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Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#141

Post by Macha »

reneberlin wrote: post #127
afturner wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The local first approach is the primary reason I use Obsidian. I trust that I can _depend_ on Obsidian because of this. On the other hand, this has also caused some headaches around using it on mobile.. but so far this has been a worthwhile tradeoff. Thanks for all the hard work!

Syncthing comes to my mind for that specific need. https://syncthing.net/

Syncthing on mobile is a little clunky because of OS limitations on background processes. Basically the reason I pay for Obsidian's own sync addon

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#142

Post by Macha »

imperfect_blue wrote: post #88
helloguillecl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! I love the philosophy around open and clear formats. Like I have said before, a second brain should be as open and reliable as possible.

Trello boards export to JSON, would you consider it open? OneNote notebooks are also an open and well-documented specification, as well as local first and backed by a very reliable company, which makes them just as open as Obsidian by those standards. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_form...

OneNote and this canvas format might be equally open and interoperable, but it's a hard claim to justify that onenote notebooks are as open as a folder of mostly standard markdown (the two exceptions being wikilinks and embeds)

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#143

Post by arcturus17 »

s1mon wrote: post #136

As evidenced by a link to AlternativeTo on their own site, this space has a lot (145+) of competition [0]. At some level, I worry about using things much more complex than a text file, because of portability and longevity. It's enough of a pain transitioning between Google and Microsoft (and back) every few years based on various jobs. I have files from the late 1980's that I can still read, but only with Libre Offic…

I'm also worried by this, which is precisely why I'm considering a move to Obsidian from Notion. I'm pretty much writing everything in Markdown by now, including my personal blog.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#144

Post by v9v »

jghn wrote: post #42

With the caveat that I'm very far from a power user, I'm struggling to picture how I'd use this. Not as in I think it's a bad idea, but rather it looks cool but I believe I don't quite understand it. I think the following is an example of an intended use case? Can anyone confirm/deny? For my work related notes, there's some hierarchical structure to them even though it's hard to see that at the note level. There's al…

It's as you think it is, the main benefit is that it's like a notebook that you can zoom in/out of as you wish.

Some of my more visually-inclined friends use a similar program called Miro to keep track of their projects. At the conception stage they collect links to similar projects, scribble notes and draw sketches to create a moodboard. As the design takes form, they create some subsections in the canvas dedicated to certain details of the project and collect related notes there. Images or links of the work-in-progress are also pasted to track progress and to point out what needs to be changed. Each stage and each part of the project gets its own space with its own notes and when you zoom out you get a nice overview of the whole thing.

Miro can also be used collaboratively, so with groups you can also add in a Gantt chart and whatnot to organize.

My friends were in search of offline alternatives to Miro, so I think there is a group of people who will find this new feature very useful.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#145

Post by LordDragonfang »

afturner wrote: post #90
kepano wrote: post #34

Obsidian Canvas uses a new JSON-based file format that we have open-sourced under MIT license. You can see the spec here: https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-api/blob/master/canva... Just like all other files in Obsidian, canvas files are your own and local to your device. You're still linking to your own Markdown files which are just as future-proof as ever. We decided to create the .canvas format because there w…

The local first approach is the primary reason I use Obsidian. I trust that I can _depend_ on Obsidian because of this. On the other hand, this has also caused some headaches around using it on mobile.. but so far this has been a worthwhile tradeoff. Thanks for all the hard work!

Some options for syncing on mobile:

Obsidian sells a first party syncing solution, which I hear works well:

https://obsidian.md/sync

I do git syncing on Android via termux (It works most of the time, except when git decides to shit itself every now and then on my tablet):

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/guide-using-git-to-sync-your-obs...

I can't vouch for it because I don't have any iOS devices new enough to support it, but supposedly you can use Working Copy to sync via git on iOS:

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/mobile-setting-up-ios-git-based-...

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#146

Post by Macha »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #84
raybb wrote: post #18

One thing that's really missing for me from Obsidian is a view similar to that of Google Keep. Like sometimes I want to drop a small note "my stuff is in locker 2130" or "Look into Open Library WikiData linking percentage" and then easily be able to see it again in a few of all notes most recent. A thread on Reddit give me a small hope this update may do that but I don't think so. PS: I'm aware of the daily notes vie…

There are community-extensions for this. "Vault Changelog"recently edited files, and "Recent Files" recently opened files. Not sure how well they work on mobile. But true, a google keep like tile-view with auto-layout and filters would be a useful enhancement for obsidian.

Could probably do it with obsidian dataview + embeds which would work on android at least. Not sure how they deal with community plugins + app store policy though on iOS.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#147

Post by redrobein »

afturner wrote: post #90
kepano wrote: post #34

Obsidian Canvas uses a new JSON-based file format that we have open-sourced under MIT license. You can see the spec here: https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-api/blob/master/canva... Just like all other files in Obsidian, canvas files are your own and local to your device. You're still linking to your own Markdown files which are just as future-proof as ever. We decided to create the .canvas format because there w…

The local first approach is the primary reason I use Obsidian. I trust that I can _depend_ on Obsidian because of this. On the other hand, this has also caused some headaches around using it on mobile.. but so far this has been a worthwhile tradeoff. Thanks for all the hard work!

It depends on your workflow. I use git to sync my obsidian vault. There's plugins to automate this, but doing it manually isn't that bad either. I use mobile mostly to read notes, and occasionally I'll write down a short line or two which I can sync over and edit and organize on desktop.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#148

Post by arcturus17 »

I'm going off on a tangent, but while we have you markdown geeks here: does anyone have any experience editing it with Vim? Do you recommend any plugins or similar?

The only real problem I have with markdown is that if I have editor soft-wraps, Vim doesn't work that well (I can't properly navigate soft-wrap lines, because there is a mismatch between what I see and what the editor understands as a line). If I do hard-wraps (new-lines), then the doc loses copy-paste portability to something like Docs.

Anyone know how to solve this?

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#149

Post by _def »

Cool, can't wait to try it out. Would love to move to obsidian fully, as of now I'm also using Joplin for my main set of notes.

btw this plugin really reminds me of a piece of software that I had seen here sometime. An infinite zooming/nesting of notes was the main concept of it, does that ring a bell for anyone?

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#150

Post by misnome »

rcarr wrote: post #54
ngrilly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using both Obsidian and Apple Notes, both on my iPhone and MacBook, and that's also the main thing I'm missing in Obsidian and keeps me partly on Apple Notes: it's faster and easier to create a note in Apple Notes, retrieve it (as they as are sorted from most recent by default, and also I can pin some notes), search, and navigate in folders (especially on mobile, navigating across folders is so much better with A…

Preface: I am a massive Obsidian fan and use it everyday. The problem is they wanted it multi platform on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux so they made it using electron. Unless they either do native versions for each platform (5 apps!) or rewrite the entire application in something quicker like Tauri it’s never going to be as fast as apple notes, and will only get worse every time you add a new plugin.

My interpretation of their word “faster” was in terms of UI design, not physical app speed.

Please, we don’t need to have the electron rant every single time an app that uses it is discussed.

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