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Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#111

Post by ymolodtsov »

christiansakai wrote: post #56

Nothing is forever. Especially if it is not free. Especially if it is not open source. If personal use is free forever but not open source, how am I supposed to believe that it will be free forever? Color me skeptical.

Because individual users don't give a lot of revenue to any SaaS company. That's why Notion just made their personal tier free.

It's a top of the funnel to convert people at workspaces into using the tool because they're familiar with it (not talking about Obsidian specifically, but in general).

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#112

Post by O_H_E »

kotutku wrote: post #30
ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

Are you going to add some features for more structured data? I'm thinking about tables like in Notion where you can sort by any column. Working with Markdown tables is very clunky.

That might be a good candid it feature for a plugin when the API is released. It was mentioned before in the discord.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#113

Post by ericax »

Whil- wrote: post #107
ericax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting idea and we'll look into it! We plan to stay in business in the long run, but if things do go wrong and we shut down, we do intend to open source the app.

I guess we all have an incentive to make you go out of business then ;-) On a more serious note: I see no issue with software being a service and costing money if it's built on a standard that leaves the data in the owners hands and in the owners own structures. I.e. Markdown files synced using infrastructure like OneDrive/Dropbox/whatever with some nice features on top of it and a nice UI can cost whatever and no on…

Totally agree (except for the first sentence LOL!).

Come to think of it, IDEs are exactly that: a powerful front-end for your code files. That means us programmers are not locked into any one IDE.

> And to take it to the next level we should create more general purpose (and standardized) database tools that are user friendly

Yep, but I wonder how we can get there. Hope someone figures it out! It's always hard to set standards.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#114

Post by ericax »

dvtrn wrote: post #94
ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

2. Link as first-citizen. sits up in chair, attention captured Where can I read more about this? My current personal wiki is powered by TiddlyWiki and while I don't necessarily love the performance, I do LOVE the link structure of TiddlyWiki (I can create a "table of contents" page a random tag, and then every page using that tag gets rendered on said page). I have similar plugins for VSCode to collect all of my todo…

The second box on our feature page might help!

https://obsidian.md/features

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#115

Post by cl42 »

benrbray wrote: post #47

This looks great! Good timing too, since Roam has recently closed its doors to new signups. I've been looking for a new notetaking / PKM / Markdown app recently, but unfortunately all apps out there fall short in at least one of the following criteria: * bidirectional [[wiki links]] * support for both inline and display math * customizable themes / CSS * rich formatting beyond markdown (e.g. wrap content in tags with…

Have you tried https://wiki.js.org/? Curious if it fits your needs, given they are open source.

P.S.

I use GitHub for all my personal writing and only now realized that a big part of it is due to its open source nature and data portability. I use emacs org-mode for my todo lists for the same reason. You're so right about how critical these features are.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#117

Post by O_H_E »

bravura wrote: post #55

How do I browse and edit my notes when I’m on mobile? Desktop only is a non starter for actually going all-in on a notes solution.

A mobile version is planned in the long term. Your notes are in plain markdown files though, so you can use any markdown editor your phone supports. I have seen 1Writer (ios) and Markor (Android) recommended a lot.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#118

Post by kickopotomus »

atfzl wrote: post #20

The graph view seems cool but I don't feel it is much useful in the long term. It has a wow factor in the initial use but it is just a mingled web of links. It is like creating a graph of the www but I don't see how that could be useful.

I agree. I think in it's current state, the graph is just a neat toy but even with just the help page, it already looks like a jumbled mess. It would be nice to be able to customize the graph or at least have it present the information in a cleaner way. For instance, have the ability to separate intra/inter document links. It would also be nice to be able to view a link hierarchy by treating a single file as a root.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#119

Post by ericax »

Veen wrote: post #79
itsspring wrote: post #50

I was about to spend $25 for a one-time/lifetime license, until I read your license. No commercial or professional use? I'm not paying $50/yr for that sorry. A yearly fee for this is unrealistic and is way more expensive than other products like Quiver or SimpleMind which offers a lifetime product

It is quite an odd choice. It makes sense to tier based on features, but tiers based on how or when people use an app is bizarre. Am I supposed to monitor myself so I don't read a note in Obsidian while I'm doing commercial writing work? (Also, their license page could do with some proofreading)

The idea is that if you're creating value with Obsidian, your employer should expense that, ideally it shouldn't impact you financially. If you're working for a non-profit for example, it's all free.

> (Also, their license page could do with some proofreading)

Interested to hear more! We did a few rounds of proofreading, did you find any typos?

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#120

Post by ericax »

katktv wrote: post #46
maurelian wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what it's missing that Roam has? I liked the Roam concept, but didn't use it for long before moving to Obsidian because of the privacy model, so I never really got a good feel for it. I still feel like I'm not getting the most out of the bi-directional link functionality everyone loves so much because I keep forgetting to create them.

I think Roam's graph is flawed, but it's much better that Obsidian's, which you can't even zoom out of. Also Conaw experiments with some neat things like to-do lists that double as backlinks, Kanban boards, Pomodoro timer (ok that's overkill but it was added recently anyway). Daily note-taking is also pretty streamlined in Roam with new notes created every day that can be referred to in a neat fashion, and perhaps al…

Interested in hearing more about the graph view!

As of the latest release our graph view can be zoomed in and out, and we've rewritten it to generate the graph with WebGL rather than SVG, so it's a lot more performant for 1,000+ notes.

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