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Comment by paradaux | Hacker News Reader

I have used Typora, it's alright — but it's definitely no Obsidian[^1] Typora is very limited in terms of plugins / customisability — although it's standard feature set might be enough

Obsidian is my new Emacs, it rules my life through some plugins I've written for myself, it can be a simple focus driven markdown editor like Typora if I need it to be, or a full knowledge suite like Notion and the likes of that all while managed by git.

I can't see a reason as to why I would ever use Typora over Obsidian, but I might not be the target user.

[^1]: https://obsidian.md

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Could you describe a bit why Obsidian feels superior to you? I tried to get into Obsidian multiple times but I just never got it. I don't really see myself clicking on the knowledge graph every other day, and typora actually had wikilinks.

I never use the knowledge graph, I don't think anyone who uses obsidian daily does either. Other than it looking pretty it doesn't have a practical use for me.

Obsidian's back links are pretty great and holding alt over them will give you a Wikipedia-style snapshot of the note, or you can control click to open it in a new window.

I use it as a knowledge IDE for college and work, and as such it lacks the simplicity that Typora has; I think they're aiming for two different markets

Their built in indexing and searching system is really where they shine. The ability to #tag content throughout a document, create and link to internal documents and have all the the links update as file names change or are moved is really why the program is as solid as it is

And all of that while keeping hold of your data in simple readable formats! while the software isn't OSS, it is free and you can use any older version to sync with your server of choice. The extension ecosystem is insanely healthy, productive, and easy to write your own that works on both desktop and mobile.

Note: If you are on Linux DO NOT INSTALL THE SNAP - its really, really slow. The flatpak or AppImage are perfectly fine.

100% agree. In addition, Obsidian has a great Vim mode, which is something that we've been asking for in Typora for years [0]. Typora is less buggy than Codemirror, but it's a small price to pay for native keybondings. I've now completely switched over to it, from a combination of Typora and Inkdrop.

Obsidian still doesn't replicate Typora's clean aesthetic though. It's something I really wish it had - some kind of clean Zen mode. A clean theme / zen plugin is on my list of wishful weekend hack TODOs.

[0]: https://github.com/typora/typora-issues/issues/187

Maybe check out the new Typewriter theme for Obsidian + Focus Mode plugin?

https://github.com/crashmoney/obsidian-typewriter https://github.com/ryanpcmcquen/obsidian-focus-mode

The Focus Mode plugin is just what I was looking for! Thank you. I really enjoy reading your blog btw.

Since it's your new Emacs, can you explain how Obsidian compare to Org mode? (I see that apparently it's not open source?). Thanks!

Not org mode per se, however I have written a small tool which converts some markdown front matter in markdown into entries in todoist so that I can match notes with actionables, thats show my workflow has developed as a full time student.

Org Roam (www.orgroam.com) add most of the Obsidian feature in Org mode

Typora is a WYSIWYG editor, while Obsidian isn't (atleast not without plugins).

I do find myself editing my obsidian files inside of Typora on a semi-regular basis.

This is no longer true, recent versions of Obsidian started adding WYSIWYG features.

Typora is nice for the clean WYSIWYG editing experience, but now that Obsidian has Live Preview mode (currently in Insider-access beta) I had actually just uninstalled Typora because I was having trouble updating it and didn't feel like dealing with figuring out why.

I guess the new licensing is why, heh.

Thanks for making me aware of the Live Preview mode. You've just earned Obsidian another Catalyst subscriber.

Typora: https://typora.io/

I'm yet to find/design a theme that doesn't have warts. Any pointers here?

Typora is a markdown reader/writer not a note taking or knowledge base application. It's strange for you to compare them like that.

I acknowledged this, what I was trying to get across is that the existence of obsidian obliterates the need for something like Typora as its functionality is baked into obsidian sufficiently for me

> Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

Sounds to me like Obsidian is a Markdown editor too ;-) Granted it has a somewhat specific purpose but I don't find it too strange to compare them.

> Typora - A minimal Markdown editor and reader.

> Obsidian - Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

Just because two applications have somewhat the same features - the purpose of the application as stated by the developers is different and with that there are different kind of optimization and shortcomings . ;-)

Obsidian is working on replicating Typora: https://trello.com/c/pXHHXIzj/18-wysiwyg-editor-like-typora and https://twitter.com/obsdmd/status/1458523572448727051

Having tried both tools, I'd say that the "venn diagram" between Typora and Obsidian is one small circle almost completely overlapped by a huge one.

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