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Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

erikjohannes.no

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Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#11

Post by TheFreim »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #7
nkit wrote: post #5

For me the main benefit of Obsidian is live-rendering editor + other handy features. Not having to look at two panes side-by-side (or having to parse the markdown format in my head) is such a QOL improvement. Neovim might never be able to provide complete live-rendering. I don't blame it though, I wouldn't want terminals to become a rendering engine. Edit: Grammar

Funny enough, Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks, and that I want richtext and data structures for my stuff. Just that there is no good tool for this. Notion and its clones are the best in that regard, but they suck in their own regard, mainly because they are online-only. And considering how many tried to replicate Notion in obsidian-extensions (and failed), I'm not the only one I guess. Ther…

> Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks

I don't understand. I currently use obsidian and the live rendering is great, not exactly sure what you mean.

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#12

Post by cl3misch »

tesdinger wrote: post #6

Just use one note, or a wiki.

...something something you can build Dropbox trivially with these existing tools...

Neither OneNote nor a wiki have the workflow of modern knowledge managers like Obsidian, Notion and the like.

Furthermore, how do OneNote or a wiki fit into "Vim and Bash"?

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#13

Post by rob74 »

TheFreim wrote: post #11
PurpleRamen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks, and that I want richtext and data structures for my stuff. Just that there is no good tool for this. Notion and its clones are the best in that regard, but they suck in their own regard, mainly because they are online-only. And considering how many tried to replicate Notion in obsidian-extensions (and failed), I'm not the only one I guess. Ther…

> Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks I don't understand. I currently use obsidian and the live rendering is great, not exactly sure what you mean.

Probably referring to the limitations of Markdown? Not sure what Markdown flavor Obsidian supports, some extensions (e.g. tables) are quite powerful...

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#14

Post by wim »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #7
nkit wrote: post #5

For me the main benefit of Obsidian is live-rendering editor + other handy features. Not having to look at two panes side-by-side (or having to parse the markdown format in my head) is such a QOL improvement. Neovim might never be able to provide complete live-rendering. I don't blame it though, I wouldn't want terminals to become a rendering engine. Edit: Grammar

Funny enough, Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks, and that I want richtext and data structures for my stuff. Just that there is no good tool for this. Notion and its clones are the best in that regard, but they suck in their own regard, mainly because they are online-only. And considering how many tried to replicate Notion in obsidian-extensions (and failed), I'm not the only one I guess. Ther…

We’re working on building an IDE of sorts [1] (but specifically for tasks/notes) trying to combine the benefits of plain text but with rich elements and structure (tree/graph). The illusion of a real editor breaks down pretty quickly when you can’t easily copy-paste or select rich elements as if it was plain text, so that’s why we’re trying to build the whole thing from scratch.

[1] https://thymer.com

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#15

Post by PurpleRamen »

TheFreim wrote: post #11
PurpleRamen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks, and that I want richtext and data structures for my stuff. Just that there is no good tool for this. Notion and its clones are the best in that regard, but they suck in their own regard, mainly because they are online-only. And considering how many tried to replicate Notion in obsidian-extensions (and failed), I'm not the only one I guess. Ther…

> Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks I don't understand. I currently use obsidian and the live rendering is great, not exactly sure what you mean.

That live rendering exists is in itself a sign that we want more than plaintext. On its own, plaintext is simple, which is why we like it. And it shoves everything directly in your face, which is also why we like it. But many of us also want more than just plaintext, so we invented markup, to add some levels of richness. But this makes it complicated again, and the more we want, the harder it gets, the less support from the tools we have.

Obsidian is now in a space where many people want something more richful, with elaborated data-handling, charts, pictures, videos, code-fragments with syntax highlighting, execution of code-framgments, and so on. The scale of demand is far more than just plaintext, or simple markup, and the tooling can't fetch up at the moment, because anything becomes very dirty and hacky around the higher abilities and more specialized workflows.

And then there is the problem of documentation and learning, which with plaintext is always a big problem, because everything depends on your input. With richtext-interfaces, you have an environment whose whole purpose is to support you in inputing and manipulating which ever richful text/object you want. So they simply scale up better. Which brought me to the realization that a modern environment around richtext and objects is what I really need. Because it's simple to level down richtext, but hard to level up plaintext.

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#16

Post by svieira »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #15
TheFreim wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks I don't understand. I currently use obsidian and the live rendering is great, not exactly sure what you mean.

That live rendering exists is in itself a sign that we want more than plaintext. On its own, plaintext is simple, which is why we like it. And it shoves everything directly in your face, which is also why we like it. But many of us also want more than just plaintext, so we invented markup, to add some levels of richness. But this makes it complicated again, and the more we want, the harder it gets, the less support f…

Everyone is re-inventing "show codes" from Wordperfect 5 and other similar platforms because no one who is inventing these things has ever used Wordperfect 5. That said, re-solving this problem is turning up some nice new U/X patterns that (as far as I know) weren't around in the older platforms ("show codes on cursor", "local modal editing for format", etc.)

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#17

Post by the_cramer »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #2

I also only found out about Obsidian recently and I've become interested in switching. So far for my notes for the last several years I've just been using raw tex files with TexStudio, and creating various level subsections with macros bound to key combos as needed. It works quite well with the navigation tree and MDI, but Obsidian sounds like it might be a better solution.

The great thing about Obsidian is that it still uses plaintext (it's not obsidian exclusive, i know). In case of issues with the tool, you can view and edit files in an editor. It also makes syncing stuff / backups very easy. Since you're probably having a kind of syntax already it won't be hard to change.

With a proper keyboard, it's super fast to create and link notes. On mobile it sucks hard. Things like "[text](linkForText)" are not very mobile-friendly.

One big gripe i have is the table editor. There is an advanced table add-in to help, but it still sucks. Create a table and put a long link into it.

Well-known keys like "end" or "pos1" don't do the expected. "TAB" will add fields... i don't know, this should be better.

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#18

Post by jrm4 »

Again, I'll put up another vote for http://zim-wiki.org which I've been using for now almost decades. I've begun to experiment more with Obsidian as well, a killer thing for me would be for e.g. Zim to support standard Markdown and just make the two fully cross-compatible...

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#19

Post by PrimeMcFly »

the_cramer wrote: post #17
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #2

I also only found out about Obsidian recently and I've become interested in switching. So far for my notes for the last several years I've just been using raw tex files with TexStudio, and creating various level subsections with macros bound to key combos as needed. It works quite well with the navigation tree and MDI, but Obsidian sounds like it might be a better solution.

The great thing about Obsidian is that it still uses plaintext (it's not obsidian exclusive, i know). In case of issues with the tool, you can view and edit files in an editor. It also makes syncing stuff / backups very easy. Since you're probably having a kind of syntax already it won't be hard to change. With a proper keyboard, it's super fast to create and link notes. On mobile it sucks hard. Things like "[text](l…

I'm familiar with markdown enough, but I don't have much need to format my own notes, no need for tables etc. All I really need is headings, and sub-headings to various degrees.

I've been wanting to make my own program to deal with that since using tex for that seems like overkill even though it works well enough. I may still as Obsidian being closed source is kind of a bummer and I'm trying to limit the closed source software I use as much as possible.

Re: Reconstructing Obsidian Features in Vim and Bash

#20

Post by quantumite »

wim wrote: post #14
PurpleRamen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, Obsidians live rendering has shown me that plaintext sucks, and that I want richtext and data structures for my stuff. Just that there is no good tool for this. Notion and its clones are the best in that regard, but they suck in their own regard, mainly because they are online-only. And considering how many tried to replicate Notion in obsidian-extensions (and failed), I'm not the only one I guess. Ther…

We’re working on building an IDE of sorts [1] (but specifically for tasks/notes) trying to combine the benefits of plain text but with rich elements and structure (tree/graph). The illusion of a real editor breaks down pretty quickly when you can’t easily copy-paste or select rich elements as if it was plain text, so that’s why we’re trying to build the whole thing from scratch. [1] https://thymer.com

This looks interesting, I'll take a flyer. Good luck!
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