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Obsidian Bases

help.obsidian.md

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Re: Obsidian Bases

#161

Post by direduck »

wkat4242 wrote: post #152
muppetman wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much wankery around Obsidian, it's so cringleworthty. Obsidian is a nice/fancy editor for markdown files. That's all it is really. People have created so many addons to bolt so much stuff onto it, but that's all it is at its core. You can search your notes, you can tag them. Just use the _core_ addons of Obsidian. That's all you need. Then if you find you really are missing something, have a look in the c…

> There is so much wankery around Obsidian, it's so cringleworthty. Obsidian is a nice/fancy editor for markdown files. That's all it is really. People have created so many addons to bolt so much stuff onto it, but that's all it is at its core. You can search your notes, you can tag them. It is a simple markdown editor yes but it's the addons that make it so different. There's tons and tons of markdown notetaking app…

> it would be great if the app offered an option to hide its files from other apps by locating them in the app's private storage area

For what it's worth, you can do just that now. Not sure when it was introduced, but on the current Android version, you are prompted to select either "Device storage" or "App storage" when creating a new vault.

You can also change the location of existing vaults from app to device and vice-versa.

With that now available, the one thing missing for me is a biometric lock option. Or even any kind of locking at all. There's a community plugin for that, but it's quite unstable and no longer maintained.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#162

Post by hresvelgr »

This seems distinctly in opposition to what I believe makes Obsidian a great program, providing an excellent editing environment and extensibility for markdown. The more it ventures into these types of features, the more they're going to lose to applications that designed for this from day dot, like Notion and Anytype.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#163

Post by wscott »

abalaji wrote: post #77

This seems useful for folks who use Obsidian as a personal CRM. I got some queries with data view that I'm going to see if this can replace: https://blacksmithgu.github.io/obsidian-dataview/ I often want to answer questions like: - When was the last time I chatted with this person - What did we talk about - Who haven't I spoken to in a while

Dataview can generate all of the data from Bases (and a whole lot more), but Bases is a lot easier to use as you can build queries in the GUI and the data comes out in nicely formatted table where you can edit the fields directly in the table rather than needing to load each data item one by one to make changes.

And still after using and making changes in the GUI the query is stored in a nicely formatted and editable YAML file.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#165

Post by slightwinder »

atoav wrote: post #155
slightwinder wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first sentence of the documentation already says it: "turn any set of notes into a powerful database". It's really just that, basically. It's a database-view, where the vault is the database and the rows are your files. There is a fancy GUI for creating views, and it seems there is the ability for live-editing data from within the view. Basically a more user-friendly replacement for the very popular dataview-plug…

Yes, but the average Obsidian user may or may not know what a database is an why they should care. As an engineer I like precise language, but we should not forget that multiple audiences require multiple levels of explainations. Otherwise it is a bit like saying "all monads are functors" when trying to make your reader care for investing time and energy into understanding the concept of monads. The problem there of…

> Yes, but the average Obsidian user may or may not know what a database

You can't constantly optimize your communication for the least educated recipient. Obsidian is full of technical, specialized terms. If you don't know a word, research it.

And database as a concept is common knowledge today. Everyone will have the word heard in news at least, most will have a rough understanding of its purpose. And people using obsidian are usually not the most uneducated, there have a certain level of technical expertise. Most will also know and understand the dataview-plugin.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#166

Post by kot-behemoth »

sureglymop wrote: post #112

A feature I have always missed in Obsidian is the continuous journal view from Logseq. How hard could it be to display the journal all on one page. I even started just writing the daily journal all in one file because that gives me that but it's starting to get a little big.

Daily Notes Editor plugin (https://github.com/Quorafind/Obsidian-Daily-Notes-Editor) does exactly that. Might do the trick for you.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#167

Post by nedt »

abrookewood wrote: post #62

I don't think they do that good a job of explaining what it is, but the Reddit post linked below included this comment which is helptful: "You know how when you search your notes for something, say a phrase? Well, Bases can basically hold a static search that automatically updates. And, instead of searching all over again, you just click into the Bases file and new notes are just there in the default table format. On…

Yeah it could have a better explanation. I added like three bases and always just got a list of "file name" and was wondering how to add different data. Was expecting something like MS access based on markdown tables. Maybe if the documentation would have an example of how you would create a collection of documents and then have a view on that with a base it would be clearer.

Re: Obsidian Bases

#168

Post by obsidianbases1 »

safety1st wrote: post #119
raybb wrote: post #42

For those curious, this feature is just now publicly launching and before it was only available to people who paid for early access. The Reddit thread has some good discussion about the feature https://old.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/1mtxh52/obsidia...

Is there a good AI plugin for Obsidian yet?

Copilot, Smart Connections and Text Generator are all "good" AI plugins in Obsidian

https://youtu.be/7Rvl9Sl29Jk

https://youtu.be/mZ8TJ59Hj28

Re: Obsidian Bases

#169

Post by slightwinder »

torium wrote: post #82
slightwinder wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first sentence of the documentation already says it: "turn any set of notes into a powerful database". It's really just that, basically. It's a database-view, where the vault is the database and the rows are your files. There is a fancy GUI for creating views, and it seems there is the ability for live-editing data from within the view. Basically a more user-friendly replacement for the very popular dataview-plug…

> The first sentence of the documentation already says it: "turn any set of notes into a powerful database No, horrible job at explaining. What does it mean to turn any set of notes into a powerful database? What does it mean to "turn"? Does it mean that a file will become a database? Or does it mean that a file can be interpreted as a database? And why set of notes? If I have a single note, can I turn that into a da…

> What does it mean to turn any set of notes into a powerful database?

You must be fun at parties. Complaining about everything, but not even bother to read the damn manual... It's explained on the third sentence on that site. Ok, to be fair, there is a big picture between those parts, and you have to follow some links for more details.

> And why set of notes?

Just curious, do you even know Obsidian? Have you ever used it? You read like someone who has no clue about this software, jump right in the middle of the manual, and then complain that you missed the tutorial.

Obsidian is a markdown-editor with knowledge base. Notes are its lifeline, and they have since nearly the beginning the option to put metadata into each note in a special section (in yaml), basically the header of the note. This metadata are now called properties. Bases is a feature building up on this metadata, offering a database-like experience for viewing and editing them in a specialized UI. The database, is the vault, the folder+subfolder containing the notes. Each note is a row in that database.

This is all explained in the documentation, if you just would read it...

Re: Obsidian Bases

#170

Post by turing_complete »

I just started using Obsidian. What is the best way to use Obsidian both on your phone as well as your PC/laptop? I use it within git and google drive. How can I sync it most easily to my phone as well?
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