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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

#271

Post by milofeynman »

eightails wrote: post #41
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.

As an open-source alternative, Joplin could be worth a look. It's a little different in terms of features, missing a lot of the linking which is kind of key to Obsidian's appeal, so maybe it's closer to Evernote. Still, they're fundamentally the same in terms of being a note-taking app built on folders of markdown files. It's quite actively maintained and improved too.

Joplin is great, simple, and I love it. I find things like connections and tagging to be more work with minor, if any benefit. Just folders with markdown works great.

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

#272

Post by lethologica »

Macha wrote: post #123
rg111 wrote: post #58

I have switched to Obsidian and I use multiple vaults for multiple purposes. One is for work, one is for personal projects and notes. One for Books and Movies I watched or want to watch. And one for Zettelkasten[0]. Obsidian is extremely customizable and user-friendly. And to make things even better, which is a must for many people including me, it saves the files as .md in the local storage. You can even sync it amo…

The one thing I found weird when I looked into Zettelkasten is the focus on having relatively hard to read IDs as the primary part of the title. It could certainly help in the original use case of having to categorise and store physical paper notes, but it just feels obsolete in a world where you have digital notes, hyperlinking, and search.

You don’t need crazy IDs any more. In Obsidian I just make sure each of my notes has a descriptive title and that’s enough to ensure it’s unique.

Some of my notes are literally just a bunch of links to other notes because the title of the notes is descriptive enough that stringing a bunch together I can form entirely new sentences.

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

#274

Post by lethologica »

helmholtz wrote: post #120
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does sound very interesting, but designing the system well at the beginning looks quite important (moving categories around later on probably causes large overhead) and difficult to do without experience. I would also like to see more examples. I'm an academic, if anyone here is also one and has implemented this system I'd be very interested in seeing what your tree looks like!

Not seeing real-life examples is the most frustrating thing about JD in my opinion. Not John Noble's fault of course. In that spirit. My structure is below. - 10-19 Documents - 11 Scans - 12 Health - 13 Travel - 14 Contracts - 15 Home - 16 Visas - 17 Education - 18 Employment - 20-29 Finance - 21 Banks - 22 Bills - 23 Investments - 24 Taxes - 30-39 Hobbies - 31 Hiking - 32 Running - 33 Climbing - 34 Music - 35 Progra…

I’m really liking the look of this but I’m curious as for what happens if you have more than ten hobbies, for example?

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

#275

Post by tomcooks »

__bjoernd wrote: post #39
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.

It's a fancy frontend for plain-text markdown files stored in a folder tree. Nothing proprietary about it.

How do you know, unless you have the source code.

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

#276

Post by tomcooks »

dm319 wrote: post #257
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.

You might also want to consider vim-wiki if you want the hyperlinks feature.

Or give readable unique names to your files and use gf (Go to File) when your cursor is above the filename

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

#277

Post by steve_adams_86 »

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 agree with you, markdown is far better than what you’ve described.

It’s an interesting thing to consider. How do we get somewhere sane between markdown and say HTML for example? What would that look like? Can you get the ease of markdown with something that would let us do more too?

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

#278

Post by tomcooks »

Datagenerator wrote: post #43

The Open Source solution which serves me well for years has been TiddyWiki (1). Supports Tags and various modes of output. Each page one file or all in one, very open so recursive changes can be applied on the shell in plain files. (1) https://tiddlywiki.com/

I had a lot of problems with tiddlywiki, I never managed to get the self hosted html file version nor the php solutions to work.

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

#279

Post by tomcooks »

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…

5 words contibution: vim runs on my server. 4 words contribution: mosh, tmux, vim, rsync 3 words contribution: no mouse needed

Jokes aside: if they wanted feedback on what's wrong with it they'd have made it free software.

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

#280

Post by tomcooks »

taurusnoises wrote: post #67
d4rkp4ttern wrote: post #49

Last I checked there was no good way to do quick capture of articles from mobile iOS to obsidian. Scenario — I come across an article on my iPhone, and I just want to dump title + URL (maybe even the text content) into obsidian. This is a must have for any note taking tool. Anyone have a good workflow for this, please share. Ideally an iOS shortcut.

My main gripe with Obsidian. That, and the fact that it costs almost $100 to have the mobile app sync with the desktop. That's insane to me, and feels vindictive. I'm all for paying for the platform. Seriously. These ventures need bottom - up support. But, syncing is a basic feature that any mobile app should have baked in. Charge for 24-hour support, something that actually requires the time of the team.

try vim on your laptop and VPS, and Markor on your phone. sync them up with rsync or syncthing and you have free magic
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