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Btw, I also like the CEO's[1] writing and philosophy. I think he is also active here on Hacker News. One such is “File over app”[2] which I have sent to quite a few friends, kids, to read and think over it. 1. https://stephango.com/about 2. https://stephango.com/file-over-app
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You are dismissing what people are telling you. Several have pointed out that Markdown is easier to read and write when taking notes. For example, lists where each item has an additional ~14 keystrokes per item, links which have an additional ~20 keystrokes. Your answer was that that doesn't matter. If that's your view, you are welcome to it, but that's why /other/ people choose Markdown over HTML for notes.
Not dismissing it at all. My original comment asks that very question. I was just wondering if there's anything else that Obsidian offers besides Markdown syntax, since hyperlinking documents and application-agnostic data formats are also features of HTML. I don't understand where all the feelings are coming from. :)
> I was just wondering if there's anything else that Obsidian offers besides Markdown syntax, since hyperlinking documents and application-agnostic data formats are also features of HTML.
Yet you reply asking if there is anything beyond Markdown. That's dismissing what a lot of people have reiterated: Markdown is the main thing.
You keep looking for a different killer feature because you are dismissing everyone else's killer feature.
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> running all sorts of processes in the background (at least one terminal, language servers, type checkers, linters and formatters, possibly extensions, etc.) That's a terrible excuse. Your terminal is a separate process and should not affect how the editor itself feels. The language server exists out of process. The linters / type checkers exist out of process. (Or at least shouldn't block the main interaction/GUI t…
> Sublime text runs the same stuff for me and works much faster than vscode. No excuses. Okay but this discussion is about electron apps. Sublime isn't.
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> I have no use for a complex notes app in my private life I thought so too, but then I noticed I was searching the internet for the same things over and over again. (Or asking it from GPT). Then I started writing stuff down as I searched it, with a sentence or two of my own text + a few tags. Now I can find stuff directly from Obsidian (or more like from the set of markdown files on my drive) instead of having to sw…
That really belongs in the browser I think. Ideally we could just highlight the info we want to save, type a note, and the whole page gets saved offline as plain HTML, along with a markdown file that points to it. Pocket is about as close as it gets it seems...
I 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 like Obsidian, but I really dislike the annoying design-philosophy which restricts my usage. For example, it's not possible to open any random folder with it, you need to first register the folder as a vault, and then can open the vault. It also doesn't handle file links under Linux correctly. For whatever reason, any link pointing to a file inside the vault, disappears. Probably some flaw in their file system-abst…
Having used these apps for a while, your comment sounds like “these fishing poles really suck as tent poles. Sure, I made them work by tying twigs to them, but they really don’t seem designed well for my use case of holding my tent up.”
I 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 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 kept trialing alternatives like VimWiki, Joplin and Logseq, but everything else is even quirkier. Org-mode is about the only thing that seemed really competitive, but since I’m not an emacs person there’s a big ramp there for me. Plus, as with most of the alternatives, that loses Markdown compatibility entirely.
Re learn new hotkeys, that’s actually not been a huge issue. Most of them simply aren’t mapped by default, which is its own pain. I did a lot of bouncing between VSCode hotkey lists and the Obsidian hotkeys UI to align shortcuts. At least they do enable you to remap most every UI action. I haven’t used the built-in vim bindings, but supposedly they also work fairly well, fwiw.
For now, Obsidian + Obsidian Tasks just does way too good a job for my work journaling for me to completely ignore. Plugins do work around most of the more questionable behavior, though it does sometimes make for an inconsistent experience.
I really like Obsidian but the long startup time (on mobile) has stopped me from using it as a daily driver.
This is a priority for the Obsidian team over the next few months. This should get a lot better soon.
A few weeks ago I started splitting knowledge between that which is worthy enough (for me) to remember via flashcards and spaced repetition, and that which I don't need to even write down anywhere. Meaning, in practice, that I don't feel the need to have a proper note-taking system. I just need proper flashcards, which I already have in Anki. I just started this split so maybe I'll come back to it, realizing limitati…
I 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…
Agreed on the power-user stuff and the courses. I use Obsidian in a simple way, but it's nice that the extensibility and the community is there. Unlike VS Code, Obsidian is (for me) an actual example of an Electron app that feels fast. The quick open/command palette features are more responsive than similar features in native Mac apps I've tried. As mentioned elsewhere, users frequently ask for Obsidian to be open so…
VS Code feels fast to me (on linux), but perhaps I'm just slow. I remember when VS Code came out, I was surprised at how responsive it felt, compared to Atom which felt like typing with a molasses membrane keyboard.
Actually, I realize now that I'm using Codium with lots of things disabled that made it less responsive to me (like code completion), so I'm probably an outlier.