Anyone familiar with both have a comparison with org-roam mode?
Why I Like Obsidian
211–220 of 376 posts
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#212Tried Obsidian multiple times, can't make it work for me.
Tried Zettlr a week ago, same result.
Somehow I seem nobody noticed anytype - https://anytype.io/ They're still in beta, looks like they draw inspiration from Notion but it's more closer to what I need.
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#213Earlier 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.…
> 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…
Could write your notes to a dir in your iCloud folder or equivalent; bind keys to the dir in netrw or whatever your choice of filetree explorer plugin
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't use the width of the canvas, but what I do love/appreciate is the way I can click anywhere and start writing. It feels as easy as pen and paper. I can go in any direction.
It doesn't have to be infinite canvas in practice, just allow enough width and length to let you put down your cursor anywhere and start writing/pasting images or whatever you wish.
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#215I 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 don’t use Obsidian, but I use wikilinks in markdown. Recently I wrote a lightweight alternative to Dataview, which renders directly into the markdown itself. It’s a lightweight standalone script that embeds any references and builds those “recaps” in a more portable way. In case anyone is interested, let me know: https://twitter.com/matteing/status/1746598313745371263
Yea, throw the link to it out here. I was about to write something similar, so you’d save me the trouble! ;)
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#216My notes system is: On desktop: Nvim with some markdown plugins plus Goyo On mobile: Obsidian Syncthing for sync (though previously I've Dropbox as well for the same) On desktop I find Obsidian's vim mode slightly uncanny valley-ish. Close enough to be able to emulate my vim flow. But not _quite_ right. On mobile, I've found Obsidian to be just top class. Though admittedly most of my real note taking happens on deskt…
Give a try to Markor it is much more usable than the mobile Obsidian.
Strong disagree.
I have indeed tried Markor and used it for quite a while. Atleast several months if not a year. It doesn't hold a candle to Obsidian.
Just two things off the top of my head among plenty of others:
1. No live edit mode in Markor. You can either edit or see the live preview. (Not sure if that's changed in recent times).
2. Here's the most thoughtful killer feature IMO of the Obsidian mobile app: it let's you configure the order of formatting tools that appear on the toolbar above the keyboard. This let's me put the checkbox edit and indent as the most frequent actions on top left. This makes my life so much better.
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#217Apple just needs to add Markdown to Notes and it would be the perfect app. Right now I am making do with creating little sections where I put monospaced fonts, but it's not ideal. I just need to plop down code between my notes once in a while, and Markdown's ``` makes that very easy.
I agree. I’ve considered trying to use Keyboard Maestro to implement an ersatz Markdown mode, like “replace '##' with ‘trigger the Set Heading Format menu’” or “replace ``` with ‘trigger the Monostyled format menu’”.
Huh. Having actually written that out, that should be easy. I know what I’m doing this morning.
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#218I was unaware of this until a few weeks ago, so I'd like to raise awareness for anybody who it affects: Obsidian is not FOSS, and purchasing a license is required for any work that generates revenue at a for-profit company of 2 or more people. https://obsidian.md/license Obsidian looks awesome to me, and for a long time I've been thinking about adopting it, but this licensing issue caused me to back away and look for…
I think it’s pretty likely that a lot of Obsidian users use it for their professional activity without paying.
Personally I haven’t considered it because of that. I have no use for a complex notes app in my private life, and there’s no way my employer would pay for the subscription.
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#219Anyone tried Dendron ( https://github.com/dendronhq/dendron )? It feels like it could almost become a competitor to Obsidian and plus is essentially a vscode plugin, so you get the benefit of using vscode as your code editor as well. Too bad the project has ended as there is no clear approach for the Dendron team to make it financially sustainable (with their cloud sync subscription, much like Obsidian Sync). But it'…
I quickly switched to Dendron from Obsidian because I preferred it being open source, and I liked the creator's views on the hierarchical search and categorization instead of just a tangle of wiki links, and liked the idea of it being a VSCode extension and then other extensions would also be available.
I think Dendron is high quality, and encourage everyone interested in markdown notes and Obsidian to check it out, and watch some of the creator Kevin Slin's introductory and overview videos or read the blog posts. He worked for Amazon and had to remember too many things and find them quickly, and that drove the Dendron hierarchical layout and features for managing lots of notes.
But personally, I'm not a big fan of VSCode or markdown; mostly what I want is to take quick screenshots and stash them for later - "here's how it looked before", "here's where to find this option" - and markdown is not great at that, you need to open 'markdown preview' to render your notes and see images. So you get a VS Code interface, and the editing window and the preview window. It's computing pre-WYSIWYG. And no way to draw on images like in OneNote. Similar with snippets of code and command lines, having to write them in markdown fiddling with word wrap and then preview the markdown to see them rendered properly in monospace isn't very convenient.
And of course hierarchy isn't free, it depends on me organizing and categorising (does this command go in "computers.aws.s3" or "software.amazon.s3.cli" or "tickets.12345678-Amazon-s3-client-weirdness" ?) which I'm not very committed to.
Re: Why I Like Obsidian
#220Obsidian 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-…
Ouch - I hadn't heard of that so thanks for raising awareness.
I'm trialling both with syncthing across multiple machines and so far no data loss but I'll make sure backups are in place!