3 ms·

I started as an Obsidian user, and generally I like the fact that it's just Markdown, but markdown tables really suck, to the point that I simply ended up avoid

I started as an Obsidian user, and generally I like the fact that it's just Markdown, but markdown tables really suck, to the point that I simply ended up avoiding them at all costs, and I used OnlyOffice's Excel equivalent in parallel to Obsidian for a while. But Notion has good tables by default, so I can have both good tables (and tableviews) and normal text files in the same app. I could have tried Obsidian plugins, but I suspect that it would have been a time sink, and Notion offered everything in a neat package, so in the end, it won.

base698 2y ago
I just migrated everything out of Notion into Ibsidian. Notion was unusable after more than a few hundred items in a DB. I migrated to using dataview and lists in Obsidian and haven't had a problem since. And it works offline. I use it for my workout logbook and cooking/recipe log with hundreds of entries.
- LizPoggi 2y ago
  Agreed. Not useful for large dataset. The magic is in connecting databases - relating project management to notes etc. I've resorted to duplicating each database and archiving anything that is worth keeping. That way databases I use operationally retain speed.
- remram 2y ago
  I find DataView to be clunky as well. Data entry is not easy (I'm currently using "DB Folder" and it helps but it's quirky) and each-row-is-a-file does not give great performance.
TheDong 2y ago
notion doesn't have normal text files. You can click "export to markdown" on a notion page, you can click "import from markdown", but those two markdown dialects are totally incompatible. Most of the time notion can't even read what it exported. The notion web editor for me has very noticeable lag, so I really want to just be able to write some text somewhere to represent a notion table or whatever, but there's simply no supported way to do that I'm aware of. I mean, it's fine, using a i7 core at 100% at all times just to produce text at a 2 second delay is totally fine for a text editor, I'm sure notion's doing its best.
- abhinavk 2y ago
  Yes. I use Notion (or Logseq or any other Electron-based note-taking apps) as a filing cabinet. I cannot type in it. The typing latency is too much.
vunderba 2y ago
I think that's fair. I will say that Obsidian's tables have gotten a lot better in terms of reflow, sorting, etc. At some point Obsidian might add some additional config to their tables to allow users to manually control column widths, etc., but it would have to be non-standard markdown - like how you can scale down images by adding a width parameter. ![[./media/example_image.png|Custom caption|450]]
strken 2y ago
I would find markdown tables easier to use if they were just CSV and some delimiters for start/header/end. Imagine being able to write +------------------------------+ Product,Cost per seat,Importance +------------------------------+ GSuite,$7.20,Critical Notion,$10,High "Something, ""with"", commas and double-quotes",$5,Low +------------------------------+
abhinavk 2y ago
Obsidian needs to officially embed SQLite.

base698 2y ago

I just migrated everything out of Notion into Ibsidian. Notion was unusable after more than a few hundred items in a DB. I migrated to using dataview and lists in Obsidian and haven't had a problem since. And it works offline. I use it for my workout logbook and cooking/recipe log with hundreds of entries.

LizPoggi 2y ago
Agreed. Not useful for large dataset. The magic is in connecting databases - relating project management to notes etc. I've resorted to duplicating each database and archiving anything that is worth keeping. That way databases I use operationally retain speed.
remram 2y ago
I find DataView to be clunky as well. Data entry is not easy (I'm currently using "DB Folder" and it helps but it's quirky) and each-row-is-a-file does not give great performance.

TheDong 2y ago

notion doesn't have normal text files. You can click "export to markdown" on a notion page, you can click "import from markdown", but those two markdown dialects are totally incompatible. Most of the time notion can't even read what it exported. The notion web editor for me has very noticeable lag, so I really want to just be able to write some text somewhere to represent a notion table or whatever, but there's simply no supported way to do that I'm aware of. I mean, it's fine, using a i7 core at 100% at all times just to produce text at a 2 second delay is totally fine for a text editor, I'm sure notion's doing its best.

abhinavk 2y ago
Yes. I use Notion (or Logseq or any other Electron-based note-taking apps) as a filing cabinet. I cannot type in it. The typing latency is too much.

vunderba 2y ago

I think that's fair. I will say that Obsidian's tables have gotten a lot better in terms of reflow, sorting, etc. At some point Obsidian might add some additional config to their tables to allow users to manually control column widths, etc., but it would have to be non-standard markdown - like how you can scale down images by adding a width parameter. ![[./media/example_image.png|Custom caption|450]]

strken 2y ago

I would find markdown tables easier to use if they were just CSV and some delimiters for start/header/end. Imagine being able to write +------------------------------+ Product,Cost per seat,Importance +------------------------------+ GSuite,$7.20,Critical Notion,$10,High "Something, ""with"", commas and double-quotes",$5,Low +------------------------------+

abhinavk 2y ago

Obsidian needs to officially embed SQLite.