You can easily jump to any other tool that reads markdown thanks to that.
Open source would better, but I’m more concerned with avoiding lock in.
Speaking of which, I wonder whatever happened to that project.
One nice thing about Roam is that because it doesn't use files, it has true transclusion, both at the level of documents and at the level of individual symbols (tags & links). Because of this, renaming a tag globally for example is trivially easy. (I don't think global tag renaming is possible in Obsidian natively (without plugin) yet.)
It's not tags, but this update brought global renaming of properties out-of-the-box. Properties are the data-fields in frontmatter, the yaml-part which acts as a header in Obsidian-files. Being yaml, makes this rather easy and safe to implement. Tags on the side can occur in freetext, which makes it easy to have false-tags found. Putting some automatism on this is a bit risky I guess.
I agree, especially if you copy paste tweets containing hashtags into your files you could end up with accident collisions.
On the other hand, I refactor my tags a lot so I really needed the feature. I ended up using a simple VSCode language server to piggyback on "rename symbols". It's not ideal but it reduced a lot of friction.
Exactly like what was the case for Athens, the core features don't feel very refined (glitches in block editing and not good at all search) and the focus is on building arguably unnecessary features.
On a cursory look it seems like Obsidian puts more effort into having a solid core, which I appreciate.
But Logseq is actually FOSS and fits my needs better with its paradigms.
Now, they approach the problem differently, to be sure, but so do vi and emacs and visual studio code. People choose between them for software development tasks though each has a wildly different approach such that you might use more than one.
Switched to Obsidian for faster startup time, which is at the top of my feature list for such apps. Joplin got worse over time with more notes. I considered Roam and Notion, but having to pay AND slow startup made no sense, although Notion features are quite nice.
Now thinking about adding Logseq to work with my Obsidian.
I also think DEVONthink is great closed source app for research especially where you can index and search all of your PDF collection and it will give you closest matching files and content with respect to your current file. Many other great features. But it’s Mac/iOS-only app, lacks of linux/windows support. Startup time is very slow. And UX for note taking is kind of unpleasant to work with. I really want to use it but I can’t for all of these reasons. It’s like an expensive car which you own but never want to drive.
It works fine, but:
1. I prefer how logseq displays each day as a timeline so I can review the last few days easily (in Obsidian you check each file for each day one by one)
2. I like that logseq operates more granular on block level (bullet points) as opposed to pages, so I could reference blocks instead of pages.
I think interlinking thoughts and noted on block/bullet level would be helpful in finding content or thoughts I came across in the past. In Obsidian, it’s only possible via searching, manual tagging, and manual content management, which seems like a waste of time. I want to eliminate the friction for inbound information.
Both of these apps actually suffer from the same issue — on iOS, if the app hasn’t been initialized recently, it won’t actually drop the content using “Share via..” widget, it will just open the note for today. Sometimes you have to do it twice.
In terms of configuration, the way it would work is, in Obsidian, you configure the daily journal to use the same directory and naming convention to match Logseq. They both read/write the same markdown files, so it works seamlessly.
I was pleased with Sublime Text tamed to play nicely when encountering MarkDown. But Obsidian came along and changed that. I still avoid Obsidian plugins that take over my content.
1: https://docs.logseq.com/#/page/how%20to%20sync%20your%20logs...
(Do one thing and do it well).
For example, I use syncthing [1] with Obsidian to sync files off-cloud.
The default git configuration was kinda weird, but I think I initialized the git myself and then added it in Logseq before adding the hooks and it's been good experience.
The attempted switch to Anytype revealed to me how important it is that Obsidian feels like opening up a terminal or simple text editor.
Honestly, it sounds like a judgment call because Notion is truly a monstrous thing. It slows down terribly and it's just plain uncomfortable. Why does "everyone" love Notion? It's horrible, how can you even use it?
Programs that do simple things should be simple and run fast. It's like a pencil that you simply use and don't think about how to use it, you don't notice it at all.
I don’t, I actually loathe it.
When was the last time you use it, and what's in your workspace? Notion did receive some improvements on performance over the years, but it still depends strong on which data you dump into your workspace.
> Why does "everyone" love Notion?
Because it's an awesome concept with a well-rounded implementation on the user side. It just sucks hard on the technical side. I mean, it's a good tool, but it has an upper ceiling of what one should do with it. But this is a general problem with all those young fancy tools. Obsidian or Logseq are not different in that regard. They all are scaling poor. They are simply not meant for this.
> Programs that do simple things should be simple and run fast.
It's not simple, it's very far from being simple.
> Any Association grants you (“Licensee”) a license to use, modify, and redistribute the Software, but only (a) for Non-Commercial Use, or (b) for Commercial Use in Allowed Networks.
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Any restrictions on commercial use make a license not open source.
> The terminology of FOSS was created to be a neutral on these philosophical disagreements between the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Open Source Initiative (OSI) and have a single unified term that could refer to both concepts.
Conflating open source software with free software isn't precise which is why I prefer FOSS/FLOSS as a term. The conflation you put forward is a political stance, not factual.
In practice, logseq’s block-oriented system works really good for the daily journal, and with obsidian I always devolved to just prepending points to a single file anyway.
Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a small fee for a great note-taking app, but I would like to be able to share some notes with my mom and with my partner. But they wouldn't want to pay for it, as they wouldn't use the app as much.
I hear syncthing is good for this, but obviously it's messier on iOS.
I just know that $8/mo for sync is too much. You can get Office 365, or Google Drive/Dropbox with a TON of space for that price, and that space is usable by lots of different things.
Plus you constantly run into issues with compatibility between the sync app(s) and the Mac/PC/iOS apps you use to edit the files.
Nothing prevents me from running that exact same setup for Obsidian for free. But I’d much rather pay $8/month and not have to deal with server backups and maintenance, compatibility, or all of the other issues.
I would say bash, git/git daemon, grep, python http server as needed.
No closed-source application between me and my information.
Structuring everything into "nodes" is a paradigm that works well for me.
The plugin ecosystem is sparse/immature, and the special features like PDF embedding/annotating are not very usable. It is difficult to set up sync properly (I self host Nextcloud and usually have to resolve sync conflicts whenever I switch devices). There is an Android app, which works fine, but the integration with the Android system (e.g. creating a note from a "Share" dialog) is... obtuse.
It works for me because I can just start typing. I don't have to worry about creating new pages. If I click on a reference (that is, a tag or page -- fundamentally the same thing), I can see all of the other places I referenced it. And all of the places I used that word but _didn't_ reference it.
I can go on and on about logseq and I'm happy to answer specific questions, but the important thing is: it works for me.
For an example of macros, I have a macro that makes it so when I enter `{{mergerequest JIRA-1000, 2222}}` I get links to the JIRA ticket and the GitHub PR. JIRA-1000 is the ticket ID and 2222 is the GitHub PR number. Macros are really powerful and a lot of fun to customize.
Obsidian is perfect for my needs but unfortunately a tad too heavy for my poor laptop with 4 GB RAM.
That said, I actually _use_ Logseq due to the way it works (i.e., an outliner). Obsidian simply doesn't meet my needs.
Org-mode can be used simply, but the kind of person drawn to org-mode (e.g. me) has a hard time not yak shaving org-mode in the extreme. :-)
I have a few questions for you. I apologize if some (all?) of them are too aggressive.
What were your reasons for creating a new project rather than focussing on the existing project? Technical debt?
What will be the pricing of the new app? Will it be open-source?
Lastly, will Notes be maintained by you to a lesser degree upon the release of Plume? Will you let the community take over? Will nothing change?
1. Notes is completely open-source[1]. There are some awesome maintainers who help me fix and update things and sometimes even implement new features. When Plume will be released, of course, I'll put much less time into Notes (as already the case). But since Notes is licensed under MPL and Plume is built on top of it, all files used from Notes will be open source as well, so any improvement from Plume could be potentially incorporated into Notes.
2. The reason for creating Plume is that I always wanted[2] to create an advanced editor (a la Notion) but only recently realized how to be able to do it using C++ (handling the model) and QML (handling the view). I had to implement many things from scratch (undo/redo/copy/paste/multi-block-editing/etc).
3. I recently discussed my reasoning to go close-source[3]. I've been working night and day (every day) converting 4 cups of coffee into code for the last 4 months to create Plume. I don't want to risk not being rewarded sufficiently for it. But, I'm 99% sure that I'll either open source the core block editor or the entire app in the future.
[1] https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes
For getting used to the motions especially https://vim-adventures.com can be a fun way, in its game format.
For getting started I’d say don’t worry about plugins much, but get https://github.com/tpope/vim-sensible at least so the defaults meant for vi don’t get in the way. The only other thing you might want is a format syntax if your preferred note syntax isn’t highlighted well by default or something. Polyglot can be good to stave that off but really I’d say learn on a really lean config, and get used to using :help or similar. It’s the best way to learn the parts that work everywhere.
Honestly I’d do the vimtutor, maybe try the free version of this, and just use it for a bit. Use the arrow keys, use the mouse (:set mouse=a turns it on just in case) but see how you like being able to use the <count><action><range> syntax to do things. That’s the real win in my opinion, things like reflow this paragraph gqip (reflow is gq, range for a paragraph is “ip” or In Paragraph), delete this sentence including surrounding spaces and period das (literally Delete Around Sentence), and with movements gU} changes the rest of the current paragraph to uppercase.
There are many lists of these things, but I learned it by treating it as notepad with some odd bindings for save and quit for a bit in college then whenever something was annoying looking up how to do it or how to build it. I’ve now been using vim as my main editor for notes, prose with latex or markdown, and programming for 20 years, and literally given courses on it for graduate students. That is to say, you don’t need to learn it all ip front to use it. Learn how to open it, get in insert mode, write and quit and jump in; hopefully it will fit you like it did for me.
It is a modal editor just like vi/vim/neovim, but way better/easier/sensible/helpful than its much older ancestors, especially for new learners. Even if you will later on decide to switch to something like neovim, this switch is going to be a relative piece of cake, after you had experience and understood the basic idea behind modal editing, compared to trying to go vim cold turkey.
According to my experience the vast majority of "vim beginners" actually already have a significant amount of experience with vim; it's just that the experience was negative, they didn't get far and were overwhelmed, unfoundly blaiming themselves and their own stupidity, hoping that all they are missing is a good tutorial. No, it's not you. It's the editor itself, build in 70s with the ideas, UI, hotkeys that are inapropriate for the current time. There is a much better way for modern times.
Install Helix, run it and type ':tutor' to access the tutorial. After that you will be ready to go.
This is the case for me too. I tried vimtutor, paid for many high quality courses directed at beginners but it never really clicked for me.
Thanks for the comment!
1. gradually, more vendor lockin (read: not plain markdown) features are added
2. greater focus on monetization
3. exit
4. go to #2.
In some products this doesn't matter. In a personal knowledgebase it might.
The only thing you could get locked out of is the convenient curation that Obsidian provides
Im normally opensource-or-bust but the way obsidian is set up is pretty low risk
Having watched this movie a few times, I like to have the insurance policy of open source licensing so that it stays true tomorrow.
Once something is proprietary it's arguably easier from a developer perspective - and preferred from an investor perspective - to make it steadily more proprietary over time.
Then one day you wake up and even if your notes still aren't saved in some some obtuse format that only loads properly in Obsidian, your experience has gradually degraded but by this stage you've got so much tied up in the proprietary extras that you stick around unhappily.
I feel like it's quite a well-worn page of the tech playbook and I'm probably only scratching the surface here.
And the second they go full evil, I can just point _any_ editor to the same directory structure and stuff will mostly Just Work.
I also want open-source for PKM software but I realized I value getting things done more if there were no near alternatives for my use case. I tried Logseq but it's straying even further from vanilla Markdown than Obsidian and is not as well-polished.
Logseq or Obsidian?
Goal 1: World class note taking
Goal 2: Not get captured by a corporation, such as what happened to Endnote
Logseq has a more convincing website.