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Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

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Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#101

Post by mastax »

Vrondi wrote: post #63
DMell wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - the homepage is pretty straightforward.

No, it really isn't if you're not already into this type of app (and the recent trendy buzzwords around them). What it is: A note taking app using plain text files and giving great organization views. Nowhere on the main page does it say note taking app. Nowhere. You have to scroll to find "tend your notes like a gardener" as a clue that this is a note taking app. Anyone who hasn't looked at this space for more than…

Not that it makes much difference, but "knowledge base" is a much older term than 1-2 years. The Microsoft knowledge base is the first thing that came to mind, which started in 2003. Tools like Lotus Notes were using the term before that, but I can't find exactly when.

This google trends graph confirms my suspicion that it was a more common term back then: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=K...

Out of curiosity I tried to find older references. There are references using this definition back to at least 1995. Beyond that it's trickier because apparently "knowledge base" was used to describe the knowledge available to an AI system during the expert systems era, which is a somewhat different definition. e.g. Lehnert 1977: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED150955.pdf

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#102

Post by rcarmo »

chriskrycho wrote: post #64
rcarmo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did a quick test. Still seems to not support storing images alongside Markdown files (at least it breaks in mine), nor support having a default file (index.md) per folder and have the folder path be the actual page path.

Not sure what approach you're stumbling with re: images, but they definitely support them, but you can literally just drop an image onto the editor and it'll embed it, including locating it where you've specified that attachments should go. The default file per folder is not built-in, but there is a handy community plugin[1] which does it. [1]: https://github.com/xpgo/obsidian-folder-note-plugin

Right. That's the problem, it insists on storing images in a single folder, which doesn't scale or make it easy to manage complex notes as a single unit (it's the reason why my notes are folders and not single files).

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#103

Post by foolfoolz »

tailspin2019 wrote: post #70
mirages wrote: post #25

Is it me or am I the only one who took a good 3 mins to figure what this app is for ? Sorry I don't want to sound disrespectul but I didn't found an quick and easy parsable description. If I would show this my parents, I wouldn't be sure if they could guess. :/ "Obsidian is a powerful and extensible knowledge base" ?????

I'm very aware of Obsidian, having used it on and off since the early days, but I would agree that the wording on the linked page (for the 1.0 release) seems to make an assumption that the reader already knows what Obsidian is: > Obsidian 1.0, the all-new Obsidian. > A brand new look. A fresh way to browse. An exciting new start. You could also be misled into thinking this is the home page. The actual home page does…

is it a browser

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#105

Post by Vrondi »

chrisweekly wrote: post #72

Huge fan; Obsidian is at the center of my personal system for PKM / TFT (note-taking, todos, journaling, devnotes, bookmarks, sketches... ). It's like an OS for .md files. It's so powerful and extensible, via eg WYSIWYG editor, Excalidraw integ, Readwise Reader integ, home for my Remarkable2 notes and drawings, etc. Amazing community too.

I'd very interested to hear more about your workflow, because lack of inking/handwriting recognition in apps like Obsidian is what keeps me on OneNote (and from going fully Linux). Can you edit any of these ink based formats later in Obsidian, or are you limited to only viewing static images of things you've drawn/handwritten elsewhere in the past?

EDIT Searching around the web indicates that you can only draw on top of images of the writing later, not edit it. Alas.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#106

Post by kylecordes »

The sync pricing is frustrating. You can choose between free (single device only), and surprisingly expensive for a low-volume file sync mechanism.

Of course I understand there are good reasons for it. It is so difficult to find a paying customer for anything, that it's impractical to price below a cost threshold. LTV > CAC.

Would love to see something like “$200 to enable the a peer-to-peer sync engine forever”, i.e. no ongoing hosting costs for Obsidian.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#107

Post by VoodooJuJu »

mirages wrote: post #25

Is it me or am I the only one who took a good 3 mins to figure what this app is for ? Sorry I don't want to sound disrespectul but I didn't found an quick and easy parsable description. If I would show this my parents, I wouldn't be sure if they could guess. :/ "Obsidian is a powerful and extensible knowledge base" ?????

The reason for this is these "second brain" and "personal knowledge management" apps are rather cultish and aren't really intended for an audience outside of those already in the know - that is, the circuit of cycling through all these different apps and "productivity" games.

A similar app, Roam Research, is the same story as Obsidian, only a few chapters ahead. Roam's marketing campaign actually referred to itself and its users as a literal cult.

Ultimately, like self help, it's all just more of the same - cashgrabs that make people feel like they're improving or achieving, with every self help quip they consoom, with every "second brain" note they take.

Ultimately, they're just games for wasting time - "tool games" [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33135227

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#108

Post by tailspin2019 »

foolfoolz wrote: post #103
tailspin2019 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very aware of Obsidian, having used it on and off since the early days, but I would agree that the wording on the linked page (for the 1.0 release) seems to make an assumption that the reader already knows what Obsidian is: > Obsidian 1.0, the all-new Obsidian. > A brand new look. A fresh way to browse. An exciting new start. You could also be misled into thinking this is the home page. The actual home page does…

is it a browser

No

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#109

Post by input_sh »

Kelteseth wrote: post #43
weberer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown editor that lets you add links to other files. You basically have a "project" consisting of a folder with various .md files.

So what is difference to vscode here? I can see a cool graph view of my links. I guess the target is not directly developers when looking at their paid sync addon, because I would simply put this into a free closed gitlab repo. I will definitely try out the free version this week :) Edit: Found md-graph that also has the same neat graph: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ianjsike...

In my opinion links and images work much better. If you move a Markdown file or an image file to a different subdirectory, links gets fixed automatically. Absolute timesaver over a custom script I had to use previously.

And plugins! I can put a search query right within Markdown and it works. I have a unified interface over Markdown's to-do syntaxes I've left in various files. I can put a button that triggers some internal Obsidian command. I can have templates that pull from APIs and auto-populate some fields. I have variables I can easily query over. There's a git plugin you can use to auto-push/pull. There's a fully-featured mobile app (nearly feature compatible with the desktop app, plugin support and all). I have some subfolders that automatically get published on multiple websites that use a different CMS/SSG.

It's nothing you can't achieve with some custom bash/python scripts, but I don't like to spend my free time maintaining custom scripts, and Obsidian is truly a remarkably extensible product that allows me not to do that. It's easily in top 3 software products I use the most (next to a browser and a terminal emulator), I can't praise it enough.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#110

Post by chriskrycho »

rcarmo wrote: post #102
chriskrycho wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what approach you're stumbling with re: images, but they definitely support them, but you can literally just drop an image onto the editor and it'll embed it, including locating it where you've specified that attachments should go. The default file per folder is not built-in, but there is a handy community plugin[1] which does it. [1]: https://github.com/xpgo/obsidian-folder-note-plugin

Right. That's the problem, it insists on storing images in a single folder, which doesn't scale or make it easy to manage complex notes as a single unit (it's the reason why my notes are folders and not single files).

No, you can put them anywhere, it just defaults to putting them in a single folder for ease of convenience. There's even a setting, "Default location for new attachments," which allows you to choose:

- Vault folder - A specified folder in your vault - In the same folder as the current file - In subfolder under the current folder

But again, that's just the default location; you can put it anywhere and reference it wherever it is using relative paths.

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