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

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

#211

Post by marbletiles »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #200
marbletiles wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lac…

(Again, rich text doesn’t need a binary file format but you ignored that)

Word’s Track Changes literally does this - you can compare/merge/etc. Quark also had extensions in the 90s that allowed it. It’s entirely feasible for any binary format (assuming you understand the format); why wouldn’t it be?

And it makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint, eg for lawyers, which is why they implemented it. Is it as rich as git? No, the use-case is different. Could it be? Yes.

I’m going to leave “power and freedom” where they lie and go marvel at the awesome power of the “Italic” and “Table” buttons from Word 5.1.

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

#212

Post by brazed_blotch »

astro_robot wrote: post #160

I’ve been interested in Zettelkasten for over a year and have tried all of the apps (Obsidian, Notion, pen and paper, etc.) but I still haven’t found a good system for using it. I always feel like it’s either too much information or too little. Any tips?

Spent the last week's evenings researching this. Make a list of the features you need. For me, using markdown and YAML frontmatter was the best solution.

As for traversing the notes, I picked VSCode (I would have picked Obsidian but it does funny things with front matter that I didn't like, and it lagged a lot on my computer). Primarily because it has extensions that update links automatically when the filepath to a note changes, and for graph view. You can use vim inside VSCode as a text editor. That's all I need really - VSCode to traverse, vim to edit.

What's great about this system is it really does stick strictly to commonmark and YAML usage isn't restricted at all (you don't even have to use the frontmatter if you don't want to), so your notes are completely portable.

Edit: typo

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

#213

Post by cratermoon »

ncallaway wrote: post #173
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m slightly relieved reading this. I see markdown everywhere, I can’t stand it, and I wonder why people are so crazy about it. It’s nice to know I’m not alone. Unfortunately I don’t think markdown is going anywhere. I think I see it far more than ever and there’s no sign of it slowing down.

I have been sent word documents that I’ve been totally unable to read. I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I haven’t been able to read. I’ve been sent a PDF that looks correct, but I’m not able to easily edit. I’ve never been sent a markdown file that I’ve been unable to edit. For a document format to be able to be widespread it needs to be interoperable and work on all systems. Markdown is popular because plai…

> I’ve been sent a PDF that looks correct

But "looks correct" for PDF presumes a certain form factor of the device used, because of the fixed page size. PDFs are a pain on many e-readers because they are laid out for US letter or A4 at a certain resolution. On a smaller device I often find I have a choice of either a. seeing an entire page at one time, as intended, but needing a magnifier to read anything, or b. zooming in to be able to read the text comfortably but then having to scroll left/right/up/down to read. There's no option in PDF to reflow the text to fit the resolution and size of the device. I'm not much of a fan of epub but at least the text reflow allows for normal reading.

Also, exporting text from a PDF to import to anything else is trying at best.

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

#214

Post by TuringTest »

RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #146
throwaway984393 wrote: post #129

Quoted post unavailable.

I thought people liked separating content from representation --- isn't Markdown's approach going against such philosophy?

In the end, Markdown is a summarized way to write simple HTML; all styling should be done on a separate CSS. If you intermix lots of s with class names in your text, you're not doing Markdown well.

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

#217

Post by abcd0880 »

RichardChu wrote: post #110
opan wrote: post #37

The comments here made it sound exciting, but it seems like it's proprietary, which is a no-go for me. I'll stick to plain text file notes and the occasional org-mode for now.

If you want an open source alternative, you should check out Notabase [0]. It's like a mix of Notion + Roam Research, designed to be delightful and easy to use. The difference from Obsidian is that it's database-backed. [0]: https://notabase.io

How does this compare to Obsidian in terms of features and extensibility? Thanks.

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

#218

Post by [deleted] »

dotancohen wrote: post #128
capableweb wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always fun to see these original comments in a HN thread. If you write this on Twitter you can get hundreds of retweets, hurry before someone else writes the tweet! Jokes aside, Obsidian being a Electron application is not a issue. The app starts in under 3 seconds for me, barely uses any RAM and CPU usage remains stable and low. If you want to actually contribute anything to this thread, feel free to give feedback o…

> The app starts in under 3 seconds for me For me that would be a showstopper. 3 seconds to open my notes app? I would have already lost my train of thought. :wq

[deleted]

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

#219

Post by avgcorrection »

capableweb wrote: post #125
nerdponx wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markdown, or CommonMark?

Obsidian has it's own flavor of Markdown there is bunch of stuff other Markdowns (including CommonMark) doesn't support. > We strive for maximum capability without breaking any existing formats, therefore we use a slightly unorthodox combination of flavors of markdown. It is broadly CommonMark, with the addition of some functionality from GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM), some latex support, and our chosen embed syntax…

They should call it Markdown* then.

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

#220

Post by afro88 »

Does anyone know the name of the note taking tool where pretty much everything is a bullet point, and each bullet point can expand to show sub bullet points. The website is essentially the tool itself IIRC. I've been trying to remember it for ages. I saw it in the comments for a different note taking tool on HN...
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