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This looks really nice, but I suppose I might ask the hard questions - how does this compare to Obsidian, which is my go-to "notes app which is just a bunch of

by johnfn 7mo ago

This looks really nice, but I suppose I might ask the hard questions - how does this compare to Obsidian, which is my go-to "notes app which is just a bunch of markdown files stored to your computer"? I very much like Obsidian, and as I understand it they are your direct competitor, so some indication of how you want to distinguish your app from theirs would be great if you want to compel me to switch. :) > Every feature we didn't build is time you spend writing. Also, I feel that this kind of marketing language rubs me the wrong way (perhaps also that it feels LLM-ish). How is you not adding features saving me time? Maybe it saves you time...

dd8601fn 7mo ago
It says "no electron". I guess that's a differentiator. But also it says: "Raw markdown. No preview pane. That's the point." So I guess it's intentionally more primitive than notepad, if that's a thing you want?
riffic 7mo ago
Obsidian is not libre, at the very least. This repo purports the project to be MIT.
alwillis 7mo ago
> This looks really nice, but I suppose I might ask the hard questions - how does this compare to Obsidian, To be honest, other than both of them allowing you to write markdown, they're not comparable. Obsidian is the current favorite of the "make a second brain" crowd which is based the concept of a Zettelkasten [1]. There are thousands of plugins to customize Obsidian to turn it into whatever you want. It just so happens to use Markdown files to store your notes. It's a very powerful tool, but it's overkill for most people who want to write a few notes in Markdown. Ghost isn't about wiki links, plugins, hypertext, Zettelkasten stuff. It's just for writing, which I think is fine. Not everyone wants or needs all of whiz bang features of Obsidian or Notion or Microsoft Word. Regarding that previewing isn't included; it's not a big deal in reality. The Notes app that comes with macOS can import markdown files and render them. There a hundreds of apps, utilities, plugins, websites that enable a user to render a markdown file. For most people, that wouldn't be ideal; I get it. (Aside: at a user group meeting, I saw a developer coding something in Vim with no syntax highlighting. I had never seen that before. He said he liked it better that way. Not everyone likes the same things.) There's a great app from indie developer Brett Terpstra called Marked [1] that was created to preview markdown files. It has tons of features, all centered around previewing markdown files. I've been a satisfied customer of Marked for years. We all use certain apps for certain things even if we have other options; sometimes it's for aesthetic reasons or we just like how a particular app "feels" when we use it. If people enjoy using Ghostmd, that's great. [1]: https://marked2app.com https://marked2app.com
- johnfn 7mo ago
  Obsidian doesn't "just happen" to use Markdown - the entire point of the app is that it writes to markdown. The URL is literally http://obsidian.md http://obsidian.md. The "notes save to your filesystem" is a concept directly lifted from Obsidian. Saying they're "not comparable" just doesn't make sense.
baby 7mo ago
I wrote this because I can't stand obsidian, I want something opinionated with good defaults and that's not overly sensitive

by johnfn 7mo ago

dd8601fn 7mo ago

It says "no electron". I guess that's a differentiator. But also it says: "Raw markdown. No preview pane. That's the point." So I guess it's intentionally more primitive than notepad, if that's a thing you want?

riffic 7mo ago

Obsidian is not libre, at the very least. This repo purports the project to be MIT.

alwillis 7mo ago

> This looks really nice, but I suppose I might ask the hard questions - how does this compare to Obsidian, To be honest, other than both of them allowing you to write markdown, they're not comparable. Obsidian is the current favorite of the "make a second brain" crowd which is based the concept of a Zettelkasten [1]. There are thousands of plugins to customize Obsidian to turn it into whatever you want. It just so happens to use Markdown files to store your notes. It's a very powerful tool, but it's overkill for most people who want to write a few notes in Markdown. Ghost isn't about wiki links, plugins, hypertext, Zettelkasten stuff. It's just for writing, which I think is fine. Not everyone wants or needs all of whiz bang features of Obsidian or Notion or Microsoft Word. Regarding that previewing isn't included; it's not a big deal in reality. The Notes app that comes with macOS can import markdown files and render them. There a hundreds of apps, utilities, plugins, websites that enable a user to render a markdown file. For most people, that wouldn't be ideal; I get it. (Aside: at a user group meeting, I saw a developer coding something in Vim with no syntax highlighting. I had never seen that before. He said he liked it better that way. Not everyone likes the same things.) There's a great app from indie developer Brett Terpstra called Marked [1] that was created to preview markdown files. It has tons of features, all centered around previewing markdown files. I've been a satisfied customer of Marked for years. We all use certain apps for certain things even if we have other options; sometimes it's for aesthetic reasons or we just like how a particular app "feels" when we use it. If people enjoy using Ghostmd, that's great. [1]: https://marked2app.com https://marked2app.com

johnfn 7mo ago
Obsidian doesn't "just happen" to use Markdown - the entire point of the app is that it writes to markdown. The URL is literally http://obsidian.md http://obsidian.md. The "notes save to your filesystem" is a concept directly lifted from Obsidian. Saying they're "not comparable" just doesn't make sense.

baby 7mo ago

I wrote this because I can't stand obsidian, I want something opinionated with good defaults and that's not overly sensitive