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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

#261

Post by JellyBeanThief »

abraxas wrote: post #259
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…

Not everything needs to live for decades. Sometimes the ephemeral capture is just as important in sorting out your ideas. What doesn't work for me with these tools is that once I've gone deep I still need a tool that offers the absolute MINIMUM friction in its interface and for me nothing has conquered an A3 sheet and a box of coloured pencils. Perhaps I should invest my time in really learning one of these tools but…

A drawing tablet helped me some, when I paired it with Xournal++. I think there are apps for iOS and Android tablets with nicer and faster interfaces, but I don't use tablets, so they didn't help. But the ability to quickly select a group of pen strokes and just move them around to make new room, as well as the ability to quickly paste screenshots of anything I was doing anywhere else on my computer made a big difference.

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

#262

Post by smusamashah »

CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #240
smusamashah wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great. Just testing it out with a goal to switch from OneNote to canvas. It can borrow a few things from OneNote e.g. - cards resize automatically with text. - OneNote starts with a cursor, clicking anywhere on canvas and writing is a single click operation. - There are no hard borders around cards in OneNote. - OneNote is WYSIWYG which this canvas isn't currently. This is not a definitive list and I know its…

Just as a data point. This feature of one-note (text boxes where you click) is the single reason I’m looking for something else. I absolutely hate any interface that has me fiddle with layout when I’m trying to focus on semantics. Not that this should impact Obsidian much, since I assume the canvas thing is optional there, just a data point. Related to infinite canvas _do_ checkout “The Humane Environment” [1] it has…

I use OneNote extensively and as I understand each page is like a white board where you can write anything anywhere. If I wanted a linear interface I would be using Word instead.

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

#263

Post by Ruq »

I'll have to see how much this affects or benefits my workflow, but I'm testing it against my Bachelors Capstone Project, and it seems really cool to be able to create an Overview that visually creates relations between my various notes relating to the project.

Very cool! I love Obsidian more every day.

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

#265

Post by cxr »

kepano wrote: post #122
sneak wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't what "open sourced" means. Photoshop is proprietary software with a well documented file format anyone can read and write. So is this software. "Open source" is not branding, it means something. It's okay to make and promote and sell proprietary commercial software. That's what you are doing, be proud and clear about it. Pretending your efforts have anything to do with free software is deceptive.

You are confusing two different ideas here. The Canvas format is MIT licensed in the same way that Markdown uses a BSD-type license. That means we are giving explicit permission for anyone to use the format and build apps, scripts, plugins on top of it. Photoshop/PSD on the other hand is a closed proprietary format: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_file_format

This is a pretty grating response, given how pointed it is. It's not made any better by the first sentence; it seems that you are the one confusing two different (types of) things:

> The Canvas format is MIT licensed in the same way that Markdown uses a BSD-type license.

In no sense are these two things comparable. "Markdown uses a BSD-type license" is a true statement because "Markdown", in the context where it makes sense to say this, is a Perl script—a program, licensed in a way that is not uncommon for open source programs to be licensed. Your canvas format is not a program. It's a 70-line TypeScript interface definition, going by your own link:

https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-api/blob/master/canva...>

To call this "open source" (let alone open source "in the same way that Markdown" is) is a very odd choice. It's less odd for anyone who recognizes that it follows a common pattern, where folks with something to sell often openwash what it is that they're selling based on the (not unfounded) perception that having it be thought of as more open than it really is tends to confer certain positive benefits. It's why Steve Jobs lied about FaceTime being an open standard, for example.

Whether or not you're giving any explicit permission to build apps, scripts, plugins, etc. is largely moot—to be frank, you don't have the power to dictate otherwise. On the other hand, if you're saying that you're aiming to steward and participate in what (you hope) turns out to be a vibrant ecosystem built on a common format, then that's cool. But say what you mean, though. Calling it an open format or an open standard would be fine; "open source", however, this is not.

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

#266

Post by probablynish »

I just shifted from Logseq to Obsidian over the last couple of weeks. One of my reasons for doing so is that while Logseq does technically store your notes as local markdown files, there's so much added on top of that, that I can't really open my notes folder in Typora/[markdown editor of choice] and have a smooth experience reading my notes. The underlying format might be open, but there was still lock-in. Obsidian seems much better for that - there'll always be a tradeoff between features and portability, but I do prefer Obsidian's balance.

I wrote a very rough Python script to help me move my graph over to Obsidian - if anyone else is in the same boat, feel free to try it out https://github.com/NishantTharani/LogSeqToObsidian

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

#267

Post by reneberlin »

How could you do this all this time, me not noticing?! THIS is the interconnected mapping for humans i had in my spare room of braincells, that were still alive at that time.

It is okay because living in a sim brings peace to the NPCs. How can one or a group progress so smooth an idea.

Just one thing: how fast this app starts is a less of a blink.

Speechless. Congrats and i step down on my knees for this.

When Sony says: it's not a game -then this is: not a app in the ordinary way. Needs no praise or downvote. This is something completly different.

'Got to remind myself: breathe in - and breathe out.

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

#270

Post by joemi »

arcturus17 wrote: post #257
joemi wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is moving from Obsidian to Notion relevant? They're basically the same thing?

I keep losing my files with cloud-first systems. I had a trove of notes in Evernote and I don't even remember which email I used to open it, nor if they are there anymore. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't lose local-first markdown files, as I could do the same thing I do with code: keep them in git, and then have a cloud backup for good measure.

Ah, i didn't realize you said TO obsidian. For some reason I read it as the other way around, which is why it really confused me.
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