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I want to use a tool like this but I dont like using Markdown for taking notes. Its far too restrictive. Which is why I keep coming back to plaintext. These day

I want to use a tool like this but I dont like using Markdown for taking notes. Its far too restrictive. Which is why I keep coming back to plaintext. These days my formatting is just deep tabs. Anyone know of tooling around this? I created a plugin for now here https://github.com/jonocodes/vscode-tabtext https://github.com/jonocodes/vscode-tabtext but I'd still like a better tool. Worth a try to ask, I guess.

journey_16162 5y ago
I used to use Atom to store notes before I came upon Obsidian. To be honest I'm thinking about coming back. I think I used to write a lot more when I was using Atom.
spidersouris 5y ago
What exactly do you find restrictive with MD?
- jonotime 5y ago
  MD is great for a readme, or a book where someone is going to read it once and digest the info. Markdown is a presentation format and is much easier to write then HTML since its less expressive. Note taking can be deep and contain a lot of data (lists of items copied form CSVs, code snippets, documenting failures). Notes are more like code. You can spend your whole day in it - tweaking code blocks, refactoring, etc. A lot of my sections are 5 tabs deep. Doing this with stars is harder to type, harder to copy/paste, and harder to read.
  - afarviral 5y ago
    I don't understand. Can you not just indent text to an arbitrary depth? I definitely get what you mean about treating like code/refactoring, but I have found I can easily do this since there so are many options. The only area it is lacking is not being able to take handwritten diagrams and tables (or similar)…furiatingly fiddly. But as far as the depth and complexity of hierarchy ... That's not something markdown is lacking? Especially in comparison to plain text. Maybe revisit it.
    - jonotime 5y ago
      Yes I can do arbitrary depth text in markdown but then it becomes text, not markdown. Then you are rending a mix of different things which are not semantically meaningful to a tool. Are you suggesting I use MD for the top levels, then then free text when nesting gets deeper? To be clear I cobbled together an example of what my notes may look like: https://gist.github.com/jonocodes/5574dc799774b4613c33d2572b105b3d https://gist.github.com/jonocodes/5574dc799774b4613c33d2572b... I'm not even sure what tab level 2 should be in Markdown. Should it be a unordered list or a heading level 2? At what depth would I switch from headings, to lists, to plain text etc? I hit a wall pretty quickly with Markdowns restrictiveness here.

journey_16162 5y ago

I used to use Atom to store notes before I came upon Obsidian. To be honest I'm thinking about coming back. I think I used to write a lot more when I was using Atom.

spidersouris 5y ago

What exactly do you find restrictive with MD?

jonotime 5y ago
MD is great for a readme, or a book where someone is going to read it once and digest the info. Markdown is a presentation format and is much easier to write then HTML since its less expressive. Note taking can be deep and contain a lot of data (lists of items copied form CSVs, code snippets, documenting failures). Notes are more like code. You can spend your whole day in it - tweaking code blocks, refactoring, etc. A lot of my sections are 5 tabs deep. Doing this with stars is harder to type, harder to copy/paste, and harder to read.
- afarviral 5y ago
  I don't understand. Can you not just indent text to an arbitrary depth? I definitely get what you mean about treating like code/refactoring, but I have found I can easily do this since there so are many options. The only area it is lacking is not being able to take handwritten diagrams and tables (or similar)…furiatingly fiddly. But as far as the depth and complexity of hierarchy ... That's not something markdown is lacking? Especially in comparison to plain text. Maybe revisit it.
  - jonotime 5y ago
    Yes I can do arbitrary depth text in markdown but then it becomes text, not markdown. Then you are rending a mix of different things which are not semantically meaningful to a tool. Are you suggesting I use MD for the top levels, then then free text when nesting gets deeper? To be clear I cobbled together an example of what my notes may look like: https://gist.github.com/jonocodes/5574dc799774b4613c33d2572b105b3d https://gist.github.com/jonocodes/5574dc799774b4613c33d2572b... I'm not even sure what tab level 2 should be in Markdown. Should it be a unordered list or a heading level 2? At what depth would I switch from headings, to lists, to plain text etc? I hit a wall pretty quickly with Markdowns restrictiveness here.