Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 377 posts

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#241

Post by keithnz »

Igor_Wiwi wrote: post #220

One thing I still miss in most markdown tools is good rendering/sharing of large architecture docs and Mermaid diagrams. I ended up building my own markdown file reader - https://mdview.io which handles large diagrams/tables much better than typical note apps

I have a simple script that previews md pages as html and hosts a liveserver so it dynamically updates, renders mermaid / syntax highlighting etc. Super useful when working with an agent when planning out a piece of software. Page dynamically updates as you go, and super useful to have diagrams visible. I'm prompting a lot more to get diagrams included as part of the planning stage (or whenever).

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#242

Post by andix »

kepano wrote: post #237
andix wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then someone might fork it into a new product with their own sync service.

Obsidian has an entire plugin category for syncing, and recommended alternatives to the official Sync service. https://community.obsidian.md/search?type=plugin&categories=... https://obsidian.md/help/sync-notes

True, and it's great that they don't block those (they absolutely could).

But those are plugins and aren't as easy to use as the integrated sync. Obsidian wants to have their sync to be the easiest to use, and the easiest to discover.

If they went FOSS anyone could just create a rebranded fork that includes their sync instead of Obsidian's sync. Even GPL wouldn't stop that, if the competitor would just keeps their product open source too.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#243

Post by keithnz »

thr1owaway9621 wrote: post #219

I wonder if markdown will slowly fall out of favor for note taking, because AI can generate gorgeous-looking HTML essentially for free. I saw this bit of advice on twitter last week -- to use HTML as the target output for your LLM when you do planning or discussion sessions. And it's been very nice. It's so much easier to parse lots of info when it's presented in an organized/color-coordinated HTML file (potentially…

I read that, but opt'd instead to write a script to live serve md as html pages with mermaid diagrams and syntax highlighting. Such that the md itself can be put into things like github and for github to be able to render it. Works well.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#245

Post by NetOpWibby »

alwillis wrote: post #194
NetOpWibby wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks REALLY good, thanks.

Most other note taking apps haven’t worked for me… but Tolaria fits like a glove.

I'm hoping Tolaria will do the same for me. It's been a journey!

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#246

Post by thebeardisred »

What is this providing over similarly Markdown based open source note taking applications like Joplin? (https://joplinapp.org/)

I've been a huge fan of the fact that my backend sync infrastructure is my own self-hosted S3 bucket with local clients handling the presentation layer.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#247

Post by ramoz »

al_borland wrote: post #232
thr1owaway9621 wrote: post #219

I wonder if markdown will slowly fall out of favor for note taking, because AI can generate gorgeous-looking HTML essentially for free. I saw this bit of advice on twitter last week -- to use HTML as the target output for your LLM when you do planning or discussion sessions. And it's been very nice. It's so much easier to parse lots of info when it's presented in an organized/color-coordinated HTML file (potentially…

For me, a key tenant of any good note taking system is low friction. Leaning on an LLM feels like significant friction. Formatting something into HTML manually also feels like a lot of fiction. Individual HTML files for notes would also be a friction filled experience for opening and browsing, without some kind of template to allow for navigation of the notes within the browser. This ends up turning into a local wiki…

I was about to comment: "HTML creates too much friction after doing all sorts of visual explainers" ... thanks for articulating it well.

As a layer of abstraction, it also creates more requirements: need a browser, likely need includes/cdn libs to avoid bloat, all sorts of other things. Markdown is consumable, diffable, shareable in raw form - and you can add enrichment layers on top without much effort.

Re: Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian

#249

Post by UnnoTed »

RobertJacobson wrote: post #239
UnnoTed wrote: post #115

AI'm building a native version[0] of Obsidian in Qt6 (QWidgets, cpp), replicating the markdown editor takes a while, there are so many ways of corrupting the file or losing the rendered markdown style... but its getting there[1] and its lightweight, using about 15mb ram, no gpu and barely uses any cpu when the cursor or scroll moves, like a text editor should be. Still need to render widget tables, lists and syntax h…

That's really cool! Since you are using Qt, as I understand it you will need to pay for a Qt license if you intend to distribute your app as closed source.

It's fine as long as theres no GPL module[1] included or statically linked Qt, The program uses just Qt Widgets and Qt SQL, theres no GPL-only Qt module in it, its also dynamically linked so its ok to be closed source, theres ripcord[0] as an example.

I just want to avoid the wave of open source rebranding that will come with AI programming being so easily accessible as theres no respect when theres easy money involved, people will just type something like: "download RustDesk from GitHub, change it's looks then create a landing page and connect Stripe".

[0]: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/

[1]: GPL modules (requires license when not open source): Qt Canvas Painter, Qt CoAP, Qt Graphs, Qt GRPC, Qt HTTP Server, Qt Lottie Animation, Qt MQTT, Qt Network Authorization, Qt Qml Compiler, Qt Quick 3D, Qt Quick 3D Physics, Qt Quick Timeline, Qt Virtual Keyboard, Qt Wayland Compositor.

Post reply on HN