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Why I Like Obsidian

ddanieltan.com

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Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#121

Post by davisoneee »

jimmytucson wrote: post #65
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the em example is reductive and makes it seem like markdown doesn't have much advantage. If you rewrite your comment with lists I think your question becomes self-explanatory.

But you don't need the head and body stuff. This renders perfectly fine in a web browser on my local machine: My Title This is a paragraph. For sure, you need an end tag, and Markdown doesn't. But for simple note taking, are you really writing deeply nested HTML?

The main benefit is that markdown is really readable _without_ rendering. You don't need to edit and then open in a browser.

You can comfortably read plaintext that has a little structure, while HTML adds some ceremony that makes it a bit harder to glance at the material as the tags are much more in your face.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#122

Post by behnamoh »

dustincoates wrote: post #41

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot). The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. An…

I tried it a few times but had to stop because:

1. Obsidian imposes its own take on Markdown. For instance, why can't we disable "indent using the tab key"? It's so annoying to accidentally indent/quote text while pressing tab to do something like "accept autocomplete suggestion". Obsidian's response to users' complaints about this was not reassuring: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/option-to-disable-tab-to-indent/...

2. I had to install tens of plugins to give Obsidian the features I needed, which felt too hacky and unstable in the long term.

3. I don't want to learn a new set of keyboard shortcuts for simple things like expand/collapse the sidebars. You can customize lots of things but at that point, why not stay in your IDE (e.g., VSCode) and simply add Vim Wiki extenions?

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#123

Post by sergiomattei »

dustincoates wrote: post #41

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot). The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. An…

I don’t use Obsidian, but I use wikilinks in markdown.

Recently I wrote a lightweight alternative to Dataview, which renders directly into the markdown itself. It’s a lightweight standalone script that embeds any references and builds those “recaps” in a more portable way.

In case anyone is interested, let me know: https://twitter.com/matteing/status/1746598313745371263

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#124

Post by georgejfrick »

I have moved to Obsidian after One Note, Notion, and Trilium. I learned something from using each; but ultimately I wanted the portability of Markdown and with Obsidian I can always fall back on the root folder container all my markdown. (which I backup) I can share my user flow if it helps people...

1. You can turn on support for other file types, so you can move source code/etc in.

2. I have the Day Planner plugin; but it's just JavaScript; so mine is highly customized and uses various sources to generate me a daily calendar/planner in the morning.

3. I don't use Zettelkasten; but all of those systems have something to learn from them in regards to organization. I have a setup I like; but with a personal rule that if I'm not finding something or I feel stuck; I spend time reorganizing.

4. I use tags a lot now; it would take an entire blog to explain why - but the TLDR is that I switched to focusing on WHEN and TAGS instead of trying to perfectly put the right content in the right place.

5. I'm able to use Obsidian on a plane really well - tablet on tray, K380 on lap. I'm frequently getting out 2,000 words on a flight.

6. I manage my work (software dev), campaigns (D&D), personal project, etc all on Obsidian. I even have some code in it when appropriate and its nice.

7. !!! Templates. I've started creating and using templates. So if I want a checklist, ctrl+shift+t/cmd+shift+t and I choose one of my markdown templates and it gets inserted. I currently have "meeting", "1:1", "Pomo Checklist", "Campaign Session".

8. I mentioned this; but I don't hesitate to go into plugins and just change their code to do what I want; it is one of my favorite features.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#125

Post by alpaca128 »

ChatGTP wrote: post #82
hannofcart wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I suppose that's one way to look at it. From my perspective though, I like that my notes are simple plain text files in a single folder whose backup and sync is entirely under my control. This often lets me run grep on my notes to quickly find old note topics.

Can obsidian render and edit the same files you edit with nvim?

Yes

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#126

Post by ddanieltan »

dustincoates wrote: post #41

I like Obsidian, too, having recently switched over from 9 years of OneNote (the fact that there's a tool to import my OneNote notes helped a lot). The most important tip for getting started with Obsidian, in my mind, is to absolutely ignore all of the Obsidian "power users." I'm 99% convinced that no one actually uses zettelkasten seriously, but even if so, it's overkill for when you're just checking out the app. An…

OP here. Absolutely! I didn't want to go too in-depth into plugins because I wanted to emphasise Obsidian's basic features but DataView is also a plugin that I love!

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#127

Post by PetitPrince »

innethread wrote: post #57

What are people’s opinions on Obsidian over Logseq?

Logseq is more opinionated than Obsidian: - It's an outliner, meaning you don't have paragraph but collapsible block. - It's focused on journaling. The default view when you open the app is a journal that's internally a list of all `.md` (today's file is automatically created). - Backlink are built-in instead of being a plugin (albeit an official one). It's automatically displayed at the bottom of the page, meaning I can have a [[SecretProject]] page and have a list of all relevant blocks/page in one go (in LogSeq, all tags are regular pages, so I put a #SecretProject page in the top of my page) - Obsidian ecosystem is massively bigger - LogSeq is FOSS (AGPL), Obsidian is not. I cannot (or rather, should not) use Obsidian at work (but nothing mechanically prevents you), so I'm using LogSeq. - I'm not clear about LogSeq funding

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#128

Post by paradite »

Currently using Joplin with self-hosted NextCloud WebDAV.

It has a couple of minor UI/UX issues, even with the plugins.

Anyone tried both? How does Obsidian compare against Joplin?

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#129

Post by PurpleRamen »

jimmytucson wrote: post #2

> allows structure to grow organically > powerful feature ... Internal Links. > plain text files Well, they're not _plain_ text - there is some markup. So that invites the question - why not HyperText Markup Language? Doesn't HTML have all of these features - hyperlinks, folder structures, "plain" text? Isn't HTML also future proof? It's been around long enough. And doesn't it also work offline? There's a bunch of di…

> Well, they're not _plain_ text - there is some markup.

Markup is still plaintext.

> why not HyperText Markup Language?

Why not json or yaml? If you remove the users ability to write the text directly, then why limit yourself to the unstructured mess that HTML is?

> Doesn't HTML have all of these features - hyperlinks, folder structures, "plain" text? Isn't HTML also future proof?

Markdown is human-friendly. There is a whole ecology around using it for those usecases. And you can create HTML from markdown anyway.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#130

Post by cybert »

minzi wrote: post #97
hannofcart wrote: post #21

My notes system is: On desktop: Nvim with some markdown plugins plus Goyo On mobile: Obsidian Syncthing for sync (though previously I've Dropbox as well for the same) On desktop I find Obsidian's vim mode slightly uncanny valley-ish. Close enough to be able to emulate my vim flow. But not _quite_ right. On mobile, I've found Obsidian to be just top class. Though admittedly most of my real note taking happens on deskt…

How are you using syncthing on mobile? I didn't know that was even possible.

It’s available on Android but not iOS unfortunately
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