4 ms·

I have no idea what Obsidian is and their frontpage does nothing to tell me what it is. All I can see is that it's been updated, but WTF is it? edit: ahh, it

I have no idea what Obsidian is and their frontpage does nothing to tell me what it is. All I can see is that it's been updated, but WTF is it? edit: ahh, it wasn't the frontpage...

weberer 4y ago
Markdown editor that lets you add links to other files. You basically have a "project" consisting of a folder with various .md files.
- nkrebs13 4y ago
  There are plugins and extensibility that can be added as well. https://github.com/search?q=obsidian https://github.com/search?q=obsidian
- toopok4k3 4y ago
  How does it compare to wikis, eh? Isn't that what they do.
  - weberer 4y ago
    That requires setting up a server, which filters out 99% of the population.
  - DMell 4y ago
    I’d start with the plugins. It allows for easy integration into my current workflow.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    It's basically a wiki but running locally that you can sync with a remote, and based around normal (well, almost "normal") markdown files.
  - Vrondi 4y ago
    It's trying to be a wiki without a server. Or at least, that's how it started. It's a note taking app that uses markdown and plain text files. Gives some nice organizational views.
  - Erwin 4y ago
    I used TiddlyWiki for a while, but it was too fiddly. E.g. saving to google drive was a hack. Obsidian, at a very low price, gives me a reliable app -- Tiddly wiki, running within the browser, often got slow when I had a few hundred diary entries.
- Kelteseth 4y ago
  So what is difference to vscode here? I can see a cool graph view of my links. I guess the target is not directly developers when looking at their paid sync addon, because I would simply put this into a free closed gitlab repo. I will definitely try out the free version this week :) Edit: Found md-graph that also has the same neat graph: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ianjsikes.md-graph https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ianjsike...
  - Macha 4y ago
    Plugin community - stuff like pulling tasks from notes, helping with various organisational systems, etc. Editing in a somewhat rendered markdown - it's not quite full wysiwyg, but e.g, your heading blocks are sized right, your lists are rendered as bullets until you're editing that line, etc. Notes first UI: Stuff like the rendered view toggle, links, inline image previews are more acccessible than in vs code due to their higher relative importance.
  - mejutoco 4y ago
    It is mainly easy of use of the links and being backed by .md files (easy to backup anywhere and future-proof). I think of Obsidian as Org mode 90% there and easier to use. Two example of easy of use: - You can type "[[" anywhere and start entering the title of a new or existing note (and follow that link). If the note already exists it will fuzzy match inline as you write. - While on a note, you can change the title and all the references get updated. There are also plugins with extra feature like note of the day, which creates and opens a file in the format 2022-10-13 so you can easily have a file for each day. Vim node also works very well.
  - input_sh 4y ago
    In my opinion links and images work much better. If you move a Markdown file or an image file to a different subdirectory, links gets fixed automatically. Absolute timesaver over a custom script I had to use previously. And plugins! I can put a search query right within Markdown and it works. I have a unified interface over Markdown's to-do syntaxes I've left in various files. I can put a button that triggers some internal Obsidian command. I can have templates that pull from APIs and auto-populate some fields. I have variables I can easily query over. There's a git plugin you can use to auto-push/pull. There's a fully-featured mobile app (nearly feature compatible with the desktop app, plugin support and all). I have some subfolders that automatically get published on multiple websites that use a different CMS/SSG. It's nothing you can't achieve with some custom bash/python scripts, but I don't like to spend my free time maintaining custom scripts, and Obsidian is truly a remarkably extensible product that allows me not to do that. It's easily in top 3 software products I use the most (next to a browser and a terminal emulator), I can't praise it enough.
DMell 4y ago
It’s a fantastic markdown editor. Have been using it daily for a year now as an organization and note tool and couldn’t be happier.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mirzap 4y ago
As front page says, it's a tool for building a knowledge base. Organizing your stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base
Vrondi 4y ago
It's a note taking app that uses markdown and plain text files. Gives some nice organizational views. That's it.
- chrisweekly 4y ago
  1st 2 sentences: true. Last sentence: not even close. It integrates w/ a Calendar, with Excalidraw for notes in images and vice versa, and via Dataview and DQL supports querying... its featureset is incredible.

I have no idea what Obsidian is and their frontpage does nothing to tell me what it is. All I can see is that it's been updated, but WTF is it? edit: ahh, it wasn't the frontpage...

weberer 4y ago

Markdown editor that lets you add links to other files. You basically have a "project" consisting of a folder with various .md files.

nkrebs13 4y ago
There are plugins and extensibility that can be added as well. https://github.com/search?q=obsidian https://github.com/search?q=obsidian
toopok4k3 4y ago
How does it compare to wikis, eh? Isn't that what they do.
- weberer 4y ago
  That requires setting up a server, which filters out 99% of the population.
- DMell 4y ago
  I’d start with the plugins. It allows for easy integration into my current workflow.
- capableweb 4y ago
  It's basically a wiki but running locally that you can sync with a remote, and based around normal (well, almost "normal") markdown files.
- Vrondi 4y ago
  It's trying to be a wiki without a server. Or at least, that's how it started. It's a note taking app that uses markdown and plain text files. Gives some nice organizational views.
- Erwin 4y ago
  I used TiddlyWiki for a while, but it was too fiddly. E.g. saving to google drive was a hack. Obsidian, at a very low price, gives me a reliable app -- Tiddly wiki, running within the browser, often got slow when I had a few hundred diary entries.
Kelteseth 4y ago
So what is difference to vscode here? I can see a cool graph view of my links. I guess the target is not directly developers when looking at their paid sync addon, because I would simply put this into a free closed gitlab repo. I will definitely try out the free version this week :) Edit: Found md-graph that also has the same neat graph: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ianjsikes.md-graph https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ianjsike...
- Macha 4y ago
  Plugin community - stuff like pulling tasks from notes, helping with various organisational systems, etc. Editing in a somewhat rendered markdown - it's not quite full wysiwyg, but e.g, your heading blocks are sized right, your lists are rendered as bullets until you're editing that line, etc. Notes first UI: Stuff like the rendered view toggle, links, inline image previews are more acccessible than in vs code due to their higher relative importance.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  It is mainly easy of use of the links and being backed by .md files (easy to backup anywhere and future-proof). I think of Obsidian as Org mode 90% there and easier to use. Two example of easy of use: - You can type "[[" anywhere and start entering the title of a new or existing note (and follow that link). If the note already exists it will fuzzy match inline as you write. - While on a note, you can change the title and all the references get updated. There are also plugins with extra feature like note of the day, which creates and opens a file in the format 2022-10-13 so you can easily have a file for each day. Vim node also works very well.
- input_sh 4y ago
  In my opinion links and images work much better. If you move a Markdown file or an image file to a different subdirectory, links gets fixed automatically. Absolute timesaver over a custom script I had to use previously. And plugins! I can put a search query right within Markdown and it works. I have a unified interface over Markdown's to-do syntaxes I've left in various files. I can put a button that triggers some internal Obsidian command. I can have templates that pull from APIs and auto-populate some fields. I have variables I can easily query over. There's a git plugin you can use to auto-push/pull. There's a fully-featured mobile app (nearly feature compatible with the desktop app, plugin support and all). I have some subfolders that automatically get published on multiple websites that use a different CMS/SSG. It's nothing you can't achieve with some custom bash/python scripts, but I don't like to spend my free time maintaining custom scripts, and Obsidian is truly a remarkably extensible product that allows me not to do that. It's easily in top 3 software products I use the most (next to a browser and a terminal emulator), I can't praise it enough.

DMell 4y ago

It’s a fantastic markdown editor. Have been using it daily for a year now as an organization and note tool and couldn’t be happier.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mirzap 4y ago

As front page says, it's a tool for building a knowledge base. Organizing your stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_base

Vrondi 4y ago

It's a note taking app that uses markdown and plain text files. Gives some nice organizational views. That's it.

chrisweekly 4y ago
1st 2 sentences: true. Last sentence: not even close. It integrates w/ a Calendar, with Excalidraw for notes in images and vice versa, and via Dataview and DQL supports querying... its featureset is incredible.