behind taking notes. For me, good ol' wiki
| style interlinking is much more useful (and vastly easier). I
| use the "Map of Content" ideas to have a few quick indexes,
| like "Current work projects" or "orders from restaurants we
| like", but that's about the most formal organization I do.
|
| If I had a career in writing, I might seriously consider
| Zettelkasten. But even then, I'd be cautious with its output.
| I've seen some results that looked like it was great for
| shoving words onto paper, so long as you don't worry about
| the quality of the end result.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| I do write for a living, and I found Zettelkasten too high
| friction to be worth using. Plus, as Cal Newport has
| argued, it solves the wrong problem. The whole pitch of ZK
| is that you can jump into your notes and quickly generate
| new ideas. But experienced writers and researchers rarely
| struggle to come up with ideas--rather, the real challenge
| is execution.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Huh, interesting! That makes sense, though.
|
| We're all suckers for processes that promise to solve all
| your problems, aren't we?
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| I use links, but only when important. And when I notice a
| really important group of pages I make an index page.
| smusamashah wrote:
| As a OneNote person for two years now, how do you deal with the
| added friction of linear notes in Obsidian (or any other
| plaintext based tool)?
|
| In OneNote I can just dump down _anything literally anywhere_
| (because each page is an infinite canvas). It feels as easy as
| having a pen and random free papers. But with my notes
| increasing, I do want to have some way to manage this data
| which OneNote fails at. I can do basic text /OCR search but
| that's it. There is no linking etc. All note management is
| manual.
|
| I usually search for an actual open source OneNote alternative
| (with easy jottable infinite canvases) every 6 months or so.
| Obsidian has added Canvases but they are definitely not a
| OneNote alternative at the moment.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I never understood the appeal of infinite canvas. Something
| about it makes me feel like I'm not in full control of my
| notes/documents. I like it when the information is clearly
| structured.
| smusamashah wrote:
| I don't use the width of the canvas, but what I do
| love/appreciate is the way I can click _anywhere_ and start
| writing. It feels as easy as pen and paper. I can go in any
| direction.
|
| It doesn't have to be infinite canvas in practice, just
| allow enough width and length to let you put down your
| cursor anywhere and start writing/pasting images or
| whatever you wish.
| mey wrote:
| Obsidian added a Canvas document type in the last year
| that you may be interested in.
|
| https://obsidian.md/canvas
| smusamashah wrote:
| Tried it and this canvas is nowhere close to OneNote at
| the moment. It is very janky if you do try to use it like
| OneNote.
| vondur wrote:
| I use OneNote at work, but it's just for mostly plain text
| and a few images pasted here and there. However, OneNote
| seems to get really flaky when the Notebooks themselves
| become too big or have too many PDF attachments inserted.
| dustincoates wrote:
| I ultimately just didn't end up missing it as much as
| enjoying what I gained. I do miss how in OneNote I could keep
| a list of study questions next to the notes, but it's okay
| that I don't have it in the end, because I'm taking better
| notes in Obsidian.
| KolenCh wrote:
| One tip I'd have is to go easy on plugins. One can try to
| explores what are available, but when committing (to have it
| enabled and relying on it) be cautious about its implications
| on performance and startup time (there is a setting that can
| show you plugin load time at every startup.)
|
| And as you scales the number of plugins and files, test it on
| multiple platforms.
|
| P.S. I learn this the hard way that each time I open Obsidian
| on iPhone (14 Pro which is not slow) it will hangs indefinitely
| without being able to open a file. On iPadOS it is ok albeit
| slow to start. I suspect it is related to having too many files
| (including git and git sub modules) inside and relying on
| iCloud sync. But basically I tested out things works great on
| Mac without constantly checking how well it works on iPhone and
| then now I'm in a situation it's difficult to roll back some of
| the decisions I made.
| Jakob wrote:
| iCloud removes files from local storage randomly and
| downloading them again is very slow and gets stuck often.
|
| I think that is the main reason why obsidian hangs at the
| start on the iPhone.
|
| I have not yet figured out, how to keep iCloud files reliably
| on local storage on iOS. It seems independent of free storage
| and file size and is driving me mad.
|
| Very sad that Apple does not succeed in syncing files. The
| same issue was there with iTools, mobile me, and now iCloud.
| KolenCh wrote:
| People using Obsidian Sync said it solves these issues (I
| guess by using a database rather than directly via file
| I/Os.)
|
| There are other solutions via plugins too. E.g. Dropbox,
| Google Drive, or GitHub. There was a post earlier in HN
| which is a reimplementation of Obsidian Sync, but it seems
| their reversed engineering uncovered something not secure
| there and Obsidian soon made a patch breaking that. There
| might be workarounds to fix it, but I haven't closely
| follow it.
|
| When I have the time to do the refactoring and cleaning, I
| will probably choose one of these alternatives (or even an
| alternative of Obsidian if there are better solutions for
| me.)
| lolive wrote:
| At one moment, WorkingCopy (on iOS) was considered a
| valid option for syncing Obsidian vaults.
| fzil wrote:
| > And, please, don't buy one of these $500 Obsidian courses.
|
| It's weird how there's even a large enough market for all of
| these in the first place.
| rchaud wrote:
| It started with Notion and Roam. There's a whole cottage
| industry of courses designed to make you "master" these
| tools. A lot of their users are in school or university, and
| given that the marketing of these tools is all about
| improving productivity, I can see why those courses sell.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| "I'm 99% convinced that no one actually _understands_
| zettelkasten"
|
| Fixed that for you ;)
|
| For real, anyone interested should go read the original book
| (How to Take Smart Notes[1]) and you learn that it's not about
| creating backlinks between your notes (that's just a wiki or
| personal knowledge base). It's about capturing ideas inspired
| by your reading, etc. and linking them other ideas.
|
| Yes, building your own personal knowledge base can be very
| powerful, but that's something different.
|
| [1] https://a.co/d/5Ntl43P
| 121789 wrote:
| That was one of the worst books I've ever read. I went into
| it expecting practical advice and found mostly vague
| hyperbolic promises of the magical benefits. If the
| hypothesis was that this note taking method produces lower
| effort, higher quality output, then the author either didn't
| use the system or the book is evidence against its
| effectiveness
| kstrauser wrote:
| _Thank you._ Those are my thoughts exactly. The title was
| wrong: it should 've been "Why to Take Smart Notes". I'd
| already decided I was interested before I ever bought the
| book and I wish it hadn't wasted 3/4 of pages trying to
| further convince me. I finished it and still had no idea
| how to practically implement the magical system it
| described.
|
| I've also never read a book so packed with redundancy.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Zettelkasten was created for a world which didn't have
| computers.
|
| People are cargo-culting it today without thinking if it still
| makes sense.
|
| Zettelkasten author would not have created it today, because it
| makes no sense when you have much more efficient ways to
| index/search information with a computer.
| Multicomp wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your thoughts on your favorite notetaking app
| OP, it's more than I've done for mine. I'm glad it works for you,
| the in-between applications trying to do notetaking is a pain.
|
| I settled on OneNote because I'm always trying to capture context
| with my notes, codify my knowledge. Usually that means
| screenshots, handwriting, file copies, rarely video or audio
| embeddings.
|
| I'm not going to try to convince you to use onenote, I want to
| instead complain about how this makes me boring and uncool, I see
| how trendy/popular the 'markdown files plus some goodies'
| notetaking applications are, but somehow I just don't get why
| those have enough ROI for my usecase, but still, my ego of not
| being a cool 10x developer who uses only certified organic grass-
| fed markdown files for my notes means I write rant comments like
| this.
|
| Anyways, that's much ado about nothing on my part, again, thanks
| for sharing!
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Speaking of boring, my entire life runs on Apple Notes.
| Everything to-dos, from family, kids, work, car, etc. I am just
| not sure how to migrate all of my 2,000 plus notes on to a new
| system. Plus with limited mobile data signal, I'm not sure if
| apps like Obsidian will work.
| pantulis wrote:
| People have reported success using Exporter, which is
| reasonably priced.
|
| http://falcon.star-lord.me/exporter
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Thanks! Will look into it.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| This might have been necessary at some point but if you
| sync your notes with icloud then they can be exported by
| logging into privacy.apple.com and clicking "request a copy
| of your data"
|
| You can also get your icloud drive and photos this way.
| Hoefner wrote:
| Also Obsidian has Importer plugin for Apple Notes
|
| https://help.obsidian.md/import/apple-notes
| drio0 wrote:
| Which you need a Mac to run
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure OP with their 2000 notes in Apple Notes
| has a Mac.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I just moved all of my stuff _into_ Notes.
|
| It's Good Enough. Other tools have a million cool extra
| features, but in practice most of those just give me an
| excuse to screw around with the tool instead of work with the
| information inside it.
|
| Notes isn't flashy. Howver, it does all of the things I truly
| _need_ such an app to do. So fine.
|
| It also has the huge, free feature that I can share notes
| with my wife and we can edit them together. That came in
| handy over Christmas with our shared shopping list.
| FredPret wrote:
| I once had a job where I needed tons of notes on hundreds of
| clients and dozens of subjects. Detailed technical notes with
| screenshots and code snippets and names and birthdays and to-do
| lists.
|
| I used OneNote. It worked brilliantly.
|
| Until my notebook file corrupted.
|
| Obsidian does the same job, but I miss the tabs. At least it's
| all text files - no proprietary files to corrupt.
| Feathercrown wrote:
| Obsidian has tabs, you can right click --> open in new tab
| FredPret wrote:
| Yes but OneNote has tabs along the top and down the side.
|
| Obsidian's tabs along the top show open documents, whereas
| with OneNote it's more a placeholder for more data.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Lovehate OneNote; the easy paste and type and draw, all
| WSYWIG, is great. But it feels like a place to lose notes and
| never find them again. "OneNote for Windows 10" gives a weird
| hierarchy view of notebooks on the left, which slides into
| folders and pages; "OneNote" shows the same data as a
| dropdown list of notebooks at the top, tabs along the top for
| folders and tabs down the right for pages; why so different?
|
| And it's obsessed with slurping your data up to Microsoft. If
| you want to stick with an older (unsupported) classic Desktop
| OneNote, you get a modal dialog box every. single. time. you.
| open. it. saying "Get more out of OneNote. A newer version of
| OneNote is now available for free. Go to www.onenote.com to
| download."
|
| On the plus side, if you do use Microsoft Cloud storage then
| you can query and work with the OneNote data through the MS
| Graph REST API: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/graph/integrate-with-oneno...
|
| So you can programatically add and update content in pages in
| a shared team notebook, for example. And because it "runs" in
| MS cloud it supports things like asking the cloud services to
| "screenshot this webpage for me and add it as a note" and
| "extract content from this website and add it".
| FredPret wrote:
| It's a brilliant product except for everything Microsoft-y
| about it
| pomatic wrote:
| I love the way OneNote handles images - and the ability to
| include ink annotations. I wish there was a FOSS equivalent on
| Linux with a similar UI experience (Obsidian image handling is
| incredibly clunky), although the improved availability of
| various exporters from OneNote makes me less leery about
| committing to a proprietary database format and the risks
| associated with potential dataloss from a random bug or
| database corruption.
| Bo0kerDeWitt wrote:
| I was an Evernote subscriber for a time, then I asked: Why am I
| paying just to save notes? So I switched to plain old text files.
| After a while, on a whim, I tried Obsidian, and I love it! I find
| the Android app very responsive, and with the files saved
| locally, it's future-proof.
|
| I don't pay for syncing or anything. If I need a note on my PC
| from my phone, I send it via Bluetooth. It's a system that works
| for me.
| innethread wrote:
| What are people's opinions on Obsidian over Logseq?
| PetitPrince wrote:
| Logseq is more opinionated than Obsidian: - It's an outliner,
| meaning you don't have paragraph but collapsible block. - It's
| focused on journaling. The default view when you open the app
| is a journal that's internally a list of all `<date>.md`
| (today's file is automatically created). - Backlink are built-
| in instead of being a plugin (albeit an official one). It's
| automatically displayed at the bottom of the page, meaning I
| can have a [[SecretProject]] page and have a list of all
| relevant blocks/page in one go (in LogSeq, all tags are regular
| pages, so I put a #SecretProject page in the top of my page) -
| Obsidian ecosystem is massively bigger - LogSeq is FOSS (AGPL),
| Obsidian is not. I cannot (or rather, should not) use Obsidian
| at work (but nothing mechanically prevents you), so I'm using
| LogSeq. - I'm not clear about LogSeq funding
| boiler_up800 wrote:
| A friend has a very popular post on obsidian templates. Never
| really followed it until he told me it was the most visited post
| on his site by a large margin,
| https://dannb.org/blog/2022/obsidian-daily-note-template/
| sgt wrote:
| Apple just needs to add Markdown to Notes and it would be the
| perfect app.
|
| Right now I am making do with creating little sections where I
| put monospaced fonts, but it's not ideal. I just need to plop
| down code between my notes once in a while, and Markdown's ```
| makes that very easy.
| drio0 wrote:
| I don't have a Mac so I couldn't access my Notes natively, or
| export it to use elsewhere.
|
| Another reason stopping me from using apple notes is that their
| search sucks (both within note and across all notes)
| kstrauser wrote:
| I agree. I've considered trying to use Keyboard Maestro to
| implement an ersatz Markdown mode, like "replace '##<space>'
| with 'trigger the Set Heading Format menu'" or "replace ```
| with 'trigger the Monostyled format menu'".
|
| Huh. Having actually written that out, that should be easy. I
| know what I'm doing this morning.
| sgt wrote:
| Please do share the outcome. I believe there is interest in
| this. Apple Notes is always there and convenient, which pulls
| me back.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Welp, I did it. I can share the macro if needed, but it
| ended up exactly as I described it. I also made macros for
| #, ##, ###, and --- while I was at it.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Btw, I also like the CEO's[1] writing and philosophy. I think he
| is also active here on Hacker News. One such is "File over
| app"[2] which I have sent to quite a few friends, kids, to read
| and think over it.
|
| 1. https://stephango.com/about
|
| 2. https://stephango.com/file-over-app
| hoherd wrote:
| I was unaware of this until a few weeks ago, so I'd like to raise
| awareness for anybody who it affects: Obsidian is not FOSS, and
| purchasing a license is required for any work that generates
| revenue at a for-profit company of 2 or more people.
|
| https://obsidian.md/license
|
| Obsidian looks awesome to me, and for a long time I've been
| thinking about adopting it, but this licensing issue caused me to
| back away and look for alternatives. I'm not suggesting that
| paying for software is a bad idea, but the free distribution of
| it led me to believe that it is FOSS, and it is not.
|
| https://obsidian.md/pricing
| brightball wrote:
| The big win for Obsidian here is that everything is just saved
| as markdown, so you're not locked in even with their license.
| arnejenssen wrote:
| What I am wondering about is that although the basic files
| are markdown, some of the plugins might be proprietary. So
| that the part of the contents in the markdown files in effect
| creates a lock-in?
| brightball wrote:
| Potentially. I don't use many of the plugins so I can't say
| with authority.
| AJ007 wrote:
| I would suggest editing and reading the markdown files in
| other editors to make avoid getting "locked in."
|
| You certainly could create your own lock-in by making some
| unique workflow that requires a combination of plug-ins to
| function. The plugins are all third party, some of them are
| just annotating the existing markdown files, some are just
| visual.
| swozey wrote:
| So you only use Obsidian for its vaults/syncing?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| My workflow isn't reliant on Obsidian's plugins, they
| just make stuff easier.
|
| Like having a template for my Daily Note that also
| automatically includes all files tagged #todo using Data
| View. Or a few global shortcuts via Keyboard Maestro that
| open specific notes on Obsidian.
|
| I could maybe whip up a similar system in a day on top of
| any editor that can render Markdown and handle links, but
| now I don't need to.
| georgejfrick wrote:
| No, becasue the plugins are just JavaScript running against
| markdown that generally produce more markdown. You might
| get a plugin that produces an image and that would "stop
| working"; but it hard for the JS to be locked down/etc.
| firecall wrote:
| And also no Synching with a subscription!
|
| When I already have access to the iCloud ecosystem, and Notes
| is excellent across iOS and macOS, I have never really seen
| much point in trying to use Obsidian.
|
| But then maybe I'm missing the point of Obsidian?
| WJW wrote:
| It's entirely possible to just stick your files in dropbox or
| something like that and they sync just fine.
| toss1 wrote:
| I found that trying to sync (Windows Obsidian app <<=>>
| Android Obsidian app) just via a cable would get the files
| over fine, but would not produce usable results, at least
| not without a lot more fiddling that I wanted to do. I was
| hoping that we could simply transfer the folder structure
| over and just have it work, but no such luck.
|
| Evidently it requires not only transfer, but some kind of
| transformation that they do in their cloud, and I'm not
| interested in another cloud subscription, particularly one
| so specific. (Happy to pay for the software & updates, just
| not to maintain the subscription and maintain the concern
| about another connection in the loop)
|
| This was a couple years ago. Perhaps this has changed, or
| there's now a plugin to make such a bidirectional transfer
| work?
|
| TIA for any suggestions!
| nickloewen wrote:
| What were the problems you encountered?
|
| Obsidian creates a hidden directory in your "vault,"
| which contains plugin files, plus metadata about your
| settings, currently opened files, etc. If those settings
| don't work equally well on both systems, that would be a
| hassle. Maybe try copying all the files from inside the
| directory (so that you don't grab that hidden dir when
| you do) instead of grabbing the whole directory.
|
| You might also want to look at the git-obsidian plugin.
| It takes a little setup, but seems to work well once it's
| going.
| hn_burner_2038 wrote:
| I just backup and sync the files with google drive and
| everything works well, but I also don't have any plugins
| installed so I can't vouch for those.
| Levitz wrote:
| There is a popular method which I use. Syncing the vault
| between devices with Syncthing.
|
| It reportedly causes problems if you edit the same file
| in two different places at the same time, it will
| generate a conflict when saving since the files won't
| match, doesn't affect me in my workflow (if I have access
| to my desktop I won't use it on my phone) but YMMV
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Syncthing is a wonderful predict with a short but steep
| learning curve.
|
| Once you actually understand how sync works in details it
| does wonders.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I think it depends on what you use notes for. Just a
| scratchpad of random, mostly ephemeral ideas or simple
| folders? Notes is probably good enough.
|
| Obsidian is designed for those people that want to minmax
| their note taking and find reasons to increase productivity
| by providing robust linking and search capabilities within
| any document. The photos in the OP are a good example of how
| many people use Obsidian.
|
| That said, I'm not an expert (never used it personally), but
| that's how I understand it.
| samrolken wrote:
| You can sync just fine without a subscription. As you already
| mentioned iCloud, just put your vault there and get syncing
| for free.
| tester457 wrote:
| The killer feature of Obsidian was the wikilinks, but now
| that other editors are getting that feature it is
| replaceable.
|
| But the other killer feature is avoiding vendor lock-in. With
| some apps your notes are on their servers in an inscrutable
| data format, and some apps don't even let you export without
| paying. With markdown notes on the other hand you can take
| your notes anywhere, sync them with git, dropbox, syncthing,
| etc.
|
| You're not bound to obsidian, and your markdown notes format
| will always be readable, unlike many of today's formats! See
| [1] "LibreOffice is better at reading old Word files than
| Word"
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38906331
| poulpy123 wrote:
| you can use alternative for syncing that are quite well
| integrated even if a bit more complex to set up
| swozey wrote:
| There's a simple git-sync plugin plus you can just stick
| your vault in a cloud service
| runiq wrote:
| I'm syncing using Syncthing, across three devices which are
| only syncing intermittently (home laptop, smartphone, work
| computer), and it appears to work fine. I cannot recall ever
| having a sync conflict. But then again, I'm hardly using any
| plugins in Obsidian.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Mainly I prefer to be able to move my data around. I'm pretty
| sure those formats are really hard to you data out of. I know
| it doesn't seem like an issue now, but it might be if you
| ever decide to leave Apple's Ecosystem. On principle, I will
| not support systems that design their products to lock you
| into platforms.
| spinningarrow wrote:
| While Obsidian may not be FOSS at all, my understanding is that
| in general needing to purchase a license is orthogonal to
| whether something is FOSS - correct?
| Zambyte wrote:
| If you cannot use the software however you wish (including
| for profit) then it is not Free Software. The developers can
| choose to not distribute the software to you unless you pay,
| and they can choose to provide support if you pay (which if
| you're making a profit from their software is a reasonable
| thing to pay for), but with Free Software the developers
| cannot decide how you use it once they have distributed it to
| you.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| It's what caused me to pick it. Selling usage for commercial
| use is a smart move, and I want to ensure the original
| developers are incentivized to keep working on the product.
| Tomte wrote:
| That didn't work so much for Dynalist.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| This one? https://dynalist.io/
|
| Looks like it's still alive and kicking. I guess you're
| probably upset by a lack of updates or something - luckily
| upgrading to a paid plan would be a good way to incentivize
| whoever is developing it to continue working on it, at
| least at the margin.
| Tomte wrote:
| I've never been a customer, I'm using Workflowy.
|
| What you missed is that the paid offer didn't stop the
| developers to lose interest and... start Obsidian!
| KolenCh wrote:
| I made the choice at the time I knew this, and preferred FOSS,
| but the alternatives just wasn't as usable, so in the end I
| still chose this, partly because at least I still have complete
| control over the data (not true for some alternatives.
|
| P.S. my comparison was done probably a few years ago and the
| landscape could have changed quite a bit. One solution I tried
| was a code extension that promised to do something similar. I
| thought it would be good as I use vscode all the time. Then I
| find out it is bad because exactly of that. Obsidian and the
| like is dedicated to notes taking so this single software is
| unambiguously for that task. In vscode there's just too much
| other things going on as distraction.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I think it's pretty likely that a lot of Obsidian users use it
| for their professional activity without paying.
|
| Personally I haven't considered it because of that. I have no
| use for a complex notes app in my private life, and there's no
| way my employer would pay for the subscription.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| > I have no use for a complex notes app in my private life
|
| I thought so too, but then I noticed I was searching the
| internet for the same things over and over again. (Or asking
| it from GPT).
|
| Then I started writing stuff down as I searched it, with a
| sentence or two of my own text + a few tags.
|
| Now I can find stuff directly from Obsidian (or more like
| from the set of markdown files on my drive) instead of having
| to sweep the internet _again_ for the same thing.
| kuter wrote:
| The deal breaker with obsidian for me is that it is not
| opensource. It's great that it's at least using a markdown
| derivative format.
|
| I am using Emacs Org Mode and quite happy with it. You can link
| different files, include images, embed and view LaTeX, encrypt
| your notes with GPG and much more. I think it will stand the test
| of time better than Obsidian which is something I care a lot for
| note taking and journaling.
| jbstack wrote:
| There's also Org Roam which adds some useful ZK-like features
| to Org Mode.
| jpgvm wrote:
| I picked up Obsidian after reading a post by the CEO here. Good
| leadership is usually a sign of a good product and I wasn't
| disappointed.
| igtztorrero wrote:
| Does anyone have a simple and concise manual on how to get the
| most out of Obsidian ?
| ryangs wrote:
| Linking is an exceptionally good idea. It is very transformative
| to how I think about organizing information and doing it with
| Obsidian the past few months has felt great. Besides future
| proofing, I love the speed of processing a simple text format
| like markdown (plus local first) allows. Everything opens
| instantly, which feels very different from things like Google
| docs or Microsoft Word. About the only note tool it doesn't
| replace for me is spreadsheets that use math. There are plugins
| but it doesn't feel quite as clean as Google sheets for this
| purpose.
| stared wrote:
| I really like the calendar plugin - it makes it easy to write
| daily notes, https://github.com/liamcain/obsidian-calendar-
| plugin.
| ncrmro wrote:
| What's the best way to sync iOS app to say git for consuming in
| Linux else where.
|
| It seems like they really want you to use iCloud
| samrolken wrote:
| If you have a git client for iOS like Working Copy, then it's
| pretty straightforward to set it up.
| wey-gu wrote:
| I prefer Logseq :)
| bbx wrote:
| I've tried to like Obsidian for a long time. It had never clicked
| with me, despite it's simple interface and seemingly great
| support.
|
| But I recently finally found a great use case for it: saving code
| snippets. Specifically: code snippets found on Stack Overflow and
| ChatGPT.
|
| You can simply select the answer (usually written in markdown),
| copy and paste it into Obsidian, and it retains all the
| formatting, and even applies language-specific color schemes.
|
| Here is an example: https://i.imgur.com/GBFr431.png
|
| It's absolutely brilliant.
| pers0n wrote:
| If you want an open source alternative use Zettlr or Logseq
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody here's mentioning AppFlowy. Is Logseq that
| much better?
| stemlord wrote:
| Obsidian is too clunky for a daily driver text editor. Compare to
| Sublime. Obsidian also sometimes breaks. Last week it gave me a
| fully white window, I couldn't use it at all despite a reinstall.
| It should be ported to a C lang or similar.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I've recently moved from vimwiki to Agenda
| (https://www.agenda.com) because I wanted a "proper" native app,
| and have been quite happy with it. Logseq and Obsidian always
| feel unnatural either on desktop or mobile (Obsidian, in
| particular, has a mobile UX that never seems to have full parity
| with the desktop one, and that is very painful to use on an iPad)
| georgejfrick wrote:
| I have moved to Obsidian after One Note, Notion, and Trilium. I
| learned something from using each; but ultimately I wanted the
| portability of Markdown and with Obsidian I can always fall back
| on the root folder container all my markdown. (which I backup) I
| can share my user flow if it helps people...
|
| 1. You can turn on support for other file types, so you can move
| source code/etc in.
|
| 2. I have the Day Planner plugin; but it's just JavaScript; so
| mine is highly customized and uses various sources to generate me
| a daily calendar/planner in the morning.
|
| 3. I don't use Zettelkasten; but all of those systems have
| something to learn from them in regards to organization. I have a
| setup I like; but with a personal rule that if I'm not finding
| something or I feel stuck; I spend time reorganizing.
|
| 4. I use tags a lot now; it would take an entire blog to explain
| why - but the TLDR is that I switched to focusing on WHEN and
| TAGS instead of trying to perfectly put the right content in the
| right place.
|
| 5. I'm able to use Obsidian on a plane really well - tablet on
| tray, K380 on lap. I'm frequently getting out 2,000 words on a
| flight.
|
| 6. I manage my work (software dev), campaigns (D&D), personal
| project, etc all on Obsidian. I even have some code in it when
| appropriate and its nice.
|
| 7. !!! Templates. I've started creating and using templates. So
| if I want a checklist, ctrl+shift+t/cmd+shift+t and I choose one
| of my markdown templates and it gets inserted. I currently have
| "meeting", "1:1", "Pomo Checklist", "Campaign Session".
|
| 8. I mentioned this; but I don't hesitate to go into plugins and
| just change their code to do what I want; it is one of my
| favorite features.
| paradite wrote:
| Currently using Joplin with self-hosted NextCloud WebDAV.
|
| It has a couple of minor UI/UX issues, even with the plugins.
|
| Anyone tried both? How does Obsidian compare against Joplin?
| aprdm wrote:
| I tried both and am using Joplin. Has less fuss around it and I
| focus more on simply taking notes .. the syncing is also
| cheaper and you can use for work
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| I've been using Joplin for over a year after spending too
| much time testing all of the options out there. Joplin's
| syncing sealed the deal for me, free and it works well.
| Obsidian was something like $100 USD a year just to get
| things synced to my phone.
| weberer wrote:
| I've tried both. No UI issues to complain about in Joplin. But
| Obsidian seems to use its own style of title bars, and it uses
| the GTK file chooser when my OS is using KDE.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I moved from Joplin to Obsidian pretty much only because
| Obsidian has all the files as regular files.
|
| Joplin has its own weird-ass database system.
|
| It was also really janky 4 years ago when I used it, might've
| gotten better since.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| I like Obsidian, but I really dislike the annoying design-
| philosophy which restricts my usage.
|
| For example, it's not possible to open any random folder with it,
| you need to first register the folder as a vault, and then can
| open the vault. It also doesn't handle file links under Linux
| correctly. For whatever reason, any link pointing to a file
| inside the vault, disappears. Probably some flaw in their file
| system-abstraction, but that made several workflows for me
| impossible. And then there is the problem with every vault having
| its own isolated configuration. Basically, every vault has a
| folder ".obsidian" which contains all installed plugins,
| configurations and whatever. For any new vault, you need to link
| this folder, and for whatever reason they are still unable to let
| obsidian handle this automatically.
|
| Overall, Obsidian is designed to have mainly one, or at least
| just a very low number of vaults. But considering how poor
| obsidian scales with file numbers, this is not working well for
| every one. For me, this removed any motivation to use Obsidian
| for everything.
| borg16 wrote:
| obsidian is good for what it does, but in the last month I saw
| someone share heynote[1] with me that I have grown fond of as a
| support to my obsidian note taking
|
| [1] https://heynote.com
| keep320909 wrote:
| I prefer Logseq. It does not need plugins for basic things (PDF
| annotations). And is completely opensource with transparent
| development on Github. And I find its workflow much better.
|
| Obsidian is commercial closed source app with subscription. Free
| for personal use only, commercial license is $50/year. I am not
| going to build my PIM around proprietary tool with subscription!
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Wait, really? I thought it was going to be like $300, $50 would
| be a steal for the ability to use the Templater plugin to
| generate all of my business reports from YAML.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> I am not going to build my PIM around proprietary tool with
| subscription!_
|
| If your concern is about the lack of a clear migration path,
| Obsidian vaults are just folders with markdown files, which can
| be used with absolutely anything, you can literally use them in
| Emacs or VSCode if you want. The most popular PDF annotation
| plugin is AGPL-3 licensed and its format is also transparent so
| you can migrate to something else.
| keep320909 wrote:
| > which can be used with absolutely anything
|
| Not really, markdown has tons of tiny implementation details.
| And I can not use PDF annotation plugin in Emacs...
| orbital-decay wrote:
| I'm saying that because I actually tried. There are
| Obsidian and customizable markdown modes/plugins for both
| Emacs and VSCode. My notes are usually cross-referenced,
| have pictures, occasional Mermaid diagrams, and are often
| heavy on math and code.
|
| _> markdown has tons of tiny implementation details. And I
| can not use PDF annotation plugin in Emacs_
|
| The same can be said about any other open format, I guess.
| There's no free lunch, you're always locked in by the
| implementation/workflow details, and have to write actual
| code (or use the code written by someone else) to migrate
| off to a different tool. The point is to not be locked by
| the format obfuscation or the storage.
| keep320909 wrote:
| I have text notes that go back to 1997, PDF annotation
| notes back to 2003. I use PDF annotations for books,
| articles and webpages (save to PDF). About 70 gigabytes
| of annotated PDFs at this point.
|
| I need to be absolutely sure PDF annotation tool will be
| around in a year 2050! Obsidian may withdraw their
| subscription offer at any time! Or raise subscription to
| $10000 per year (someone here says much higher price
| would be a steal!). I will always be able to run Logseq
| PDF annotator! Maybe in virtual machine. Or I will patch
| it (I have source code!!!). I have control over it!
|
| And I really really hate fiddling with plugins. I was
| never much of Vim/Emacs guy for this reasons (prefer
| integrated IDEs such Idea). Logseq just works without
| setting up dozens of plugins and scripts. I use vanilla
| version with two plugins (video timestamp annotations and
| extra theme).
| poulpy123 wrote:
| If you don't need the extensive extension library of obsidian
| and want an open source tool, I would advise for Joplin. Tthe
| philosophy of logseq is completely different of obsidian (and
| joplin), being centered on lists instead of documents
| keep320909 wrote:
| Logseq is journaling app with graphs. Notes are not organized
| in folders, but tags. I find journaling much better. I never
| procrastinate deciding into what category/folder/doc notes
| should fit. I just put everything into journal and fluently
| refactor as time goes.
| aprdm wrote:
| Can you expand how you refactor ?
| keep320909 wrote:
| Take bullet point, and move it to new page. Or extract
| all mentions of tag into single page. There are some
| basic hotkeys and commands.
|
| Refactoring is perhaps strong word, more like mouse
| dragging and copy&paste. It just feels like refactoring
| code. I can move things around without worrying something
| disappears or gets forgotten. I can also leave things
| half finished, without negative effects on readability
| and discoverability.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Joplin having data in a db is a non-starter for me. The flat-
| file nature of Logseq makes it much easier for me to
| script/mine/garden my digital garden.
| aprdm wrote:
| Hm really ? It easily exports to markdown, and scripting
| against sqlite is very straightforward too
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| The impedance feels unnecessary.
|
| I want my data checked into git, and directly accessible.
| I don't feel like custom schemas and database drivers, as
| a user, do anything but make the operational loop
| painful.
|
| I can quickly use any mdast library/toolkits and some
| terrible shell scripts to make anything possible in
| moments.
| aprdm wrote:
| I guess it depends the person, dealing with sqlite +
| python doesn't need dependencies or custom drivers and is
| easy to do/easier to manage for me than bash scripts
| bongripper wrote:
| > Knowledge is a mosaic crafted from interconnected ideas.
|
| source?
| geokon wrote:
| Not to put to down the author, just trying to understand it
| better - But the tasks described in the link seem a bit trivial.
| I can already write a Asciidoc file, tag it, and add links to
| other .adoc files. Are tools like Obsidian/Logseq just adding a
| layer of tools on top of that to search and sort files based on
| tags/dates/etc.?
|
| I keep plenty of notes in asciidoc and orgmode files, so I'm
| genuinely curious to hear from someone with experience. I've
| tried running Logseq and didn't really get what I was supposed to
| do...
| rocky_raccoon wrote:
| What is the best option for cross-device syncing when you're
| using, e.g.
|
| - an iPhone - Google Workspace (+ Google Drive) - Multiple
| desktops/laptops - Dropbox
|
| Is there a single solution that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I'm using https://github.com/vrtmrz/obsidian-livesync with IBM
| cloudant as described by the documentation. It handle my
| android phone, a windows laptop, a windows desktop and a linux
| desktop
| hiq wrote:
| A few weeks ago I started splitting knowledge between that which
| is worthy enough (for me) to remember via flashcards and spaced
| repetition, and that which I don't need to even write down
| anywhere. Meaning, in practice, that I don't feel the need to
| have a proper note-taking system. I just need proper flashcards,
| which I already have in Anki.
|
| I just started this split so maybe I'll come back to it,
| realizing limitations I'm not aware of yet, but at least for now
| I feel way better not having a proper note-taking workflow.
|
| Compared with Zettelkasten-based systems, this might make it
| harder to add connections between pieces of knowledge, but I
| never got around to actually using a Zettelkasten so I am not
| entirely sure what I'm missing. On the other hand, one's brain is
| IMHO the best way to connect pieces of knowledge together, and
| recalling the vertices frequently might be enough to recall the
| edges of this knowledge graph as well.
|
| I haven't seen this (lack of) "approach" mentioned before so I'm
| curious if I'm alone with this realization and mistaken somehow.
| MichaelNolan wrote:
| You're not alone. My "note taking" is essentially what you
| described. I do have a single google doc where I paste
| temporary notes though. This gives me a space where I can
| properly decide to either delete the content, or ankify it.
| senjin wrote:
| This is basically what I tried to do using the spaced
| repetition plugin for Obsidian but it's just not very good yet.
| I just checked and the author asked for a co-maintainer
| yesterday. I really hope they can find someone to put a bit of
| time in because it's a great idea and a great foundation.
|
| https://github.com/st3v3nmw/obsidian-spaced-repetition/
| CrypticShift wrote:
| So the author is _keeping notes in a flat hierarchy_ and then
| using the graph.
|
| He stated that the goal is "greater understanding," and then he
| just (in all honesty) states that the _nice graphical topology
| represents my learning journey and keeps me motivated._
|
| That is exactly the problem: motivation and a history of learning
| do not always lead to "greater understanding." On the contrary, I
| find that our 'notes' are often transient while our internal
| understanding morphs subtly yet swiftly (especially when learning
| something new).
|
| That is why I think 'organic linking' works better for very large
| AND more definitive content. Wikipedia is the best example.
|
| For personal use, I prefer more structure. The outliner/database
| combo (like logseq) is the best tool for that.
|
| And Frankly as long as I can easily download my data in a
| readable format, I'm OK with any tool. It does not have to be
| built as plain text files.
|
| But I do like Obsidian :)
| aaarrm wrote:
| I often hear of people using Obsidian or other feature-ful not
| taking and task organization apps creating PKMS (personal
| knowledge management systems) in then. They often state that
| linking things together, categorizing and organizing them well,
| and using appropriate tools to help view these associations
| that it results in... "realizations", or "understandings"? But
| I've yet to see anyone mention a concrete example of what they
| mean by this.
|
| I can use my imagination to come up with some potential
| examples, but I'm curious these conclusions actually often
| occur or if people are just chasing some idea, when in reality
| they just get enjoyment from the organization process.
|
| Either way, I use Obsidian lightly and am trying to refine how
| I use it, but I'm definitely not "there" yet. I mostly enjoy
| having a personal wiki basically of any information that I've
| researched or need to keep on hand somewhere. Main downside
| I've run into is that I'm not a huge fan of the layout / UI
| (maybe there's plugins for that) and tables are horrendous in
| it (I know they just added an update for them recently but I've
| already offloaded my table-style data elsewhere and I don't
| plan on bringing it back).
| subpixel wrote:
| I struggled with Obsidian especially b/c repeatedly creating
| files and futzing around in the UI to name and move them felt
| wrong.
|
| I landed on Workflowy which has it's own quirks but has seen a
| lot of improvement since I last kicked the tires, including
| mirroring etc.
|
| It does a great job of staying out of the way so I can just get
| notes done.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I cross my finger for someone to propose a similar tool based on
| typst (although the extensibility of the language may be
| counterproductive)
| tamimio wrote:
| What I like about obsidian is how it's a very good front-end for
| my notes, that's it, just a front end, in case of anything or if
| obsidian tomorrow ceases to exist, all my notes are in my git and
| they are also backed up daily somewhere else, I don't feel I'm
| locked to anything or any company. The addons too are very nice
| extra touch but it isn't why I like obsidian.
| nigamanth wrote:
| As a high school student, I also use Obsidian over more
| mainstream alternatives such as Notion or OneNote. I find it
| primarily useful because of the no-internet feature and I find
| the linking ability to be extremely useful since most ideas are
| related to other ideas, and in totality this creates a concept.
| joemccall86 wrote:
| I used Obsidian for a while, but for some reason
| https://silverbullet.md ended up resonating more with me.
| ska wrote:
| Anyone familiar with both have a comparison with org-roam mode?
| NoMAD76 wrote:
| Tried Obsidian multiple times, can't make it work for me. Tried
| Zettlr a week ago, same result.
|
| Somehow I seem nobody noticed anytype - https://anytype.io/
| They're still in beta, looks like they draw inspiration from
| Notion but it's more closer to what I need.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Obsidian is that thing in the back of my mind which is
| Markdown+Synch. Service.
|
| I've never really gotten into synch. since I tend to monocompute
| a lot.
|
| I write things in Org Mode. Not a power user of that thing, just
| the markup I use. I don't use links in Org but I would like to. I
| sometimes make very informal and tedious links. So that would be
| a welcome feature.
|
| > Obsidian's choice to work with plain text files make it future-
| proof
|
| Future-proof yes. It is. But as a customer this doesn't sound
| that exciting. A company could offer to print all my data and
| mail it to me when I terminate the plan. That's also future-
| proof.
|
| Ditto with
|
| > Obsidian allows structure to grow organically
|
| I haven't read the links but 95% of the time this means "because
| there isn't any structure (YOLO)". Yeah okay I am free as a bird,
| cool. But I can't make a decades-spanning personal wiki based on
| completely unstructured data and links alone.
|
| All in all: most MD tools kind of fade into the background for
| me. People want all kinds of bells and whistles with that semi-
| language like a dedicated editor so that they can write headers
| and unordered bullet lists with a preview. Overall the
| marketplace feels excessive.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Whenever there's an Obsidian fanfare going on here on HN (and it
| happens quite often :P) I wonder around among the comments
| looking for a simple, minimal, and clean knife (or maybe a light
| bow and arrow) while people are discussing their AWPs, customised
| Dragunovs, and bespoke Abrams. Good fun :)
| justnotworthit wrote:
| I've been waiting for and nvAlt/Resophnotes with image file
| support for 10 years.
| hskf wrote:
| They've been working on it for a while, and I don't know its
| status, but a successor to nvAlt is coming! You may be able
| to get on the beta https://nvultra.com/
| dist-epoch wrote:
| I replaced Resophnotes with Obsidian, since I found Obsidian
| to be extremely similar.
| sevagh wrote:
| I have a bludgeon. A permanently open markdown file with my
| life stuff in it (chores, ideas, projects, backburner, vacation
| plans). I think the closest is probably this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38733968
| dandy23 wrote:
| I like easyorg for development and project tasks. Makes it
| easy to prioritize tasks etc but still in a text file.
| https://easyorgmode.com
| tristor wrote:
| I've tried to use Obsidian three different times, and I always
| end up going back to Standard Notes. I love Markdown, I love
| note-taking with Markdown, but I really just want something
| that's clean, simple, and fairly basic. I'm very fluent in
| Markdown and am not trying to do something crazy to munge into a
| Markdown representation, and I also don't want to deal with a
| complex plugin architecture to get things done.
|
| Before I used Standard Notes, I was mostly satisfied with a
| private Github repo, containing Markdown files and NeoVim.
| pilgrim0 wrote:
| Obsidian is nice, I use it to write articles. But I don't like to
| take notes in it. IME notes are something transient, so recording
| them as files generates too much pollution/trash. Having paper
| notebooks around is much more fun, gets me in a flow easier,
| there's close to no commitment with structure, the mind works
| better, can use colored pens, etc. Plus, it's so much fun to go
| through old notebooks, it has historical weight, it makes me
| remember other aspects of my life surrounding the events, you can
| tell the mood of the writing, etc. So, my take: Use the tool
| relevant to the desired output format.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| Not disagrreing with you but it's sorta funny that you say
| files pollute more than paper.
| mortallywounded wrote:
| I tried Obsidian for a while and the whole "second brain-thingy"
| until I watched a video about complex procrastination (basically,
| using tools like Obsidian as a means of not doing actual work).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKCC2uTbRc
| rchaud wrote:
| Another term for it is "knowledge p*rn", basically getting off
| to the idea that you're learning by watching another power user
| video, or reading another blog post, instead of simply doing
| the work.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Anyone know of an alternative that stores data locally and looks
| and feels a bit more like Notion? The plain list like note view
| is just so ugly and when I create a new note I'd want it to be in
| the context of whatever I'm currently looking at, not at the
| root. I know about tags and the graph view but it's just not what
| I need.
|
| There was a comment to a Notion related submission the other day
| that talked about something Notion like but self hosted, that's
| be fine too but I can't find it right now.
| rchaud wrote:
| Was it anytype.io?
| abhinavk wrote:
| SiYuan?
|
| https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan
| n8henrie wrote:
| My setup is a little complex, but I'm very happy syncing plain-
| text notes between my Mac, several Linux machines, and my iPhone.
|
| I'm still using (and loving) Notational Velocity on my Mac.
| Thankfully it's open source, so I was able to hack together arm64
| support even though I don't know C/ObjC/C++ [0].
|
| On my iPhone, I've been very happy with 1Writer, which has a
| similar interface, and is scriptable with JavaScript for power
| users.
|
| I have NV configured to store plain-text notes that are stored in
| 1Writer's iCloud folder, so syncing happens seamlessly between
| them.
|
| Finally, I sync that same directory with Syncthing to my Linux
| machines, where I mostly use neovim for editing.
|
| The only feature that I'm often wishing I had is shared editing
| with my wife. At some point I whipped up some launchd scripts to
| automatically move notes tagged with `#shared` to a shared
| subfolder, but it never worked very well. Thankfully my wife is
| not really all that interested in sharing notes, so we just use
| Apple Notes when needed.
|
| Tried Obsidian but was miffed at the inability to recognize /
| store as .txt files instead of .md (or perhaps it was vice versa)
| without a community plugin, and I prefer FOSS, so uninstalled
| after a couple days.
|
| Have LogSeq installed but can't convince myself to use it, what I
| have fits my needs well enough. I'm also concerned about their
| funding model and the longevity of the project, the other side of
| the coin of FOSS I suppose.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/n8henrie/nv [1]:
| https://apps.apple.com/app/id680469088
| DLion wrote:
| I'm a happy Obsidian user too, it's probably the application I
| use the most. The amount of plugins available is incredible (my
| favs: Excalidraw and Calendar, Obsidian Git)
|
| I also wrote an article about why I switched from Notion to
| Obsidian a few years ago.
|
| https://domenicoluciani.com/2021/12/17/why-did-i-switch-from...
| Otternonsenz wrote:
| While not my personal knowledge base yet, my personal use case
| for Obsidian is probably what gives me the most joy for it: as a
| Dungeon Master's Worldbuilding Notes / Interactive DM Screen
|
| Where I have used pen and paper in the past to track everything,
| Obsidian has supercharged my ability to sit down and flesh out my
| homebrew world in a way that was hard to do for myself prior. On
| top of the ease of writing and linking together notes, it also
| allows me to simultaneously tie in my pre-written lore with the
| session notes I take, so I don't forget stuff that happens or
| that my players are supposed to pick up on.
|
| I've also encouraged my players to use it, so that if they are
| taking notes on the right things, they can piece together stuff
| or make their own assumptions to inform how they choose to play.
|
| It works for us, I get it's not for everyone. But versus my old
| DM Binder in OneNote, it works perfectly for my needs!
|
| On a similar, yet separate note, I've found the folder/note
| structure to be conducive to learning new TTRPG rules and
| essentially having my personal SRDs for different games
| (currently chunking my way through the Shadowrun 6e SRD and
| making my own notes or expansions on it to make it make more
| sense).
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| A lady that gives a lot of tutorials about Obsidian on YouTube
| users it as a DM as well. I think she posted a few videos about
| that usage.
|
| Edit: found her: https://youtube.com/@nicolevdh
| diimdeep wrote:
| https://github.com/SublimeText-Markdown/MarkdownEditing is still
| a way to go for me.
| adhamsalama wrote:
| While Obsidian is good, I prefer SiYuan Note, which is open
| source, and has more features. It's like a mix of Notion and
| Obsidian.
|
| https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan
| mtriassi wrote:
| I've really fallen for Obsidian myself. I became somewhat of an
| evangelist for it in my office. Much like the author i tend to
| use it as a "backstage for my life". In the interest of sharing
| my system with my colleagues i even turned my work vault into a
| template of sorts [^1].
|
| Though that's also the most interesting part about Obsidian. What
| works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another. When i
| presented my template to my colleagues i definitely got some
| comments like: "oh man, my brain doesn't work that way" or "this
| feels overly complex". It's interesting how a simple markdown
| editor has become this analogue for some of our brains.
|
| [^1]: https://github.com/m-triassi/obsidian-workvault-template -
| This is still a work in progress, but if anyone has suggestions
| or things they'd like to share i'd be open to feedback or even
| PRs!
| ezst wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: I dislike obsidian. I came to the realization
| that any reasonably large collection of notes requires structure,
| which goes by the definition of types (for people, places,
| organizations, ...). Obsidian is very rudimentary in this regard:
| it offers properties, folders and templates. Those are workable
| at first but fall apart soon enough: you can derive many
| instances of a type from a certain template, but obsidian will
| happily let you change the template later on without offering the
| means to propagate the changes to existing instances, leaving
| your notes in an inconsistent state with no way to tell. Anytype,
| SiYuan, LogSeq have the same problem. Notion is a bit better
| considering its "databases" help finding and patching such
| discrepancies, but is also limited in that it doesn't let you
| extend types (polymorphism). None of them support cardinality
| (should there be one or multiple references) nor defining forward
| and backwards relationships when the property is relational.
|
| As I was about to give up, I found out about Trilium which checks
| all the good marks when it comes to data modeling and
| consistency, in a super simple and straightforward manner. And on
| top of that, it's opensource, local first, self hostable,
| syncable, has a web UI so you don't have to install anything if
| you can't, and lends itself to emacs levels of hackability. IMO,
| anyone claiming to be managing a large collection of notes should
| give it a serious look.
| Lazare wrote:
| Tried Obsidian for a while, loved a lot about it, but....mmm.
|
| Obsidian out of the box is a bit limited; plugins are great and
| add tons of features, but then you start hitting issues with
| plugin maintainers abandoning plugins you rely on, or needing to
| make a decision between three different plugins that all do the
| same thing slightly different. Depending on your use case and
| expectations that may not be a big deal, but I really missed not
| having what I personally saw as core features not being
| officially supported.
|
| (Also, FWIW, the sync service is a bit pricy for what it is. I
| get that it's how they're trying to monetise it, but...I would
| have preferred another pricing model, even if the total cost was
| just as high.)
|
| I've personally switched to Trilium Notes which I'm finding
| nicer. One element I particularly like is that it has first class
| suport for notes being able to exist at multiple places in a tree
| simultaneously. I know it's a very personal thing, but for me
| personally being able to file notes in multiple locations
| "clicks" in a way that tags didn't.
|
| Trilium Notes: https://github.com/zadam/trilium
|
| And here's a nice writeup on ways to use Trilium (although much
| of it applies to Obsidian too):
| https://github.com/zadam/trilium/wiki/Patterns-of-personal-k...
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