I am not able to locate that plugin from him? Are you talking about the web clipper?
Search Community Plugins for txt - txt as md
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Thanks I found it. I was looking here - deathau (Gordon Pedersen) · GitHub - for some reason it is not listed. I don’t know my way around GH very well so maybe it’s right in front of me there I am not seeing it.
EDIT - I see now I had to click out of the Overview tab into the Repo.
I would like to add, I can effectively replace Obsidian with Typora (or a similar .md viewer/editor). So long as I can always access my notes as .md files I can always switch to something like Typora.
The key feature Typora simulates from Obisidian is the spotlight search feature and organizing my notes as a file tree. This is the cornerstone of my Obsidian system. Everything else I consider a bonus. (But don’t get me wrong: they are incredibly nice bonuses that do increase efficiency that I would not want to leave behind.)
Hell, I could even do my notetaking system as a paper-only system. For me, digital programs are about replicating an analog system and then maximizing efficiency of that system.
I would say the only two situations where I would leave Obsidian are if they decide to DRM lock my notes in a similar way to Notion (which is extremely unlikely, and I have two third-party backups so it’s unlikely this would happen so suddenly I would lose the chance to jump ship with notes intact) or if they go out of business. If either of those happen, I can use Typora. And while it would be less effective than Obsidian, I have learned so much about PKM from using Obsidian and participating in the community here, that it would be a far more effective system compared to what I did before I stumbled on Obsidian.
It’s always a question of Costs vs Benefits; everything is like this, even paper, and I think the costs of using Obsidian are still significantly lower than other programs, even though the utility they provide (or third party devs provide) does soft-lock us into it.
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@Dor - many thanks for this reply, the OP’s question is something I have been wondering about as well but I felt too new to Obsidian to even know how to ask the question.
May I ask a follow up question though: when you say you use Wikilinks, can you explain what you mean? I’m still on a learning curve when it comes to Markdown and using URIs and ‘actions’ and ‘shortcuts’ etc, so I’m trying to figure out how to achieve interoperability between DevonThink and Drafts5 in particular. If there are ways of maintaining links that work independently of which software is being used, this is of particular interest to me as I’m still figuring this out.
Your suggestion to use .txt files is helpful, so I’ll give that some thought as I progress my thinking on workflows. I too have decided to keep my Obsidian implementation to core plugins. I’ve read elsewhere on the forum that there may be security risks of using plugins from unscrupulous developers, since the only way to know they are ‘safe’ is to check the code yourself (which I lack the knowledge to do). Is this something that you worry about on a practical level, or do you just watch the comments on plugins and avoid being an early adopter?
Thanks again, this is helpful.
I think the security risks are overblown.
Risks from lack of maintenance and data loss are higher. This is especially true for complex plugins with multiple functions. As always I’d advise backups.
The plugin code is inspected before first deployment and is available for inspection thereafter. As you say, most users aren’t actually capable of checking things out but there are probably enough who are to pick up the most nefarious concerns quickly enough, especially for popular plugins.
I think you are more likely to be caught by a scam or phishing than an Obsidian plugin.
Practically, I have a large number of vaults, including a number which exist only for testing. Any new plugin I might consider goes there first. I don’t install highly complex plugins (maintenance, complexity and data loss risks). I have an effective multiple backup regime, with versions.
Remember that this depends on a plugin.
And .txt files are still not treated as .md equivalent in Obsidian.
In Obsidian there are two options for link syntax.
markdown and [[wikilinks]]
Wikilinks are much easier to write and are becoming more common; markdown links will be recognised by all programs that work with markdown. Converting one to the other isn’t that hard, and converters are available. For me, the speed and efficiency of wikilinks trumps any issues of compatibility with programs that remain stuck on markdown linking.
I’m afraid I can’t help there. Not an Apple user (I dislike their security practices!!). But I’ve seen frequent references to both programs here, so there ought to be plenty of specific help if you need it.
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Thanks for the detailed answers, very helpful thank you.
A significant one is this:
Notion and Roam believe in the rent-to-use model. Month after month, year after year, these applications will nickle and dime you. Sure, it may not be a lot in of itself. But add the subscription cost to all of the other subscriptions in your life and it starts to look a little bleak.
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You can always use iA Writer or Typora to work on your markdown documents. Markdown and text documents will always be usable under hundreds of different applications out there.
Wiki versus markdown links is a key portability issue. I switched to markdown links and there is a plugin (of course) that hekps make this relatively painless. It is obsidian-consistent-attachments-and-links. If you want portability, make sure to use this to help. There are also several other variations from markdown but those are more easily handled.
The big issue for portability is the reliance on plugins. Many add enormous convenience and value but are proprietary. Great example is the tasks plugin. The good news is there is that the tasks can be converted into todo.txt (extended) format fairly easily with a python script that won’t be complicated to write. Excalidraw can create an svg file so you can move that but perhaps not the raw Excalidraw content. If you want maximum portability, be aware and judicious in what you adopt for critical capabilities.
Many apps support wikilinks, including some that don’t use markdown. Wikilinks are generally quicker and easier to read and write.
So decision about which to use in terms of compatibility depends on which apps you want compatibility with. But easy enough to bulk convert one to the other.
I’d say idiosyncratic rather than proprietary.
How future-proof is really Obsidian, with a heavy use of plug-ins that add a lot of code to the notes which is specific to those plugins?
A plugin is often created by a single developer that could abandon it at any moment. Then a new version of Obsidian comes out that doesn’t support that plugin anyore and boom, hundreds of notes suddenly become partially or totally unreadable.
I make sure to only use plugins/workflows that keep to clean simple Markdown. So no dataview or fancy front-matter stuff for me, for this exact reason.
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Can only agree. As .md is basically a text file and can be open by a lot of applications.
My thoughts regarding the modification through plugins. I’m using YAML Front matter, dataview and breadcrumbs as plugins who “modify” the markdown. But even then I can open the md file in Notepad, VSCode, … And as it is a text file, You can easily write a script in Python or your preferred language to modify the md files.
I can imagine many people reinventing the wheel. We need a pandoc extension/filter that handles all markdown formats, including plugin syntax extensions, for all.
I find the “extras” of Obsidian to be very helpful. However I am using folders to keep things organized. I can open files without Obsidian and do so at times for quick reference. But the plugins are really nice and useful. Moving from Evernote.
Obsidian to Craft
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The process of getting my notes back out of Obsidian was surprisingly tricky.
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While notes in Obsidian are simple Markdown text files, maintaining the critical links between note files, images, and other embedded files is complicated without a proper export function (which Obsidian lacks). Thanks to a tip from Curtis McHale, I used Bear, a competing notes app, to import my notes from Obsidian. Since Bear doesn’t recognize folders, I had to consolidate all my notes from a dozen folders in Obsidian to one catch-all folder to avoid losing links. Bear was able to import all my notes, complete with links between notes, images, and PDFs, and then export them in a format that worked fine for Craft. Once in Craft, I had to refile all my notes back into my folder scheme, which took some time. For software that touts itself as the ultimate in future-proofing, I honestly didn’t expect it would be such a hassle to move my information back to Craft. Bear gets high marks here for serving as the go-between, but it seems like a pretty big gap for Obsidian not to have a proper export function.
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Despite the time it took to retrieve my files from Obsidian, I discovered how easy it was to export my information from Craft, which isn’t something you usually figure out until it becomes a critical necessity. I now have very little hesitation with trusting my notes to the Craft with its top-notch export capabilities.
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Hmmm, I think the devs should perhaps keep and eye on how portable core obsidian is, but I don’t think it’s their concern if 3rd party plug-ins make obsidian less portable.
When I wrote this back in December, importing an Obsidian vault into Craft created all sorts of problems with links and required the Bear app as a go-between. I just tried this again and now everything comes across great in Craft without any conversion. I think this must have been an import limitation on Craft vs. a problem with the way Obsidian stores its files and related links.
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