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Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

obsidian.md

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Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#551
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using iCloud sync with Obsidian for a year, and it has worked perfectly. Correct, you don't get to put your folder anywhere you want. It has to be in iCloud Drive, but so what?

If you only use it on a single ios device, it screws up your whole syncing method. Google drive/dropbox works on every other platform seamlessly.

If you need to sync it to anything non-Apple, then yes. If you don't, then iCloud Drive is just fine.

In my case, Obsidian syncs just fine between my laptop, iPad, and iPhone. I use Sync.com for everything else.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#552
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish the minimal theme didn't get rid of switching to the finger cursor when hovering over links.

The cursor is a pointer for links. Do you mean buttons? Also, you can change the cursor by going to Style Settings > Minimal Advanced Options

Yeah I do mean for buttons. I strongly prefer having the equivalent of `cursor: pointer` for all buttons in the UI. This change is the primary reason that I didn't switch to the minimal theme before. Is there a way to bring back the pointer for buttons in the 1.0 default theme? Or will I need to create my own theme for this now?

Edit: Ah I see. You're suggesting installing the "Style Setting" plugin, installing and changing the theme to "Minimal" and then setting the "Cursor style" to "Pointer".

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#553
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cursor is a pointer for links. Do you mean buttons? Also, you can change the cursor by going to Style Settings > Minimal Advanced Options

I think they mean like the macOS-native functionality where you hover over a URL and macOS changes the cursor from an arrow to a hand with the index finger pointing. This might be the CSS? (I am not a CSS guy, sorry.) cursor: pointer; https://www.w3docs.com/tools/code-editor/2404

Yeah, that is what I meant. And specifically for the UI buttons (although links as well, I was just mis-remembering what wasn't working how I expected it to).

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#554
post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They often break after upgrades I mean. This is what v1.0 is for.

Yes ideally, we'll see. They jumped from 0.15.9 to 1.0.0 :)

There was a 0.16.x released in Insider channel (the beta channel) which already had this new interface.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always feel like the term “outliner” misrepresents the approach to note-taking that tools like Logseq, (Org-)Roam, RemNote, etc. have chosen. I don’t really have/know a good alternative label, but there is so much more to it than just “outlining” your thoughts in a list of bullet points. Often when I write down my thoughts this way, it is more like following associative threads. I focus on a particular thought and…

I like this approach too, just drilling down and fanning out as needed as you research or think. I’ve used dozens of outlining and mind mapping tools from FreeMind to Logseq to OmniOutliner and more… But for me Obsidian, still wins because of the plugins. Check out the selection of outlining, link management (in particular link graphing) and crucially the refactoring plugins. At the basic level the outlining plugins…

I've been using Obsidian for a while and have some plug-ins, but nothing like you're talking about. Would you make some specific recommendations on the plug-ins you're referring to?

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#556
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try https://logseq.com/ ? I've had not reason to pick freemium Obsidian over open source Logseq.

I tried both and am using Obsidian now. I wanted to use logseq (I felt good about "Obsidian, but open source") but when I tried to find some text in a page I was writing it didn't work. I'm a total logseq noob but as far as I could tell I needed to install an extension/plugin to search through the page, which was weird. Plus, the plugin didn't work for me (I typed in the thing to search for, clicked "go find it" and…

Pretty sure search works, used it mang times. Anyway the major logseq power from my point of view is the ability to tag every bullet point, and then query it. Granted I never needed to write a query, I just search for the tag and find all references to it.

First note taking tools where I actually *read my notes*

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this approach too, just drilling down and fanning out as needed as you research or think. I’ve used dozens of outlining and mind mapping tools from FreeMind to Logseq to OmniOutliner and more… But for me Obsidian, still wins because of the plugins. Check out the selection of outlining, link management (in particular link graphing) and crucially the refactoring plugins. At the basic level the outlining plugins…

I've been using Obsidian for a while and have some plug-ins, but nothing like you're talking about. Would you make some specific recommendations on the plug-ins you're referring to?

Happy to share some of what's been working for me. Some of this is stuff I'm actively using, some of it hasn't quite made it into the "day to day use" yet, but I've been experimenting with. (Random personal advice: Never let your note taking tools feel like using them is work, that's the first step towards not keeping notes!)

- For fans of "outline workflows" Outliner is excellent. A whole bunch of outline/indented text movement and manipulation commands: https://github.com/vslinko/obsidian-outliner

- For easily refactoring notes that are getting too large you want to have Note Refactor. It gives you tools to easily take blocks of text and quickly cut them out into new notes. Its not magic out of the box, but its a powerful tool you can use when building workflows with other plugins. https://github.com/lynchjames/note-refactor-obsidian

- Local images is another good one, working with online content can get messy when you copy notes and then want to be able to work any where you have Obsidian synched. I've got it on my Laptop, two desktops, phone and tablet... I want to carry as much of my related content with me so having an easy way to convert remote images to local copies is a big productivity boost when making notes about content from the internet. https://github.com/aleksey-rezvov/obsidian-local-images

- For analysing the content for some useful stats there's: https://github.com/SkepticMystic/graph-analysis but this is for a relatively specific sort of analysis.

- More general and flexible analysis and graph visualisations are available from the combination of https://github.com/zsviczian/excalibrain , https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview and https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin ... in short query your notes and note metadata like its a database, build reports and data visualisations, and then excalibrain is a whole thing built on top of that power.

- Dynamic embeds of outside content are available from https://github.com/dhamaniasad/obsidian-rich-links and https://github.com/Seraphli/obsidian-link-embed depending on the style and use you like. While there is a built in functionality to preview the links to other notes when you hover over them https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Page+preview which has a demo here https://youtu.be/dmnVml_jbsQ?t=222

- And a real force multiplier is adding https://github.com/Taitava/obsidian-shellcommands to your setup. It lets you run scripts and prompt for information and really invest time in procedural automation without having to build your own javascript plugins. So you can setup your system so that when you use the refactor to cut out a new note, the automations will trigger, ask you to give the note a new heading, tags, and you have a little script that checks last modified time of the folder tree of text files, and looks at the folder of the last modified time and asks you in that popup if you want to move the new note to the folder the note you cut it from is located in. Or anything else you can imagine using outside automation and scripting tools on your plain text markdown files.

These are just a start and if you haven't already browsed the plugins at https://obsidian.md/plugins I wholeheartedly recommend it, people are adding new cool things pretty often and other plugins add new functionality that makes them worth checking out if they were previously not something that you found interesting. I do a read through of the plugin list probably at least once every month or two just to see what's new, and more often if I'm experimenting with changes to my workflow.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#558
post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian has a way of transcluding files, so you would have a bunch of logical paragraphs and transclude them together. Updating the individual paragraphs would update each instance they appear, since tranclusion is at view time.

Nice! Can I also lock edits on some of the views resulting in locking of all transcluded paras/sentences but no others?

When they are transcluded you have to click through to the source file to edit it. I think that accomplished what you mean.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#559

For people who use a personal notes tool like obsidian, how would you deal with notes that turned to work related later? I always find myself end up with half-finished notes in multiple different places. First versions in personal notebook and refined ones in company's google doc/etc. Thanks

It varies for me. I’ll often write a draft of something in obsidian, then put it onto a doc/wiki and update my obsidian file to a link to that with a list of keywords for if I ever search it again.

Re: Obsidian 1.0 – Personal knowledge base app

#560

I just can't keep up with all the note taking apps; I sometimes go through a Phase of "I need a means to organize my things", but invariably just go back to a folder with text documents. The note taking apps are fine, but they will either have a web/electron based interface that is too indirect, or their data storage is not open (like text documents), or they try and upsell you cloud storage / sync, or they offer no…

This is precisely why I ended up on Joplin several years ago... Being able to sync for free (I just pay for S3 costs) means I got cross-device/platform support and know I will never lose my notes. I'm trying to understand the use case where it would be worth it to switch to Obsidian and pay monthly for the sync and no longer host the data myself, which doesn't sound like an improvement to me. The way Obsidian organiz…

> Being able to sync for free (I just pay for S3 costs) means I got cross-device/platform support and know I will never lose my notes.

This is also the case with Obsidian! Because the files are just loose `.md` files in a folder, I personally use Syncthing and Git to keep them synchronised across devices for free. Sync is another option to complement those, for people who don't want to roll their own solution.

By default in Obsidian you own the data (and it never leaves your hard drive), you pay for them to host it for you so that it 'just works' across devices

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