Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
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Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#202Anyone have any thoughts on Craft[1] and how it compares to Obsidian as a note-taking tool? My primary work machine is a Mac (I also have an iPad and iPhone). I'm looking primarily for a note-taking app with support for images. I don't necessarily need the more "glamourous" publishing type features that craft has. Things I like about the app: * (Generally) good keyboard support * Syncing (but I'm paying for it) * Goo…
Craft uses a proprietary data format. Obsidian is more portable since it just uses folders of Markdown files.
Craft for Windows doesn’t work offline (only online).
Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#203Obsidian is my favorite app, and my only missing feature is to enable better PDF support, similar to Logseq. Logseq allows me to embed the PDFs inside the app and annotate them with all the bells and whistles enabled by markdown. Area highlights, math notation, all these things are not possible with classical PDF readers, and I think Obsidian would fit well here.
What do you prefer Obsidian over Logseq for?
- No export to PDF. There's a community plugin, but it's not great. The workaround is to export to HTML and print to PDF, but there's no real iOS option there.
- Managing images and other attachments are a mess. Using the "upload an asset" method gives it a random filename that if the app fails to save the page correctly, you either dig through the folder structure to find the random file name to link manually or you re-"upload an asset" creating a duplicate with a new random name. This could be alleviated if it was more stable or with a file picker with thumbnails to find previously "uploaded" files
- Pages fail to save correctly more than I'd like. I have no idea what the cause is, but it happens frequently on every platform I've tried.
- Page title changes don't propagate correctly sometimes, causing orphaned pages where it's a coin flip whether the page with the older title holds the content or the new one, leaving the other empty.
- Each page needs a unique title. I like how Notion allows multiple pages with the same title and are organized based on which parent page they're embedded or created in. I imagine Notion randomizes the actual file name similar to how Logseq already does for "uploaded" assets, so this could be alleviated if Logseq did the same. It could potentially alleviate the previously mentioned issue and it seems to me like the most logical method of handling this particular type of non-directory organizational structure.
- Their E2EE sync service is not yet ready, so no real mobile sync outside of iCloud (I use DropBox).
- Their documentation is terrible. There's tons of undocumented features, like admonitions, and the existing documentation is horribly structured, which is ironic since the documentation uses Logseq itself and the whole point of the app is to structure content.
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Side note, since we're on the topic of personal knowledge bases and note taking, my personal dream app is Obsidian with Asciidoc support instead of Markdown. A lot of the extra features they add to markdown are part of the Asciidoc standard, like admonitions and document-to-document cross-references, it would potentially make the backend easier and the content more portable with page attributes like specifying an attachment directory, and some features are simply more flexible/powerful like tables.
I still use AsciiDoc to create PDF documents that require more flexibility, like table spans and nested ordered lists (Obsidian's markdown uses just 1,2,... instead of changing to e.g., a,b,... for a nested level). My current workflow is typing it up in VS Code, converting to DocBook with asciidoctor, then converting that to a LaTeX PDF using pandoc. The result is a professional, academic-like PDF, but the workflow is a bit of a hassle and I'd prefer to do all of my document typing in Obsidian since it's so nice to use.
If I had more free time outside of my CS master's program and thesis work, I'd learn JS/TS to attempt to create a community extension that added AsciiDoc support to it and support for exporting to HTML and DocBook (and basic PDF since I'm pretty sure Obsidian uses an HTML-based PDF export anyway because CSS themes affect the look of the export), even if I still needed to use pandoc to convert to a more professional LaTeX PDF. I'm sure the VS Code AsciiDoc extension as reference and asciidoctor.js could get one pretty far.
Sorry for the rant. I've just been itching for a AsciiDoc-based note-taking/PKB for a long time.
Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#204Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#205Questions for users - if we work in an environment where we cannot install applications (and no this wont be approved) are we able to use this still, or is it only going to be viable for a "personal" machine. I ask as i can think of several times ive been stuck with just a work laptop or similar and it would suck to not at least have a browser version or something. Thanks
If you can't install applications locally, Logseq is a good alternative. It can operate entirely locally, with nothing installed, if your browser supports the localstorage API. Edge does, for example. (There are a small number of features that don't work in this mode.)
Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really struggling to understand how Obsidian isn't free. Maybe I'm simply missing your point. There is no expectation that you use sync, it's simply an option for those that want it and are likely less tech oriented.
+1. It's pretty easy to setup your own syncing using iCloud, Dropbox or whatever you want.
Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#207Questions for users - if we work in an environment where we cannot install applications (and no this wont be approved) are we able to use this still, or is it only going to be viable for a "personal" machine. I ask as i can think of several times ive been stuck with just a work laptop or similar and it would suck to not at least have a browser version or something. Thanks
This is very cool! Thanks for sharing.
Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#208Could someone tell me if the ability to export standard markdown has been implemented yet?
Can you explain more? The files are already in Markdown format, and you can use standard notation. You don't actually need to export them, they're just in your vault folder.
Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#209Including most useful plugins, does it work offline without issues?
Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app
#210Between Obsidian, Roam, Amplenote, and Reflect it has certainly been a golden age for note taking over the last few years. It's hard to remember that it was only 5 years ago that second generation note apps like Evernote, Notion and Bear were the only viable options unless you wanted a 1st gen app like OneNote or Workflowy. What might be most interesting about the new set of fast moving note apps is that all seem to…
I'm still waiting on one of these upstarts to implement the most essential features of the "first gen" apps, like inking/handwriting.