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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

#311

Post by wj »

D13Fd wrote: post #278
runjake wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a number of other notes syncing that's better -- probably even Evernote's. As a happily paying Obsidian Sync customer, I'll drop some reality, so new people aren't caught off-guard. - Obsidian Sync is pretty slow. - Obsidian Sync doesn't happen in the background, at present. That means, if you just made a bunch of updates in Obsidian, or you haven't opened the Obsidian mobile app in a while, you're in…

Totally agreed. Obsidian sync is pretty disappointing, honestly. I still use it, but I would call it just barely good enough.

It significantly improved for me a few months ago. The syncing seems to start much more quickly after I open the app. Not perfect but much better than it had been when I had to keep the app open by constantly touching my screen and hoping it would even start the syncing process.

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

#312

Post by rounakdatta »

Dnguyen wrote: post #93

I've heard about Obsidian for a while but never got around to using it. Does anyone know if I can take notes and highlight on a web page and include that onto canvas? That's what I'm looking for, notes close to the source as possible.

There's the very good tool Hypothes.is for taking notes and highlights. If the Obsidian community can develop a plugin that can obtain the stream of highlights from the Hypothesis API, then I guess that is possible.

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

#313

Post by encryptluks2 »

erksa wrote: post #168
alpaca128 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown was never intended for data with a graph structure, so I think it's the right decision to use a different simple format instead of creating yet another bloated non-standard Markdown variant.

Yes! Compliment the standard, don't obfuscate it even more. As someone who mostly write org rather than md, but sometime have to write md in various places, it's confusing that they're not all the same.

Agreed here too. This was a poor choice IMO. They call it canvas but it looks like a poor hybrid between mind mapping and UML. Markdown already supports hierarchy. I am guessing this let's you set coordinates for how to lay the canvas out but this is exactly why I'd never use it.

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

#314

Post by flylikeabanana »

aussiesnack wrote: post #250
ulnarkressty wrote: post #157

This kind of feature would obviously not be able to be implemented into a (easily readable) markdown file, so, as Obsidian is willing to go to the proprietary open format route, could someone please consider adding usable tables as a feature? Even simple stuff like multiline cells would greatly increase the usability of the tool. The current table experience even with the community plugins is... not ideal.

I haven't tried any of the community plugins - if any of them come close to what you want, why not file issues outlining what needs improving? I've only used Obsidian tangentially, but from 10000ft it does look like the app tends to incorporate the best plugin ideas over time, so this route might get what you want into the app eventually. Emacs org-mode does demonstrate that it is possible to create a usable interfac…

Org mode tables have a lot to polish though. I'd love to see word wrapping in org tables but the current solutions all leave a lot to be desired

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

#315

Post by aussiesnack »

flylikeabanana wrote: post #314
aussiesnack wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't tried any of the community plugins - if any of them come close to what you want, why not file issues outlining what needs improving? I've only used Obsidian tangentially, but from 10000ft it does look like the app tends to incorporate the best plugin ideas over time, so this route might get what you want into the app eventually. Emacs org-mode does demonstrate that it is possible to create a usable interfac…

Org mode tables have a lot to polish though. I'd love to see word wrapping in org tables but the current solutions all leave a lot to be desired

Sure - it's a long time since I used it so I'll take your word for that. But it demonstrates the principle.

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

#316

Post by abraxas »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #281
abraxas wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

i bought a remarkable tablet for that purpose but still failed to adopt it.

Yeah, the Remarkable looks like the most likely candidate to be able to displace a sheet of paper but my hangup is that the lack of colour will hinder its usability too much for me. I always use a few coloured pens when I scribble my notes.

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

#317

Post by atentaten »

brap wrote: post #305

I really don’t get Obsidian and why HN seems so obsessed with it. Can anyone please enlighten me? Why do they call these notes “a second brain”? How is this “a new way of thinking”? What are you people even writing that requires this? It just seems silly, honestly. What am I missing?

It allows me to dump thoughts, ideas and things that I need to remember in one searchable and organizable home. Obsidian makes this easy by not getting in the way and it's highly customizable. I find it fun to use.

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

#318

Post by quickthrower2 »

randomluck040 wrote: post #225
kepano wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the fact that there are so many Markdown-based editors that can read the files you create in Obsidian gives plain text format more resilience over time. Even if Obsidian were to disappear, your writing and ideas will still be accessible in the future.

Also I would argue that you can rather simply write a parser for the basic markdown syntax and convert it to e.g. HTML or plain text if necessary by getting rid of markdown specific syntax.

Markdown is plain text, with conventions. To lose the ability ti see your data would requiring us to lose utf8 encoding which is unlikely as it is self perpetuating.

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

#319

Post by jaimex2 »

Is it strange that they made a whole bunch of thick clients for what should have been a browser based product?

Least they made a Linux client, good on em.

Edit. Read more, I get the clients now. Wow. Its so rare to see products think about not locking in.

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

#320

Post by MikeTheGreat »

I've been using Obsidian and enjoying it quite a bit - thank you for making this, and for making it freely available!

I figured that I've give this a spin but can't find it in my local install of Obsidian. I've got 'auto update' turned on (so I _think_ I'm up to date) and I can't find Canvas listed in the Core or Community plugins in the Settings panel within Obsidian. FWIW I'm using the "Commander" plugin to customize my left sidebar (so it might be hidden from me if it's supposed to show up automatically).

I must be missing something - how do I get access to this awesome and cool new feature? :)

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