New post: Obsidian

I’ve moved from using org-roam to Obsidian to handle my academic and ‘thinking’ notes.

@bsag I'vee been using it for a couple of months now. My experience has been pretty much the same as yours. Having everything as a separate text file is a big plus. I just wish there were a good mobile version.

@bsag Agreed! If you keep the files in the cloud, I guess you could use one of the iOS markdown editors? I don’t really need mobile access but I am planning to use drafts to capture quick ideas to an inbox folder.

@millerde That sounds useful!

@bsag Not to derail your Obsidian discussion (which was excellent btw, and had me viewing some really useful videos) but I love the Remarkable 2. Probably my favorite tech investment for the past several years.

@millerde I’ve had a look at the Remarkable tablet before and think it looks pretty amazing. Does the text recognition work well in practice?

@millerde @bsag I use Obsidian on Windows with the data on Dropbox, and then use Dropsync on Android to mirror those Dropbox folders to my mobile devices. The Epsilon Notes editor on Android gives a nice Markdown preview and is a decent text editor. This setup has the advantage that I always have a copy of the files on each device and so can edit straight away even when there is no network. Only disadvantage is that Epsilon needs the normal Markdown link syntax rather than [[Obsidian's]].

@bsag On Windows I have found that Obsidian's Electron roots begin to show when editing larger notes - for example failing to scroll when the cursor moves past the bottom of the window. I often end up dropping out to Vim when I have a lot of changes to make.

@bsag It's been excellent so far for me. The mobile and desktop apps are nice, too. I would think the PDF annotation would be pretty useful for you, for articles. Note that the recognition results in text sent to you via an email, not a text file on the device. I'm hoping that develops a little more.

@frogplate That's a good idea. I'll have a look at DropSync!

@bsag I see there is a Windows version. It is free for personal use? Or would that be only for very limited uses?

Is it only for programmer people? I built my static html Dylan bibliography decades ago by following one book on html. Is it possible for a mere mortal to write & organize notes with Obsidian? Or is it really only for computer experts?

Thanks for your help!

Ron

@Ron As far as I know, there are free versions for all platforms. You can pay to get early access to new versions, and there are subscriptions for their publishing feature (to publish notes to the web) and a note syncing service, but otherwise all features are accessible in the free version. You can do advanced stuff with it, but basically you just create a new note, writing in Markdown (as you do here) and if you want to link to another note you type double square brackets and start typing the name of the note you want to link to. Give it a try and see if you like it!

@millerde Sounds great!

@frogplate I haven’t experienced those glitches yet, but overall I’m not a huge fan of Electron apps.

@millerde Rather confusingly it is listed in the app store as "Autosync for Dropbox - Dropsync" thought it calls itself "Dropsync" internally. I think that is because they have added equivalent apps for Google and OneDrive.

@bsag I've fallen in love with Obsidian too. It's the perfect front end for my folders of markdown files. And I can edit them in other editors like Typora without messing things up.

I keep everything in my Nextcloud server and I've never had an issue with it.

@peroty Typora is amazing for writing and export. You can also use Zettlr as a front end when you get to the point of drafting output as it handles Pandoc citations, though I reckon that Obsidian will catch up eventually.