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Why I Like Obsidian

ddanieltan.com

201–210 of 376 posts

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#201
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am wondering about is that although the basic files are markdown, some of the plugins might be proprietary. So that the part of the contents in the markdown files in effect creates a lock-in?

I would suggest editing and reading the markdown files in other editors to make avoid getting "locked in." You certainly could create your own lock-in by making some unique workflow that requires a combination of plug-ins to function. The plugins are all third party, some of them are just annotating the existing markdown files, some are just visual.

So you only use Obsidian for its vaults/syncing?

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#202
As a high school student, I also use Obsidian over more mainstream alternatives such as Notion or OneNote. I find it primarily useful because of the no-internet feature and I find the linking ability to be extremely useful since most ideas are related to other ideas, and in totality this creates a concept.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#204

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 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?

This is what I used to do with Vim, but I had two problems: (1) I would often forget to `git push`, (2) I wanted to easily access notes on my phone.

Importing into Obsidian and paying for Sync made both issues go away.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#205
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Take bullet point, and move it to new page. Or extract all mentions of tag into single page. There are some basic hotkeys and commands.

Refactoring is perhaps strong word, more like mouse dragging and copy&paste. It just feels like refactoring code. I can move things around without worrying something disappears or gets forgotten. I can also leave things half finished, without negative effects on readability and discoverability.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And also no Synching with a subscription! When I already have access to the iCloud ecosystem, and Notes is excellent across iOS and macOS, I have never really seen much point in trying to use Obsidian. But then maybe I'm missing the point of Obsidian?

you can use alternative for syncing that are quite well integrated even if a bit more complex to set up

There's a simple git-sync plugin plus you can just stick your vault in a cloud service

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#207

Obsidian is great. For those looking for an open source alternative (or don't want to pay the Obsidian fees for professional usage) check out Logseq: https://logseq.com/

Search for “Logseq data loss $current_year” and you’ll see horror stories of people who did everything exactly right and still lost a bunch of data from it. The most recent one I saw involved someone getting on a plane and thus losing Internet access to the paid syncing service. They did a bunch of work as they flew across the country. When they landed and the connection resumed, it synced everything back to the pre-takeoff state and erased their work.

Logseq is so very close to being exactly what I want, but there are way too many tales like that for my comfort. Yes, I could come up with something involving Git or rsync or whatever, but at that point I’ve conceded that I don’t trust the tool. And if I don’t trust the tool, I’m not going to use it.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#209
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plume is built on top of my open source note-taking app Notes[1]. Since Plume is based on Notes, I'll of course comply with the MPL license and release all existing files that were changed (and must stay MPL licensed). But I recently discussed my reasoning to go close-source[2]. I've been working night and day (every day) converting 4 cups of coffee into code for the last 4.5 months to create Plume. I don't want to r…

> But, I'm 99% sure that I'll either open source the core block editor or the entire app in the future. Why withhold the remaining 1%? If you aren't so confident about your decision to open source, there's no need to commit to that decision now . It's good that you are leaving the door open, but keep in mind that if some folks suddenly become successful with a service that can turn any GitHub repo into a nice looking…

Because I'm very much still a believer in open source. And you're right, that's a horror scenario I want to avoid. I'll only open source it in a way that won't compromise the sustainability of my work. I've yet to come up with the right model, so until then, it will stay close source.

Re: Why I Like Obsidian

#210

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.…

What were the features that you needed from Obsidian?
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