[HN Gopher] Migrating from DokuWiki to Obsidian
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       Migrating from DokuWiki to Obsidian
        
       Author : kaeruct
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2024-08-19 07:16 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (kaeruct.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (kaeruct.github.io)
        
       | Multicomp wrote:
       | Nice! I've been resisting Obsidian because I prefer the
       | multimedia capabilities of OneNote, but since I have an old
       | dokuwiki install that has floated around for a long time, I may
       | just use this to finally kick the obsidian tires.
        
         | BenFranklin100 wrote:
         | If you're looking to incorporate markdown into OneNote, you may
         | want to look at the OneMark addin:
         | 
         | https://onemark.neux.studio
        
           | jabits wrote:
           | Thanks, I've been looking for something like this.
        
         | CWuestefeld wrote:
         | I've been a OneNote user for years, but a few months ago MS
         | sabotaged the clipper extension for Firefox - and for no
         | apparent reason except, apparently, to force people toward
         | Edge.
         | 
         | If they're going to maliciously break my workflow, then who
         | needs 'em?
         | 
         | So I've switched to Obsidian, although I'm finding it a little
         | clunky and I've also been playing Zoot.
        
       | ortusdux wrote:
       | Intended color scheme? https://i.ibb.co/741mzfh/image.png
        
         | RsmFz wrote:
         | Looks correct now on Firefox on macOS (light mode, probably)
        
           | iforgotpassword wrote:
           | The screenshot doesn't load for me, but I see a very dark
           | color, maybe purple, on black background. Absolutely no way
           | to read anything, just about able to make out that there is
           | some text.
           | 
           | Firefox on android, no dark mode.
        
         | jimjimjim wrote:
         | Thats what i get on firefox on ios
        
         | AstroJetson wrote:
         | I got dark on more dark. Hope this was awesome, but I can't
         | read it.
         | 
         | Chrome.
        
         | ortusdux wrote:
         | Appears to be fixed! - https://i.ibb.co/VLsLFyP/image.png
        
       | scblock wrote:
       | Site is nearly unreadable on an iPhone or Firefox on Windows,
       | showing up with a dark background and dark text. Something broken
       | in the CSS?
        
         | warkdarrior wrote:
         | Same problem on macOS, in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
        
         | mirshko wrote:
         | Seems text color is driven by light / dark mode at the OS
         | level, but the background color is not.
        
         | jholman wrote:
         | If you're already using Firefox, all you have to do is click
         | the Reader Mode button, at the right edge of your URL bar.
         | 
         | https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clu...
        
       | ndarray wrote:
       | This website is a good test of who actually clicked the link, not
       | able to read a thing, coming back to the comments to report the
       | bad experience, and who didn't click the link/is a bot, talking
       | about the article as if nothing happened.
        
         | daemonologist wrote:
         | The styling isn't broken for everyone (looks fine to me,
         | Firefox on Fedora in dark mode), so I'm afraid the test may
         | have some false positives.
        
           | arp242 wrote:
           | Yes, it's only broken in "light mode"; looks like there's a
           | bug/omission in the CSS it doesn't correctly set the
           | background colour (but does set the text colour).
        
         | crabmusket wrote:
         | I simply flicked on reader mode (Firefox/Android). But to the
         | OP yes, please do fix your styles!
        
           | dsr_ wrote:
           | Same, FF/Mac.
        
         | juujian wrote:
         | Looks fine on mobile
        
           | al_borland wrote:
           | Which mobile? I'm on Safari on iOS and it's bad.
        
             | fransje26 wrote:
             | Firefox, Android.
        
         | al_borland wrote:
         | I came to the comments to see if it was just me. Dark gray on
         | black seemed bad it had to be a rendering issue, but at the
         | same time, background color and color seem like the CSS that
         | would always work.
        
         | eviks wrote:
         | This comment is a good example of people coming up with bad
         | tests: reader mode exists, you know, and non-bots can use it
        
         | fransje26 wrote:
         | Works absolutely fine in Firefox on Android.
        
       | loph wrote:
       | usability test much? effectively unreadable.
        
       | crabmusket wrote:
       | I've just gotten interested in Dokuwiki for use in a small
       | association I've joined which is slowly realising that just
       | having a free Slack account is not going to cut it for all our
       | shared knowledge needs.
       | 
       | And since we have a WordPress site, Dokuwiki is about a 30-second
       | installation away.
       | 
       | Looking into the project governance/maintenance it looks sturdy-
       | while seemingly one person does a lot of the work, there's a
       | community there. It appears to me, a newcomer, like a project
       | that could last a very long time while being boring and doing
       | exactly what it needs to, no more and no less.
       | 
       | As for the subject of the post itself; for a single person
       | personal wiki, I'd also use Obsidian. I love that I can sync it
       | to my phone with Syncthing, which is a mild pain but free!
        
       | 404mm wrote:
       | I decided to migrate from DokuWiki to Markdown some time ago too.
       | I write a python script for the conversion if anyone is
       | interested https://github.com/michalmiddleton/Dokuwiki2Markdown
        
       | rowlandc wrote:
       | This site is borderline unreadable, maybe a little tiny bit of
       | CSS testing in order before sharing stuff here... ouch, my eyes.
        
       | poglet wrote:
       | I started migrating from OneNote to BookStack wiki. Loving it so
       | far, but am not sure how backups and data exports work.
       | 
       | It's nice to be able to have it publicly available and accessible
       | from any internet connection.
        
       | paradox460 wrote:
       | I've been using foam instead of obsidian for my personal
       | knowledge base. It works rather well. And it's completely free
       | and ultimately just markdown. While I might wish it was djot, I
       | don't wish hard enough to make that so myself
       | 
       | https://foambubble.github.io/foam/
        
         | TheCraiggers wrote:
         | Kinda neat, but only if you live in Code.
         | 
         | Not sure it would work for me, as a lot of time I have a random
         | idea I don't want to lose while I'm not at my computer. And
         | while I know it's just markdown and thus any text editor could
         | open them on my phone, I do enjoy having something like
         | Obsidian which works well on my phone and syncs files over git.
        
         | abhinavk wrote:
         | It makes VSCode very slow though which itself is getting
         | heavier every release. Obsidian doesn't feel like an Electron
         | app just like VSCode from a few years ago..
        
       | nfriedly wrote:
       | I haven't tried Obsidian, but I'm pretty happy with NextCloud
       | Notes which saves all my notes as either plain text or markdown
       | and keeps them in sync across my phone, and various computers.
        
         | suprjami wrote:
         | I recently spun up a self-hosted Nextcloud and was pleased to
         | see my existing directory of Markdown notes just worked.
        
       | egberts1 wrote:
       | i couldn't put import various media into Obsidian.
        
         | Kichererbsen wrote:
         | What kind of media? An Obsidian vault is just a folder with
         | files in it - and with the `![[file-name]]` syntax or the
         | `![title](path/to/file)` syntax if you prefer plain markdown
         | (for portability?!) it just embeds?
        
       | apitman wrote:
       | Obsidian's business model might be genius. Open file formats;
       | closed source.
       | 
       | By making a great product, they attract users. Usually the main
       | argument against software like this is vendor lock-in. But by
       | using open formats, there's always an escape hatch. If they
       | decided to squeeze their users, I suspect a decent open source
       | alternative would pop up very quickly. In the meantime, casual
       | open source alternatives are very unlikely to catch up in terms
       | of quality and features, because they don't have a funded team
       | working on them full time.
       | 
       | On the flipside, Obsidian is incentivized to keep their customers
       | happy, because their moat isn't so large as to allow complete
       | complacency.
       | 
       | Overall some of the best aligned incentives I've seen. Though it
       | does make me sad because I feel like we almost never see this
       | good of balance in open source software.
        
         | boraoztunc wrote:
         | Products are the reflections of their makers. Obsidian is a
         | great example. Happy from the beginning.
        
         | abhinavk wrote:
         | Yeah. It's one of my most used apps. I pay for Sync to support
         | their model even though I hardly use it on my phone.
         | 
         | Apart from no lock-in, another benefit of the open format model
         | is that you can complement it with other tools. Since their
         | code editor is not that great, I just open the vault folder in
         | Vim/VSCode when it becomes cumbersome.
        
         | itsjustjoe wrote:
         | The third party plugin community is fantastic as well, I use it
         | for GMing TTRPG sessions and I have a pretty powerful workflow
         | built out.
        
           | zappchance wrote:
           | Care to share which plugins you use? I'm interested in GMing
           | some lesser known RPGs.
        
           | throwbmw wrote:
           | Please write a blog about it
        
         | slightwinder wrote:
         | > On the flipside, Obsidian is incentivized to keep their
         | customers happy
         | 
         | I think at this point, it's more about people not making
         | unhappy. Development is already slowing down and focusing on
         | fixing bugs, and the community seems to have shrunk to specific
         | areas of interest. Which is kind of a problem IMHO, because
         | we've already seen many add-ons becoming unusable and dying as
         | a result of updates of the main-application.
        
           | chrisweekly wrote:
           | > Development is already slowing down and focusing on fixing
           | bugs
           | 
           | Yes - because it's stable and powerful. So grateful they care
           | about quality and are not becoming bloatware / chasing random
           | features.
           | 
           | As for the plugin ecosystem, it was always inevitable that a
           | significant portion of them wouldn't be well-maintained and
           | wld become obsolete.
           | 
           | As an Obsidian early adopter and heavy daily user, I have
           | only good things to say about the core software and the
           | handful of high-quality community plugins that support every
           | workflow and use case I desire.
        
             | slightwinder wrote:
             | > Yes - because it's stable and powerful. So grateful they
             | care about quality and are not becoming bloatware / chasing
             | random features.
             | 
             | Yes, but this is only good for the satisfied users. Users
             | who wait for certain "promised" features, might slowly
             | become unhappy over time. Other will simply not find what
             | they need.
             | 
             | I guess a bit of the problem is that Obsidian exploded in
             | interests far beyond what the devs imaged, and now they are
             | left with multiple different groups which are all not
             | maintained equal well.
             | 
             | > As for the plugin ecosystem, it was always inevitable
             | that a significant portion of them wouldn't be well-
             | maintained and wld become obsolete.
             | 
             | Then remove them. It's not good if you offer the users add-
             | ons which are not even working anymore.
        
           | phren0logy wrote:
           | I'm of two minds about this. I'm not sure continuously adding
           | features is really necessary or desirable in software like
           | Obsidian. I want new, shiny things but perhaps those should
           | come in the form of optional plug-ins I could buy if I
           | want/need them.
        
       | aidenn0 wrote:
       | FWIW, Pandoc can convert from dokuwiki to markdown.
        
       | jszymborski wrote:
       | I have used and loved both DokuWiki and Obsidian (although I use
       | Joplin these days). As the author noted, DokuWiki is best with
       | collaborators and when public facing. However I've found a Git
       | repo with Markdown files that link to eachother makes a killer
       | decentralized collaborative KB. Add to that forges like
       | GitHub/GitLab/Codeberg which render the markdown and list the
       | files in your browser and it's truly great.
        
       | kristianpaul wrote:
       | It took me a while to realize that there wasn't an obsidian git
       | repository to check out the source
        
       | kaeruct wrote:
       | Thanks everyone for the feedback regarding the issue with
       | readability in light mode. I completely missed it!
        
       | yegle wrote:
       | I wonder if migrating to tiddlywiki would be a better option.
       | Mostly writing in Markdown, lightweight, intended for single
       | user, open source & have good mobile web UI.
        
         | graemep wrote:
         | Tiddlywiki or Zim or one of many tools meant for single users.
         | 
         | Dokuwiki seems like overkill for a single user.
        
       | entrepy123 wrote:
       | It's possible to basically avoid the second step ("Convert all
       | text files from DokuWiki Syntax to proper Markdown") by only ever
       | writing Markdown in Dokuwiki to begin with.
       | 
       | To write Markdown in DokuWiki, the "DokuWiki Commonmark Plugin"
       | [0] is pretty great.
       | 
       | To use it, tips are:
       | 
       | - REQUIRED: On the top line of each page, put `<!DOCTYPE
       | markdown>` (using the new toolbar button or typing it in). So
       | that Dokuwiki knows the page is in markdown.
       | 
       | - STRONGLY SUGGESTED: In the Dokuwiki Config, set the
       | `maxseclevel` to 0. Since the Commonmark markdown plugin
       | currently unfortunately sort of messes up edit-section.)
       | 
       | That's basically it. Makes the Dokuwiki files that much more
       | immediately-portable, in theory.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:commonmark
        
         | tannhaeuser wrote:
         | Interesting, didn't know about <!DOCTYPE markdown>. Though as
         | an SGML pedant, I have to say using this doctype declaration in
         | this way just tells an SGML or XML parser about the base
         | ("root") element and is thus simply incorrect since there is no
         | "markdown" element. The proper way would be to use just "html",
         | and adding SGML shortref declarations in the "internal subset"
         | for markdown-to-HTML mapping, like sgmljs is doing.
        
       | Xen9 wrote:
       | Regarding note-taking, an Obsidian plugin that generates Loci's
       | palaces where you get to add all sort of things, using stable
       | diffusion & other new technology (rotable 3D => better spatial
       | memory) would be great.
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-21 23:02 UTC)