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

obsidian.md

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

#191

Post by groby_b »

kazinator wrote: post #177
yokoprime wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your point? I've moved my obsidian notes to vscode and back without any issues. Is closed source software somehow incapable of having true statements?

Approximately: "It's funny to be criticizing user freedom and lock-in issues with other programs, above a link to buy your stuff from an app store."

Closer: "I am incapable of reasoning, except in broad generalities".

Having an open and simple file format that is easily imported/exported is all many of us want from software. We are actually perfectly OK with paying people for work. Separating data freedom from access to source code is a perfectly meaningful thing to do, even if you personally don't like it.

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

#192

Post by kzrdude »

bachmeier wrote: post #61
kzrdude wrote: post #28

I think I've seen this as a vscode extension, right? (For now I personally use vimwiki, instead. I just can't quite leave the vim keybindings for typing.)

You are probably thinking of either Dendron or Foam.

You're right - dendron. Thanks

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

#193

Post by theprotocol »

bachmeier wrote: post #61
kzrdude wrote: post #28

I think I've seen this as a vscode extension, right? (For now I personally use vimwiki, instead. I just can't quite leave the vim keybindings for typing.)

You are probably thinking of either Dendron or Foam.

Thanks for mentioning these! They look pretty interesting.

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

#194

Post by jdgoesmarching »

aquova wrote: post #133
throwaway984393 wrote: post #129

Quoted post unavailable.

I could not disagree more. I'm very pleased that things such as markdown exist and are being widely used. All of the tools used by 'other professions' as you say, are in some nonsense proprietary format that works in their application and theirs alone. Even something as widespread as .docx is still a third-class citizen on other applications, due to Microsoft's monopoly on it. Is Markdown perfect? No. I find it rathe…

I really don’t understand what they think we’re missing in markdown, as if most of us don’t have plenty of experience with “better “ document software. They also don’t actually explain what features or tools make that’s software “better.” Most people I know in these trades are using Google or Office suites simply because that’s what they’re the most familiar with.

I’ve been through so many formats and styles of capturing information and always come back to markdown. If OP has specific critiques of what we’re missing out on, I’d love to hear them. Mostly it was just vague ranting about “devs love old tech.”

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

#196

Post by smusamashah »

kepano wrote: post #158

This is an incredible time for knowledge management tools. Just a couple of years ago I was pulling my hair out trying to get a local wiki to feel like a native app, and now we have a dozen great options to choose from. I started using Obsidian when it came out last year, and it instantly clicked for me. I immediately migrated 20 years of notes to it. What differentiates Obsidian from all of the other tools in this a…

I made a Windows 98/2000 theme for Obsidian which feels faster because animations are disabled and have more Thanks to Electron that I could do that. It was mentioned in the previous thread by its creator that because it's Electron you could make a css to make it look like anything you want.

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

#197

Post by spidersouris »

capableweb wrote: post #88
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…

Your solution seems to miss the single most important feature of Obsidian, the ability to link notes together with references directly in the documents. Obsidian is a knowledge base, what you are describing is a note taking solution. Might work for most people who just want to scribble things down, but once you start having information you want to inter-connect, it'll break down.

But it must be said that Obsidian works perfectly fine for simple note-taking. You won't fully leverage all the features, but who cares?

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

#198

Post by cratermoon »

It's worth pointing out that here, half a century later, we are finally getting something like the tools that Ted Nelson wrote about in his 1965 paper "Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate" https://doi.org/10.1145/800197.806036 [PDF available https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Complex-information-pr...]

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

#199

Post by runjake »

kepano wrote: post #158

This is an incredible time for knowledge management tools. Just a couple of years ago I was pulling my hair out trying to get a local wiki to feel like a native app, and now we have a dozen great options to choose from. I started using Obsidian when it came out last year, and it instantly clicked for me. I immediately migrated 20 years of notes to it. What differentiates Obsidian from all of the other tools in this a…

Can concur, his Minimal theme is really awesome and looks Mac-native.

His theme played a huge part in getting me to make the jump from Bear Notes to Obsidian as I try to move away from Mac-specific apps to cross-platform (macOS and Linux) options.

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

#200

Post by TimTheTinker »

marbletiles wrote: post #167
TimTheTinker wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of tradeoffs to using non-plaintext formats beyond not being able to edit them on old-school green CRTs: - Have you ever tried using git on a docx file? The best you have is file history, but good luck trying to merge branches, create/apply patches, cherry-pick commits, rebase, or view line-by-line history. - You lose the interoperability of plaintext. Any editor can open a plaintext file, and consumi…

You are begging the question. Git works well with plaintext because it is a product of the 1970s thinking that OP is bemoaning. If we built tools to do Git-like things on rich text file formats, they’d work just as well. (And Track Changes does a subset of those things surprisingly well inside Word, fwiw) And OP didn’t specify binary output. The output format could be anything we standardised on, just so long as it s…

What you call question-begging is really just an assumption I'm making - that git's feature set isn't available (or practically feasible) for any binary format.

You might disagree with that assumption, but if so I'd challenge you to show me (or build) a piece of software that (a) uses a binary storage file format and (b) has a feature set comparable to that of git for files in that format.

I know an argument from lack of existence doesn't prove anything. It certainly is within the universe of the possible to implement git's feature set in MS Word. But I highly doubt MS will ever do that, as that wouldn't make sense from a business standpoint.

A great general version control system is most likely to be implemented on formats that are the most interoperable. Nothing is more interoperable than plaintext. Perhaps if someone designs a structured general-use binary format that becomes widely adopted, then version control will be implemented for it. But I bet if someone does try to build such a binary format, someone else will follow it up by building a similar or better plaintext format. Plaintext is more attractive for non-proprietary software, because you get a lot for free.

In fact, I believe the only long-term business benefit of a binary format is vendor lock-in.

You might say developers are spoiled -- we enjoy power and freedom in our workflows that others don't even know is possible. I for one prefer the power and freedom that plaintext formats (both data and code) afford. Although I do sometimes use MS Word, I almost never commit a non-plaintext file to a git repo when there's a plaintext-format alternative.

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