Why I Like Obsidian • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#291

Post by jslakro » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:04 PM UTC

safety1st wrote: post #175

bloopernova wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried zettlekasten and found I just didn't use it enough to justify the effort involved. Instead I just have an org-mode folder that I dump documents in. I search across them with Deft in Emacs. Sure, the links between documents can be incredibly useful to some people, but I've found I'm more chaotic than that.

I have read a bit about Zettelkasten and watched a video explaining it, and to me it feels like a pretty random collection of mostly good ideas on organizing information. Right up there with drinking coffee on exactly two specific days per week... https://zettelkasten.de/posts/practical-integration-deep-wor... I think this stuff is esoteric and personal enough that we are under no obligation to follow it to the lette…

Esoteric and personal are both adjectives I didn't find before to describe what Zettelkasten represents. That kind of thing that you need to visit again and again until you realize it doesn't fit to your own way of thinking

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#292

Post by kepano » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:40 PM UTC

midasz wrote: post #16

I really like Obsidian but the long startup time (on mobile) has stopped me from using it as a daily driver.

This is a priority for the Obsidian team over the next few months. This should get a lot better soon.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#293

Post by BrandoElFollito » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:43 PM UTC

Levitz wrote: post #190

toss1 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that trying to sync (Windows Obsidian app «=» Android Obsidian app) just via a cable would get the files over fine, but would not produce usable results, at least not without a lot more fiddling that I wanted to do. I was hoping that we could simply transfer the folder structure over and just have it work, but no such luck. Evidently it requires not only transfer, but some kind of transformation that they do…

There is a popular method which I use. Syncing the vault between devices with Syncthing. It reportedly causes problems if you edit the same file in two different places at the same time, it will generate a conflict when saving since the files won't match, doesn't affect me in my workflow (if I have access to my desktop I won't use it on my phone) but YMMV

Syncthing is a wonderful predict with a short but steep learning curve.

Once you actually understand how sync works in details it does wonders.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#294

Post by aprdm » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:44 PM UTC

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #257

aprdm wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm really ? It easily exports to markdown, and scripting against sqlite is very straightforward too

The impedance feels unnecessary. I want my data checked into git, and directly accessible. I don't feel like custom schemas and database drivers, as a user, do anything but make the operational loop painful. I can quickly use any mdast library/toolkits and some terrible shell scripts to make anything possible in moments.

I guess it depends the person, dealing with sqlite + python doesn't need dependencies or custom drivers and is easy to do/easier to manage for me than bash scripts

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#295

Post by BrandoElFollito » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

Otternonsenz wrote: post #275

While not my personal knowledge base yet, my personal use case for Obsidian is probably what gives me the most joy for it: as a Dungeon Master’s Worldbuilding Notes / Interactive DM Screen Where I have used pen and paper in the past to track everything, Obsidian has supercharged my ability to sit down and flesh out my homebrew world in a way that was hard to do for myself prior. On top of the ease of writing and link…

A lady that gives a lot of tutorials about Obsidian on YouTube users it as a DM as well. I think she posted a few videos about that usage.

Edit: found her: https://youtube.com/@nicolevdh

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#296

Post by abhinavk » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:53 PM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #259

Anyone know of an alternative that stores data locally and looks and feels a bit more like Notion? The plain list like note view is just so ugly and when I create a new note I'd want it to be in the context of whatever I'm currently looking at, not at the root. I know about tags and the graph view but it's just not what I need. There was a comment to a Notion related submission the other day that talked about somethi…

SiYuan?

https://github.com/siyuan-note/siyuan

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#297

Post by pcthrowaway » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 10:32 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #260

muwtyhg wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obsidian's response to users' complaints about this was not reassuring This is my main worry about choosing Obsidian for the long run. The devs seem very opinionated about a system that is meant to be customizable to each user's workflow. Their Vim implementation does not support setting hard line breaks, making modal editing a little funky (every paragraph is just one long line and any action working on a line wil…

I've also noticed that Obsidian hides text automatically inside of or other HTML elements if they contain the property "markdown='1'", thereby blocking you from writing perfectly valid HTML inside of a Markdown file which was designed to be HTML-compatible.

Is the markdown=1 attribute part of the HTML spec? I can't find any indication that it is.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#298

Post by recfab » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 10:45 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #267

kisamoto wrote: post #29

Obsidian is great. For those looking for an open source alternative (or don't want to pay the Obsidian fees for professional usage) check out Logseq: https://logseq.com/

Logseq really needs the ability to add YAML frontmatter (title:, date:) to the text files. Every text file created by Logseq has a starting bullet point (" - ") because it is an outline. But this makes it impossible to render the file as a web page in a Markdown-friendly CMS as they all require frontmatter at the start of the file.

It's been a while since I've used Logseq, but IIRC you can use yaml front matter. The very first block in the page is special and if you enter YAML there, the underlying markdown will have that yaml block without any bullet points. It renders just like the `foo:: bar` properties.

There was a limitation though that it didn't handle nested YAML. (Obsidian has the same problem I believe though I haven't tested recently)

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#299

Post by ezst » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 10:53 PM UTC

Unpopular opinion: I dislike obsidian. I came to the realization that any reasonably large collection of notes requires structure, which goes by the definition of types (for people, places, organizations, ...). Obsidian is very rudimentary in this regard: it offers properties, folders and templates. Those are workable at first but fall apart soon enough: you can derive many instances of a type from a certain template, but obsidian will happily let you change the template later on without offering the means to propagate the changes to existing instances, leaving your notes in an inconsistent state with no way to tell. Anytype, SiYuan, LogSeq have the same problem. Notion is a bit better considering its "databases" help finding and patching such discrepancies, but is also limited in that it doesn't let you extend types (polymorphism). None of them support cardinality (should there be one or multiple references) nor defining forward and backwards relationships when the property is relational.

As I was about to give up, I found out about Trilium which checks all the good marks when it comes to data modeling and consistency, in a super simple and straightforward manner. And on top of that, it's opensource, local first, self hostable, syncable, has a web UI so you don't have to install anything if you can't, and lends itself to emacs levels of hackability. IMO, anyone claiming to be managing a large collection of notes should give it a serious look.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#300

Post by Lazare » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 10:57 PM UTC

Tried Obsidian for a while, loved a lot about it, but....mmm.

Obsidian out of the box is a bit limited; plugins are great and add tons of features, but then you start hitting issues with plugin maintainers abandoning plugins you rely on, or needing to make a decision between three different plugins that all do the same thing slightly different. Depending on your use case and expectations that may not be a big deal, but I really missed not having what I personally saw as core features not being officially supported.

(Also, FWIW, the sync service is a bit pricy for what it is. I get that it's how they're trying to monetise it, but...I would have preferred another pricing model, even if the total cost was just as high.)

I've personally switched to Trilium Notes which I'm finding nicer. One element I particularly like is that it has first class suport for notes being able to exist at multiple places in a tree simultaneously. I know it's a very personal thing, but for me personally being able to file notes in multiple locations "clicks" in a way that tags didn't.

Trilium Notes: https://github.com/zadam/trilium

And here's a nice writeup on ways to use Trilium (although much of it applies to Obsidian too): https://github.com/zadam/trilium/wiki/Patterns-of-personal-k...