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Why I Like Obsidian

ddanieltan.com

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Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#191

Post by orbital-decay »

keep320909 wrote: post #180
orbital-decay wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not going to build my PIM around proprietary tool with subscription! If your concern is about the lack of a clear migration path, Obsidian vaults are just folders with markdown files, which can be used with absolutely anything, you can literally use them in Emacs or VSCode if you want. The most popular PDF annotation plugin is AGPL-3 licensed and its format is also transparent so you can migrate to something e…

> which can be used with absolutely anything Not really, markdown has tons of tiny implementation details. And I can not use PDF annotation plugin in Emacs...

I'm saying that because I actually tried. There are Obsidian and customizable markdown modes/plugins for both Emacs and VSCode. My notes are usually cross-referenced, have pictures, occasional Mermaid diagrams, and are often heavy on math and code.

> markdown has tons of tiny implementation details. And I can not use PDF annotation plugin in Emacs

The same can be said about any other open format, I guess. There's no free lunch, you're always locked in by the implementation/workflow details, and have to write actual code (or use the code written by someone else) to migrate off to a different tool. The point is to not be locked by the format obfuscation or the storage.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#192

Post by outlore »

inferense wrote: post #12

obsidian is awesome. I'll go ahead and do a shameless plug for an alternative built with similar philosophy around privacy & data ownership aimed at developers https://acreom.com

I love the design of acreom! When I tried it, I was impressed with marking notes as Active/Done etc.

Do you support collecting individual checkbox items into a unified view as well?

Would you also consider adding an outline view/toc? Tysm!

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#193

Post by kstrauser »

bloopernova wrote: post #161
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 zettlekasten and found I just didn't use it enough to justify the effort involved. Instead I just have an org-mode folder that I dump documents in. I search across them with Deft in Emacs. Sure, the links between documents can be incredibly useful to some people, but I've found I'm more chaotic than that.

I’ve written off Zettelkasten. It’s not for me. It seems to be optimized for turning notes into publications, but that’s not my own goal behind taking notes. For me, good ol’ wiki style interlinking is much more useful (and vastly easier). I use the “Map of Content” ideas to have a few quick indexes, like “Current work projects” or “orders from restaurants we like”, but that’s about the most formal organization I do.

If I had a career in writing, I might seriously consider Zettelkasten. But even then, I’d be cautious with its output. I’ve seen some results that looked like it was great for shoving words onto paper, so long as you don’t worry about the quality of the end result.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#194

Post by aprdm »

keep320909 wrote: post #183
poulpy123 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't need the extensive extension library of obsidian and want an open source tool, I would advise for Joplin. Tthe philosophy of logseq is completely different of obsidian (and joplin), being centered on lists instead of documents

Logseq is journaling app with graphs. Notes are not organized in folders, but tags. I find journaling much better. I never procrastinate deciding into what category/folder/doc notes should fit. I just put everything into journal and fluently refactor as time goes.

Can you expand how you refactor ?

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#195

Post by aprdm »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #185
poulpy123 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't need the extensive extension library of obsidian and want an open source tool, I would advise for Joplin. Tthe philosophy of logseq is completely different of obsidian (and joplin), being centered on lists instead of documents

Joplin having data in a db is a non-starter for me. The flat-file nature of Logseq makes it much easier for me to script/mine/garden my digital garden.

Hm really ? It easily exports to markdown, and scripting against sqlite is very straightforward too

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#196

Post by behnamoh »

dsp_person wrote: post #182
behnamoh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

For #2 could you share some of the plugins you needed?

Off the top of my head, things like "Paste URL into Text" (which VSCode Markdown supports out-of-the-box), an extension for being able to define shortcuts for heading 1, 2, etc., connecting to Zotero, converting links to Markdown before exporting PDF, exporting PDF using pandoc templates, "Zoom" in sections while hiding the other sections (it was a neat extension), etc.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#197

Post by keep320909 »

orbital-decay wrote: post #191
keep320909 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which can be used with absolutely anything Not really, markdown has tons of tiny implementation details. And I can not use PDF annotation plugin in Emacs...

I'm saying that because I actually tried. There are Obsidian and customizable markdown modes/plugins for both Emacs and VSCode. My notes are usually cross-referenced, have pictures, occasional Mermaid diagrams, and are often heavy on math and code. > markdown has tons of tiny implementation details. And I can not use PDF annotation plugin in Emacs The same can be said about any other open format, I guess. There's no…

I have text notes that go back to 1997, PDF annotation notes back to 2003. I use PDF annotations for books, articles and webpages (save to PDF). About 70 gigabytes of annotated PDFs at this point.

I need to be absolutely sure PDF annotation tool will be around in a year 2050! Obsidian may withdraw their subscription offer at any time! Or raise subscription to $10000 per year (someone here says much higher price would be a steal!). I will always be able to run Logseq PDF annotator! Maybe in virtual machine. Or I will patch it (I have source code!!!). I have control over it!

And I really really hate fiddling with plugins. I was never much of Vim/Emacs guy for this reasons (prefer integrated IDEs such Idea). Logseq just works without setting up dozens of plugins and scripts. I use vanilla version with two plugins (video timestamp annotations and extra theme).

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#198

Post by aprdm »

paradite wrote: post #128

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?

I tried both and am using Joplin. Has less fuss around it and I focus more on simply taking notes .. the syncing is also cheaper and you can use for work

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#199

Post by behnamoh »

smusamashah wrote: post #166
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…

As a OneNote person for two years now, how do you deal with the added friction of linear notes in Obsidian (or any other plaintext based tool)? In OneNote I can just dump down anything literally anywhere (because each page is an infinite canvas). It feels as easy as having a pen and random free papers. But with my notes increasing, I do want to have some way to manage this data which OneNote fails at. I can do basic…

I never understood the appeal of infinite canvas. Something about it makes me feel like I'm not in full control of my notes/documents. I like it when the information is clearly structured.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#200

Post by kstrauser »

lawgimenez wrote: post #70
Multicomp wrote: post #47

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on your favorite notetaking app OP, it's more than I've done for mine. I'm glad it works for you, the in-between applications trying to do notetaking is a pain. I settled on OneNote because I'm always trying to capture context with my notes, codify my knowledge. Usually that means screenshots, handwriting, file copies, rarely video or audio embeddings. I'm not going to try to convince…

Speaking of boring, my entire life runs on Apple Notes. Everything to-dos, from family, kids, work, car, etc. I am just not sure how to migrate all of my 2,000 plus notes on to a new system. Plus with limited mobile data signal, I’m not sure if apps like Obsidian will work.

I just moved all of my stuff into Notes.

It’s Good Enough. Other tools have a million cool extra features, but in practice most of those just give me an excuse to screw around with the tool instead of work with the information inside it.

Notes isn’t flashy. Howver, it does all of the things I truly need such an app to do. So fine.

It also has the huge, free feature that I can share notes with my wife and we can edit them together. That came in handy over Christmas with our shared shopping list.

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