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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

#241

Post by bloopernova »

bloopernova wrote: post #239
jstx1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is so customisable that as soon as I want to customise anything, I get lost searching for solutions online and inevitably give up on using Emacs altogether.

Emacs is fantastic for Yak Shaving. You can spend hours or days tweaking and modifying its configuration files if you're not careful. My advice for those seeking to get into Emacs: start from scratch. Learn how to split your custom.el from your init.el, and make sure you're using git to manage those files. Then start slowly and install org-mode from source and go from there: 8 │ ;; Save customizations in a different…

And some more snippets since I'm copying and pasting already. (I'm using "bat" to view files. Get it from https://github.com/sharkdp/bat )

  40   │ ;; Taken from https://karl-voit.at/2017/02/11/my-system-is-foobar/
  53   │ ;; Check if system is GNU/Linux
  54   │ (defun my-system-type-is-gnu ()
  55   │   "Return non-nil if system is GNU/Linux-based."
  56   │   (string-equal system-type "gnu/linux")
  57   │   )
  59   │ ;; make Linux a bit more mac-like
  60   │ (when (my-system-type-is-gnu)
  61   │   (global-set-key (kbd "s-/") 'comment-or-uncomment-region-or-line)
  62   │   (global-set-key (kbd "s-") '(lambda () (interactive) (kill-line 0)))
  64   │   )


 362   │ (defun newer-than-7-days(file)
 363   │   "Return list of files newer than 7 days old in directory FILE."
 364   │   (> 7
 365   │     (/(float-time(time-subtract
 366   │                    (current-time)
 367   │                    (nth 5 (file-attributes file))))
 368   │       86400)))
 407   │   (setq org-agenda-files
 408   │     (seq-filter #'newer-than-7-days
 409   │       (directory-files-recursively "~/Org/Journal" "\\.org$")))
Yes, Emacs is an operating system that also edits text :)

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

#242

Post by bloopernova »

capableweb wrote: post #92
krzyk wrote: post #81

I just downloaded deb and was a bit worried that it has 60MB, quick check on forums and it us unfortunately Electron :( Oh well, back to vim and cd.

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…

My problem with Electron apps is that they don't seem to support window decorations under Wayland on Linux. I'm trying Logseq (https://github.com/logseq/logseq ) right now, and like any Electron app on Wayland, you have to start it via "Logseq --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland" but that still doesn't give you window decorations (like titlebar, minimize button, etc)

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

#243

Post by trutannus »

submeta wrote: post #240

What I am missing most in Obsidian is this: It does not show the date created of the document. I need to hover over a note to see that info. This is such a basic and super important info, I am wondering why it‘s neglected so much. Every note taking app always shows the creation and/or modification date: Evernote, Bear, Ulysses, and every other app I know. Also the aesthetics is not on par with Bear or Ulysses. Finall…

> It does not show the date created of the document

You could use/write an extension for that! Obsidian is very extensible. I think there's template extensions you can use to put the datetime in the title, or in the filename.

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

#244

Post by DavideNL »

rodneyzeng wrote: post #231

To me, the fatal weakness of obsidian, after trying it for 5 min to realize it, is sync functionality. It only supports icloud sync and its paid sync. This is turn down 100%.

You can sync the folder (=vault) with any tool you prefer… including git.

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

#245

Post by abcd0880 »

stevenpetryk wrote: post #230
abcd0880 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Obsidian offer that Foam doesn’t or vice versa? I use VSCode for writing and programming so am trying to avoid yet another tool for note taking and knowledge management.

Foam doesn't run on my phone. Because VS Code doesn't run on my phone. So I use Obsidian to edit a synced folder on my phone, just because it is functionally similar to Foam but runs on iOS.

Thanks.I don’t need access to my knowledge base from my phone so will start with Foam. Any Obsidian features that you particularly miss in Foam?

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

#246

Post by Havoc »

I just set this up today using self-hosted gitlab and working copy on iphone.

Not friction free (since on phone you need to trigger git push/pull) but seems to be working well.

Still need to get used to it, but the combination of git backed, self hosted and markdown seems pretty future proof

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

#248

Post by jdgoesmarching »

marbletiles wrote: post #228
jdgoesmarching wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 captu…

Markdown mixes formatting and content (in a lossy way - did the author mean that asterisk as a format character or as part of their text? Who knows). It doesn’t support spans or ranges for mixing languages. It has hard-to-remember syntax, especially around links - Gruber makes mistakes with it all the time. And it doesn’t easily support the sort of powerful visual editing tools like you might have seen on a 1980s Mac…

1. Mixing formatting and content is the point. Maybe it’s not for you, but describing its main feature as a problem doesn’t make sense.

2. There are maybe 5-10 syntax elements to get up and running with Markdown. Your average excel user has probably committed far more keyboard shortcuts to memory.

3. Most markdown users are fine with importing an image from another app if “powerful visual editing tools” (which still haven’t been defined) are needed. Not to mention extra features in this area provided by Markdown editors like Obsidian.

4. Again, I still don’t know what you consider to be an “actual powerful tool” for managing text. Does your definition begin and end at WYSIWYG?

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

#249

Post by taigi100 »

I often see people in this community being fans of note taking apps. Yet, I never really found why it's useful, maybe someone can enlighten me on that :D

1. For tech articles / knowledge databases -> tech seems to change so fast that research done 3-4 months ago is mostly useless (except for a few more high level areas)

2. For recording / knowledge database purposes -> i never seem to go back to them tho, googling (or duckduckgoing?) seems faster to reach an answer.

3. For current note-taking / todo lists / etc they work well, but so does a simple notepad. A history of those doesn't seem to help me with anything specifically.

4. Same for book notes / reading notes, i never seem to go back to them, actually.

So, in what domains or where do find those apps actually useful?

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

#250

Post by capableweb »

avgcorrection wrote: post #219
capableweb wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why? "Markdown" is not a standard, it's a loose collection of formats. CommonMark is a standard, and they are not calling it that. Anything that is Markdown-like can be called Markdown.

It's the same deal with lisps. Lots of languages are "lisps", even the ones that are slightly different than the ones you're used to. Then there is a Common Lisp that is a language that is also a lisp.

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