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Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

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Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#101

Post by laserlight »

marco_craveiro wrote: post #42
jstx1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is so customisable that as soon as I want to customise anything, I get lost searching for solutions online and inevitably give up on using Emacs altogether.

I think the biggest problem with Emacs is that you cannot really make sense of a lot of stuff until you start programming elisp in anger. I tried for many years to copy and paste snippets etc, but now I realised you just need to bite the bullet and learn it like any other programming language and be prepared to do "real development" in Emacs. Its very difficult to be a "tourist" in Emacs, IMHO, a lot of things just d…

Couldn’t agree more. I used to get annoyed that I had to copy and paste code snippets that I found over the Web just to configure basic stuff. It got out of control pretty quickly. Now I understood that Emacs is supposed to be used by programming it. Turns out it was meant to be a feature, not a bug.

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#102

Post by bambax »

galfarragem wrote: post #80
bambax wrote: post #71

I built a simple journal solution for myself two years ago. It sends an email every day and I can reply to it, and the response is stored in an SQLite database, in plain text. The db is on a remote server but copied to Dropbox every day (and in any case all the emails also exist in my sent folder). It is surprisingly effective at storing not just what I did with my day, but random thoughts and ideas, solutions to bug…

I'm somehow on the same boat as you. I've tried dozens of "fancy" tools but they never stuck. A plain text file, kind of a "flat wiki", that you can search with your text editor may be the grail of note taking. What I consider critical is to "tree-shake" it often to remove the cruft. Hints: - Tree-shake your notes each time you iterate them. You'll leverage your excitement and it won't be a chore. - Maintain part of…

> Maintain part of your notes public

Personally I like that notes are raw and stay raw. I even force me to not use capital letters to remind me of this.

But of course very often they are used as a draft for something more elaborate.

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#103

Post by exhaze »

bambax wrote: post #71

I built a simple journal solution for myself two years ago. It sends an email every day and I can reply to it, and the response is stored in an SQLite database, in plain text. The db is on a remote server but copied to Dropbox every day (and in any case all the emails also exist in my sent folder). It is surprisingly effective at storing not just what I did with my day, but random thoughts and ideas, solutions to bug…

> but copied to Dropbox every day

This seems unnecessarily complex - have you considered replacing this with rsync + cron job?

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#104

Post by dangoor »

krzyk wrote: post #81

I just downloaded deb and was a bit worried that it has 60MB, quick check on forums and it us unfortunately Electron :( Oh well, back to vim and cd.

Obsidian benefits from being an electron app because it has allowed people to create many plugins that provide useful UIs and these plugins likely wouldn't exist otherwise.

(That said, there are non-Electron alternatives like Tauri coming along that use the native webview to accomplish essentially the same thing.)

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#105

Post by bambax »

exhaze wrote: post #103
bambax wrote: post #71

I built a simple journal solution for myself two years ago. It sends an email every day and I can reply to it, and the response is stored in an SQLite database, in plain text. The db is on a remote server but copied to Dropbox every day (and in any case all the emails also exist in my sent folder). It is surprisingly effective at storing not just what I did with my day, but random thoughts and ideas, solutions to bug…

> but copied to Dropbox every day This seems unnecessarily complex - have you considered replacing this with rsync + cron job?

"Copied to Dropbox" is a copy cron to a folder that is shared on Dropbox. No API was harmed -- or used -- for any of this[0].

It's also in effect a poor man's backup, because the db is renamed with today's date so each copy doesn't overwrite any other.

[0] Edit: not in fact true. The email part uses Mailgun's API (from when you could use routes with a basic account).

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#106

Post by RichardChu »

avinassh wrote: post #79

I am looking to move from Notion, looking for an alternative. Here are few things I am looking for: 1. It is easy to back up or export my data 2. Great UI! May be its just me, I care about the UI a lot and if it is nice, I seem to be writing more 3. Support for templates, so that I can write daily journal/entries with predefined fields 4. Support for keyboard shortcuts (or mouse-less operations) so that I can link or…

Might be worth checking out Notabase [0]. The UI is designed to be really clean and easy-to-use.

[0]: https://notabase.io

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#107

Post by jf___ »

sharikous wrote: post #59
eightails wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an open-source alternative, Joplin could be worth a look. It's a little different in terms of features, missing a lot of the linking which is kind of key to Obsidian's appeal, so maybe it's closer to Evernote. Still, they're fundamentally the same in terms of being a note-taking app built on folders of markdown files. It's quite actively maintained and improved too.

Joplin is my choice too. I deplore the complicated codebase, unfortunately. I would have made the changes to get better linking, at least in a personal fork, but I could not find the time to commit myself to it.

with quicklinks [1] and the backlinks [2] plugins your're basically there. frictionless interlinking has made all the difference

[1] https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/quick-links-plugin/14214

[2] https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/automatic-backlinks-with-m...

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#108

Post by nerdponx »

nonamechicken wrote: post #96
opan wrote: post #37

The comments here made it sound exciting, but it seems like it's proprietary, which is a no-go for me. I'll stick to plain text file notes and the occasional org-mode for now.

While Obsidian may be proprietary, as long as the files follow standard markdown syntax, it can be opened in any markdown editor. I am currently using both Obsidian & Typora on the same workspace folder(I like Typora better for editing since its WYSIWIG). Not being locked down to any specific software was the primary reason I moved away from OneNote.

Markdown, or CommonMark?

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#109

Post by gego »

taurusnoises wrote: post #67
d4rkp4ttern wrote: post #49

Last I checked there was no good way to do quick capture of articles from mobile iOS to obsidian. Scenario — I come across an article on my iPhone, and I just want to dump title + URL (maybe even the text content) into obsidian. This is a must have for any note taking tool. Anyone have a good workflow for this, please share. Ideally an iOS shortcut.

My main gripe with Obsidian. That, and the fact that it costs almost $100 to have the mobile app sync with the desktop. That's insane to me, and feels vindictive. I'm all for paying for the platform. Seriously. These ventures need bottom - up support. But, syncing is a basic feature that any mobile app should have baked in. Charge for 24-hour support, something that actually requires the time of the team.

...syncthing

Re: Obsidian – A knowledge base from a local folder of plain text Markdown files

#110

Post by RichardChu »

opan wrote: post #37

The comments here made it sound exciting, but it seems like it's proprietary, which is a no-go for me. I'll stick to plain text file notes and the occasional org-mode for now.

If you want an open source alternative, you should check out Notabase [0]. It's like a mix of Notion + Roam Research, designed to be delightful and easy to use. The difference from Obsidian is that it's database-backed.

[0]: https://notabase.io

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