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Mylloon | 3 years ago

Personally, I use Obsidian.md [1] to take notes, especially because there is an extension for excalidraw [2] that I particularly like.

To publish my notes, I use PineDocs [3] which generates a very nice website with the markdown files

I synchronize the machine that hosts PineDocs with my note-taking machine using Syncthing [4]

[1] https://obsidian.md/ [2] https://excalidraw.com/ [3] https://github.com/xy2z/PineDocs [4] https://syncthing.net/

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JoshCole|3 years ago

Seconding this; I switched to Obsidian from Notion and I've been liking it. I also use a plugin called Wielder for it that lets me write codeblocks in my notes and turns my note taking system into a literate programming environment. So I have for example a self-written plugin that applies transformations to existing pages to incorporate the sort of question templates suggested in books like How To Solve It or on websites like untools. I also have certain data structures built into the note environment - stuff like asynchronous task management. Since everything is markdown everything just defaults to working when these higher level tools aren't active because I'm in a no code environment.

What I'm not so certain on is if this is actually helping me think better enough to be worth the cost in time of getting fancy. This is an example of a blog post written basically by stringing together notes from walking a path through the graph of my notes:

- https://joshuacol.es/2021/05/17/virtuous-cycles.html

These are two I wrote before adopting the methodology which I feel a bit happier with because I feel like I learned more in the process of researching them and writing them:

- https://joshuacol.es/2020/03/06/modeling-technical-income.ht...

- https://joshuacol.es/2019/04/23/hypothesis.html

diggan|3 years ago

Off-topic maybe, but I'm the author of Obsidian Wielder (https://wielder.victor.earth), so it's great to hear that people in the wild are finding it useful! If you have any sort of feedback how it can help you more, please do let me know!

I'm sure a lot of other Obsidian users here on HN would find Wielder useful as well, but the Show HN I made a while ago didn't get much traction (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31846474), maybe I'll retry once I've added some more features :)

lwerdna|3 years ago

I'm interested in this bit:

> ...lets me write codeblocks in my notes and turns my note taking system into a literate programming environment. So I have for example a self-written plugin that applies transformations to existing pages to incorporate the sort of question templates suggested in books like How To Solve It or on websites like untools.

Do you have any posts or additional information on this in particular?

weberer|3 years ago

I've switched from Obsidian to Joplin, which is a nicer looking FOSS alternative.

capableweb|3 years ago

Last time I checked, Joplin stores a bunch of metadata in databases and such, is that still true?

I'm still using Obsidian after some years, mainly because it's just a directory of Markdown files (and some JSON configuration in the .obsidian directory), but also for the plugin ecosystem. Would it be hard to use terminal git to sync my Joplin database manually?

jjoonathan|3 years ago

Snap & Sketch is my core workflow (it's by far the fastest way to get information from meat space into notes), and the best app I've found so far to facilitate this is GoodNotes. It has three critical features:

1. Native snap & sketch support (no fussing with embedding every time you want to create/edit, which is all the time for me)

2. Stores notes as folders-of-PDF in dropbox, not proprietary format locked behind a subscription.

3. Fast OCR search (I'd happily swap this for good native text editing, but having some smooth search mechanism is very important and many graphical apps don't.)

GoodNotes has plenty of weaknesses -- the drawing tools are primitive, the desktop text editing story is almost nonexistent, it's tied to the mac ecosystem -- so I have been delighted to see the explosion of good Markdown tooling which is strong in these other areas, and I have been hoping that one of them would be good enough at snap & sketch that I could jump. Obsidian.md+excalidraw comes dangerously close to challenging GoodNotes, but my brief trial on an iPad involved too much fussing around to make the snap & sketch workflow happen, so I don't think I'll jump quite yet.

Just including my thoughts for anyone else out there approaching notes from the Snap & Sketch angle.

cush|3 years ago

What is Snap & Sketch? Google's turning up nothing

and0|3 years ago

I've been really enjoying Obsidian. I think of it as VSCode but for Markdown, with an extension marketplace more for notes than code.

Turning markdown into an interactive kanban is especially powerful, and more extensions are being added all the time.

I am going to check out Joplin soon, though. Obsidian could be a little friendlier and come with a couple more batteries for someone like me.

wenc|3 years ago

For my knowledge base, I use VS Code with Markdown Memo, which supports back links and easy link creation. Free.

Ultimately it’s all just a bunch of Markdown files with mermaid diagrams and LaTeX equations. It’s so simple.

moystard|3 years ago

I am also very satisfied of Obsidian.

Do you use excalidraw with a tablet or graphic tablet, or with your mouse? I have been exploring ways of taking manuscript notes.

Mylloon|3 years ago

With a mouse, I use it in class

UmYeahNo|3 years ago

>To publish my notes, I use PineDocs [3] which generates a very nice website

This is music to my ears(eyes?)! And, something I've been searching for my obsidian vault. I'm not a developer, could you expand just a bit about your PineDocs workflow for Obsidian? Especially: does it handle note-to-note links and transclusions?

Mylloon|3 years ago

I share a folder between my Obsidian vault and the folder PineDocs uses with Syncthing (because the machine that runs PineDocs is not my laptop), so as soon as I save my files the site is immediately updated, but PineDocs was not designed with Obsidian in mind, the links work but not the advanced features Obsidian offers.

On the other hand, Perlite [1] is (I never really tested it but it looks cool) designed with Obsidian in mind so maybe it supports more features.

[1] https://github.com/secure-77/Perlite

diggan|3 years ago

If you want to publish a website directly from Obsidian + support the Obsidian developers monthly (), you can give Obsidian Publish (https://obsidian.md/publish) a try. I use it for my notes and as a demonstration website for one of my projects, works well enough for those use cases.