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Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

obsidian.md

281–290 of 501 posts

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#281
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick search suggests it's doable https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=org%20mode%20pictures

Yep, I did use inline images in my days with org-mode, but I found it to be rather hacky. It's possible, I just found it unpleasant.

Resizing image is a pain, and inserting quick screenshots takes some hacking around.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early user here. Obsidian is literally the best app in 2020 so far IMO. - Blazingly fast - Clean UI - Free - Sync with Dropbox, Github, iCloud... - Great community I have never looked back to Notion and Bear since I found it. Btw, the Obs team is moving so fast.

> Free Not really. The license says you are not allowed to take notes about work you get compensated for. So free only for 100% hobby projects. Working in a start-up I don't have big 100% hobby projects that would require a lot of note keeping. YMMV

It's not like there's a realistic way to enforce that license, so it's essentially free.

Edit: typo

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#283
post #233
post #225

As several people have pointed out, both the "Personal" and "Catalyst" licenses are intended for personal use only, making this quite an expensive product should I want to use it for work as well. But in the full license text, there seems to be an even more problematic phrasing: > The use of OBSIDIAN for the exercise of your own trade or profession (...) does not qualify as personal use. I would interpret this to mea…

Hi there! Sorry it's our first time doing a license like this. If I understand correctly, licenses are usually written more strictly for legal purposes, but in my opinion your use case sounds like it should belong to personal use. If anyone has pointers for us to make the license text more clear, please let me know!

> licenses are usually written more strictly for legal purposes

Well written legal documents are precise (not strict). The trouble is that you haven't unambiguously defined what qualifies as personal use, and there are a rather large number of obvious edge cases. This is a good example of something that should be drafted by a qualified attorney.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early user here. Obsidian is literally the best app in 2020 so far IMO. - Blazingly fast - Clean UI - Free - Sync with Dropbox, Github, iCloud... - Great community I have never looked back to Notion and Bear since I found it. Btw, the Obs team is moving so fast.

Curious if you use your markdown files on mobile and if so, what tools do you use? I’m still using bear because of their iPhone/iPad apps.

Not GP but Markor is fantastic for anyone running Android (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.gsantner.markor/).

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your employer should expense that, ideally it shouldn't impact you financially. You're really limiting your userbase (customer pool) here by expecting only enterprise users. Many people here are freelance designers, students with part-time jobs, researchers writing for-profit books, or they work for themselves. Most employers don't allow expenses for note-taking apps. I would encourage you to adopt this pricing mod…

I confirm, I could be interested in such a tool for my professional activity, but I work in a large company and there’s 0 chance they’d let me expense whatever software I want. I’d be paying from my own pocket.

For what it's worth: JetBrains has a model where they sell cheaper individual licenses that people can buy from their own money (company credit cards/expenses are not allowed), and those can be used for work. And more expensive per-seat licenses for companies/organizations. Also, that also includes a perpetual license for the version at the time of purchase (and discounts for people who upgrade). I think that is overall a fair deal, and keeps the incentives for both developers and customers as aligned as is possible under such circumstances, IMHO. Yearly licensing like this doesn't make much sense for such a product, I think.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#286
post #54

This looks great! Good timing too, since Roam has recently closed its doors to new signups. I've been looking for a new notetaking / PKM / Markdown app recently, but unfortunately all apps out there fall short in at least one of the following criteria: * bidirectional [[wiki links]] * support for both inline and display math * customizable themes / CSS * rich formatting beyond markdown (e.g. wrap content in tags with…

Inline math is coming very soon! WYSIWYG unfortunately will take a while to get right, but we'll get there. Give Obsidian a try and let us know what you think! :)

You didn't ask for advice, so feel free not to take it - but you should consider using a pre-baked editing solution like Quill.js or something similar. Rich text serialization is its own problem and you shouldn't waste your development time on it :)

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#287
post #267

Not very impressed with this, because: - Rendering of files takes quite long (a couple of seconds) - Interface looks dated - Graph view is not very usable, it just shows a bunch of words. No idea how to get any meaning out of this. - Backlinks did not update in my test Typora [0], another markdown editor is light-years ahead with the basic features – being able to edit markdown files and search through them all at on…

Hi there! It certainly doesn't sound normal for the app to take a few seconds to open files.

Would you join our community to give us a chance to debug the issue? https://obsidian.md/community

We're still currently in beta so we'd really appreciate all the help we can get to polish any hiccups in the app.

As for the editing experience, we're only about 3 months in so there's a lot of catching up to do, and Typora-level editing experience is something we're shooting for.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial license is 50$ per year. Not even 5 bucks per month. I do not think this qualifies as "expensive", especially if you intend to use it for work related stuff

If you are going to use it as a knowledge base, you are probably looking at a few years of use. Currently the closest match to this software I have installed is Quiver. Let’s compare costs over a period of 5 years: Quiver: $9.99 Obsidian: $250.00 That may not be a lot of money to you personally, but it fits my mental model of “expensive” pretty well.

Does Quiver solve the same problems? Sorry it's a hard word to Google so not sure I found the app you are thinking of.

50/y is definitely a think about it and review yearly when budgeting type of expense as a personal expense, because all those recurring expenses add up! But as a business expense, if a $100k/y dev asks for a $50 tool I think their boss will say "why you waste my time asking, just get it and we'll pay for it".

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#289

Genuine question: what exactly are you taking notes of? I have tried using tools like this before, but in all of my attempts I have found that I actually don't have much to take notes for; for example, I have never felt like "I wish I had taken notes of this", because I feel like any kind of search engine is doing this on a much larger scale, practically for combined notes of millions of people in a much efficient wa…

* random lists (e.g., things to do, books to read, movies on netflix)

* personal CMS (e.g., mailing addresses, the name of so-and-so's boyfriend, etc. etc.)

* bookmarked articles with quotes or summaries (e.g., I read lots of things like https://psyche.co/ideas/a-touch-of-absurdity-can-help-to-wra... but since the idea that absurdity can push people towards the familiar is very disheartening to me, and therefore has interesting implications for my ideas, I'm taking notes on it)

* "ruby case statement syntax" (don't laugh, I switch languages a lot at work, and it's always faster to pull up the neat little answer I wrote myself)

* drafts of things like blog posts

* little fragments of ideas that I might or might not want to turn into blog posts

* journaling (especially nice when linked to entries for people mentioned)

* freewriting on anything I should probably be seeing a therapist for

* personal project documentation (e.g. install commands for self-hosted nonsense)

It's never "I wish I had taken notes of this" exactly, but more a combination of being able to pull up some fact /information/resource, draft things with lots of interlinked connections, or write just about anything down with connections to other things (like my journal entries linked to people they mention). In addition, the process of writing notes means you remember more even if you never consult the notes you wrote, so it's not wasted even in that case.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to use it as a knowledge base, you are probably looking at a few years of use. Currently the closest match to this software I have installed is Quiver. Let’s compare costs over a period of 5 years: Quiver: $9.99 Obsidian: $250.00 That may not be a lot of money to you personally, but it fits my mental model of “expensive” pretty well.

Does Quiver solve the same problems? Sorry it's a hard word to Google so not sure I found the app you are thinking of. 50/y is definitely a think about it and review yearly when budgeting type of expense as a personal expense, because all those recurring expenses add up! But as a business expense, if a $100k/y dev asks for a $50 tool I think their boss will say "why you waste my time asking, just get it and we'll pay…

I suspect OP is talking about this: https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver/wiki (there's a link to an iOS app there)
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