Is it possible to draw in Obsidian (with a tablet/touchscreen)? I’d really like a digital app for algorithms work but so much of it is based on doodling graphs and automata and diagrams. I really like the idea of progressive annotation of such doodles with a note-taking app, but I need to be able to doodle in the first place.
Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
331–340 of 394 posts
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#332Obsidian 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…
What does it mean to open-source or MIT-license a "file format"? The MIT license is a license about copyrighted software, allowing people to use/modify/publish that software. But a file format isn't a piece of software. Are you open-sourcing the specification document for the file format? (people are still free to write software that reads+writes the file format even if the specification document isn't open-sourced).…
It's just a marketing gimmick.
Anyone is free to write software that modifies a file - there is no copyright law protecting that. This is one of the reasons why many large corporations are pushing hard towards cloud - they can protect the format AND the platform then monetize it at will. End users lose control.
I will give them points for putting it in a readable file format. But placing it under an MIT license and "open sourcing" it, doesn't do anything - and they know that. It's just fluff to market their new features.
Edit: Re-reading what I posted, In case it's taken the wrong way, I am not disparaging the team at Obsidian in any way:
I think they do good work and make great software.
IANAL
> The file itself is considered instead to be an idea or a system and is therefore not protected by the laws of copyright. So the description of a file format is copyrightable, but the format as it exists in its medium is not.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, we do not use AWS. The Sync and Publish servers are running in Digital Ocean datacenters in the US. How sync encrypts the data is documented here: https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Security+and+privacy As others have already pointed out, Sync is not the only option to synchronize notes, Obsidian sync is just a convenience option. For compliance, I am guessing you mean certs like SOC 2 / ISO 27001?, or what a…
From the link: > AES-256 is a military-grade encryption specification that's widely used in for example online banking. The term “military grade” is meaningless and if anything raises a red flag (at least to me). What would be more useful is a detailed spec on the implementation. Are the crypto routines implemented in house or has a well tested library been used? If in house, had there been an external code audit don…
The data is successfully encrypted before it's sent (which you can verify with wireshark). What exactly are your concerns, given that the data isn't encrypted locally in the first place? And seriously with the question...what do you think is more likely, that the tiny team of 6 invested a ton of time reinventing the wheel with a custom in-house AES implementation, OR that they used any of the readily available and extremely well tested libraries? SMH
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#334Is it possible to draw in Obsidian (with a tablet/touchscreen)? I’d really like a digital app for algorithms work but so much of it is based on doodling graphs and automata and diagrams. I really like the idea of progressive annotation of such doodles with a note-taking app, but I need to be able to doodle in the first place.
Sadly not out of the box im afraid, there is a plugin for that though [1]. This plugin is not as advanced as say onenote, but it works for small things
[1]: https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#335I 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's decent note-taking software with useful features and a storage medium that's currently in favour. If you have a use for such a thing, it's one of the best options available right now.
But that's all. You can forget all the "second brain"/zettelkasten stuff. It's just marketing gumpf used to build careers prattling about notetaking methods (dressed up as something fancier).
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#336I'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 customi…
I don't know if I wasn't noticing the "Relaunch to install update" button or if I just needed to give it a while to download the new update, but after the update (to v1.1.8) the Canvas feature now works.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#337Earlier 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 works well on Android for photos, music, movies, and downloads. Not so much for notes. You'll end up with conflicts, and there aren't many great ways to merge changes on mobile.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#338That’s fantastic. Are use obsidian somewhat casually, but this could turn it into a bit more of a daily driver.
I just wish that their sync service was less expensive, say $30, instead of $100. Because that’s the difference between being willing to pay for sync vs using any number of computer sync services (be a dropbox, Google Drive, or anything else) to get synchronization that is good enough that committing to either $10 a month or $100 a year just doesn’t seem worth it for the incremental gain.
I don’t know, it’s a difficult balance to strike between customers that need it enough to pay their current prices, and more casual users a bit on the borderline like me who are no power users enough to pay that much. Price elasticity is not an exact science and it’s entirely possible they have already filed in the optimum amount for it.
Although I wonder if there might be room for a tier that was quota driven. For example a certain amount of megabytes of data or number of notes or some other combination of factors, and charge around three dollars a month.
Basically I would like to give them more money to use their sink service, but I might be in too small of a user group for it to be worth it for them to try to target me and others like me with a specific type of plan.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#339Nice feature, but I'm not interested in managing my notes with something that isn't pure open source.
Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas
#340Obsidian 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…
I was just researching graph representations. I would have used dictionaries for edges and nodes indexed by their IDs.. because that representation is json-merge patchable, which is useful for specifying atomic bulk graph operations.