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As evidenced by a link to AlternativeTo on their own site, this space has a lot (145+) of competition [0]. At some level, I worry about using things much more c
by s1mon 4y ago
As evidenced by a link to AlternativeTo on their own site, this space has a lot (145+) of competition [0]. At some level, I worry about using things much more complex than a text file, because of portability and longevity. It's enough of a pain transitioning between Google and Microsoft (and back) every few years based on various jobs.
I have files from the late 1980's that I can still read, but only with Libre Office because Apple's supplied apps can't read old MacWrite files.
Some people swear by OneNote or Notion or Keep or various mind mapping software, but keeping things cross platform and simple is a challenge. I was never an Evernote person, but it sounds like that turned into a bit of a debacle. These tools work for now, but will they work 5 or 10 years from now?
[0] https://alternativeto.net/software/obsidian/ https://alternativeto.net/software/obsidian/
- skilled 4y agoIf I may interject, AlternativeTo is a pretty shallow platform for finding alternatives (I do wonder if you even checked their listings), and it's also biased - run by a moderator team that can deny/approve listings as they please.
- sph 4y agoWell, what's the alternative to AlternativeTo then?
- NAR8789 4y agohttps://alternativeto.net/software/alternativeto/ https://alternativeto.net/software/alternativeto/
- pantulis 4y agoThis made me laugh.
- deafpolygon 4y agoWonder if AlternativeTo is listed as an alternative to AlternativeTo?
- throwaway89201 4y ago> AlternativeTo is a pretty shallow platform I've found AlternativeTo to be the complete opposite of shallow. In most cases its pretty precise in exhaustively listing every viable software alternative, which abundant filter options. Even if the ordering is "biased" (which I haven't really encountered), the site is quite useful without having many alternatives itself.
- arcturus17 4y agoI'm also worried by this, which is precisely why I'm considering a move to Obsidian from Notion. I'm pretty much writing everything in Markdown by now, including my personal blog.
- joemi 4y agoHow is moving from Obsidian to Notion relevant? They're basically the same thing?
- infinityio 4y agoThe difference is with a local-first editor (like Obsidian) you hopefully get to keep your files if the company stops being nice
- arcturus17 4y agoI keep losing my files with cloud-first systems. I had a trove of notes in Evernote and I don't even remember which email I used to open it, nor if they are there anymore. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't lose local-first markdown files, as I could do the same thing I do with code: keep them in git, and then have a cloud backup for good measure.
- joemi 4y agoAh, i didn't realize you said TO obsidian. For some reason I read it as the other way around, which is why it really confused me.
- kepano 4y agoOn the other hand, the fact that there are so many Markdown-based editors that can read the files you create in Obsidian gives plain text format more resilience over time. Even if Obsidian were to disappear, your writing and ideas will still be accessible in the future.
- randomluck040 4y agoAlso I would argue that you can rather simply write a parser for the basic markdown syntax and convert it to e.g. HTML or plain text if necessary by getting rid of markdown specific syntax.
- spiderice 4y agoMaybe many people on HN can do this. A lot fewer people than that on HN want to do it. And many people who use Markdown outside of HN can't do it.
- randomluck040 4y agoRealistically, only a few people have to do it and open source a toolkit. Also I don’t really think that we’ll have that issue with markdown because it’s widespread and rather well established. This doesn’t invalidate your point, which I absolutely agree with.
- randomluck040 4y agoAlso it’s not true for the file format for canvas which is probably way harder to parse correctly.
- pillefitz 4y agoWay harder means what? An extra 3 days of effort to the future open source Obsidian clone?
- jay3ss 4y ago
- abraxas 4y agoNot everything needs to live for decades. Sometimes the ephemeral capture is just as important in sorting out your ideas. What doesn't work for me with these tools is that once I've gone deep I still need a tool that offers the absolute MINIMUM friction in its interface and for me nothing has conquered an A3 sheet and a box of coloured pencils. Perhaps I should invest my time in really learning one of these tools but they never seem to be seamless enough to pose a real challenge to a pen and paper. Maybe if I had a Wacom tablet...?
- JellyBeanThief 4y agoA drawing tablet helped me some, when I paired it with Xournal++. I think there are apps for iOS and Android tablets with nicer and faster interfaces, but I don't use tablets, so they didn't help. But the ability to quickly select a group of pen strokes and just move them around to make new room, as well as the ability to quickly paste screenshots of anything I was doing anywhere else on my computer made a big difference.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y agoi bought a remarkable tablet for that purpose but still failed to adopt it.
- abraxas 4y agoYeah, the Remarkable looks like the most likely candidate to be able to displace a sheet of paper but my hangup is that the lack of colour will hinder its usability too much for me. I always use a few coloured pens when I scribble my notes.
- rodun 4y agoI went paperless this year as an engi student with dendron, xournal++, a (used) wacom tablet, and some pdf editors. The main benefits were avoiding scanning, instantly being able to reorganize or copy/paste diagrams, and not having to carry notebooks. Pencil or pen and paper still feels the best but in order to keep everything digital, this was reliable and cheaper than an ipad or tablet. https://alternativeto.net/list/34598/paperless-student/ https://alternativeto.net/list/34598/paperless-student/
- xiande04 4y agoThat's kinda the biggest selling point of Obsidian...? It's all just markdown files. Markdown is a standard format, so you can open it in many other apps as well.
- captaincaveman 4y agoMarkdown is fine for formatting text, not convinced it's great for knowledge management.
- pillefitz 4y agoFormatting and knowledge management are somewhat orthogonal concepts, aren't they? You store information in a textfile, have rendering thereof based on Markdown, and another layer to reference and index files.
- captaincaveman 4y agoWhich is basically my point!
- cschmid 4y agoI disagree; I think a system like Wikipedia shows that a textual and visual format like markdown provides the flexibility to convey pretty much any information. For any formal and semantic storage system, you will probably spend more time adapting it to each specific use case than to actually fill it with content.
- captaincaveman 4y agoyet has no metadata or any semantics, its basically just how you layout text ...
- brimwats 4y agoit can, using plugins. i.e. i use schema.org's things as fileClasses, which are enforced using a metadata schema for attributes which are extensible and excludable. My ontology is based on FRBRoo and I have link visualization for ease of reading.
- neop1x 4y agoFrom FOSS alternatives listed there, LogSeq [1] looks quite promissing! It also mentiones canvas feature in their docs [2] (which are written as LogSeq graph, too). I am still evaluating it but so far so good, it even has an Android app (as a pre-release on GitHub). [1] https://logseq.com https://logseq.com [2] https://docs.logseq.com/#/page/whiteboard https://docs.logseq.com/#/page/whiteboard