Well, it is. Many in the Legal World or in many other areas remember Word Perfect. It was an awesome word processor that the Legal folks and others became dependent on. Then one day, unannounced, it was gone. There are still Disks filled with Word Perfect docs than are inaccessible. Plain text files should be around for a long long time. Markdown makes plain text easier to manipulate and look at (no HTML code). Combine markdown (or HTML) with CSS (Consolidated Style Sheets) and you can do a LOT, and still have plain text if needed for future compatibility. I have lots of friends that have their theises only on paper because the digital originals can not be read any of today’s programs. If they were done in plain text/markdown/CSS they would still be readable.
I could still read any version of a Word Perfect doc. Assuming I had a disk reader that could read the disk. In fact, the latest stable release of Word Perfect was in 2021.
You’re not arguing that Markdown is better than rich text, you’re arguing that open formats are better than proprietary ones. And I agree! But the solution to that is to have an open-standard rich text format. RTF is one. Another could be developed. Or use plain text, but hide all the formatting and give me a standard word processing interface, so that I don’t see the formatting codes at all, and don’t need to.
I avoid the use of all such syntax and plugins. I dislike reading files with symbols I need to parse before parsing normal written language. I don’t need the overhead and I’m well aware of the risks you describe, even though I know I am capable of amending that syntax if I ever needed to.
This is absolutely true. Visible syntax is a distraction unless it has been overlearned and used to the point of happening automatically. This many be true for programmers, but not for the general public. There’s a reason for the existence of a version of WYSIWYG in some markdown editors and why reading modes interpret and strip out all the otherwise visible formatting.
Quite a few programs do this better than Obsidian.
Even Word has one way links.
Quite a number use open source database formats. They’re not proprietary.
But they are databases, not files.
Even Obsidian can’t manage that; mobile OSs in particular are very tied down.
Most databases have limited syncing options and most users of such programs want access from the web, so it’s not usually a development priority.
If you don’t have an account (or don’t sign in to it), Upnote is just a local database. You would then be free to sync that across devices however you wish. And it does have mobile apps.
I feel your pain, although I come at it from a slightly different direction.
I gradually moved away from using Obsidian regularly for my notes because there was always a lot of work involved in making it work as I wanted, it’s a poor fit for my muscle memory, interoperability with rich text programs is poor, and workflows are subject to change at any update.
I feel my angle differs from yours in that most of my initial writing has always been in txt. That works as designed by markdown editors and can also be read and edited in word processors. But Obsidian makes txt a second class citizen, links and graph etc wise, and converting txt to md means that word processors won’t open them (except for Word with the Writage add-on); deathau’s plugin helps but does not solve the friction. My next stage always involves colour; that can be added via HTML (as Highlightr does) or CSS but isn’t native markdown: nothing works as easily for this as a rich text editor.
In my case, I concluded that was true. I’m pretty good at using it, but it’s never a comfortable fit. I feel it is a best fit for programmers and/or students. Keybindings work as in code editors (true for traditional two pane markdown editors, but not the case for WYSIWYG editors or PKM programs). There’s a multitude of features and options and plugins to play with, so for the right users it’s a fun activity in and of itself.
I always stayed up-to-date with PKM competitors. As you observed interoperability or rich text functionality is problematic in this space. Wikilinks, which aren’t actually markdown anyway, are now common in many programs including those which are rich text rather than markdown. I don’t believe that there is a good rich text option yet, but some of the newer programs may offer this - but they all use databases and probably don’t tick all your boxes. I moved partly in this direction, I have to use docx etc, so I need workflows which make that as smooth as possible.
But for most of my writing, I have moved back towards an Obsidian variant markdown editor, which offers a much better writing workflow and feature set (for me, quite probably not for you) and an increased use of text oriented programs that function with a much wider range of formats. I’ve been files based for quite a while now, but I’m certainly keeping an eye on the database programs and weighing up how I could utilise them to improve my workflow.
Hiding the formatting is what CSS is supposed to be all about. And HTML is much uglier than markdown :)
Most markdown processors including Obsidian have a mode that “hides” the bare markdown file.
Barry
And Markdown is much uglier than rich text. And I shouldn’t have to learn CSS to make my notes look like notes instead of code.
I originally thought that, but even WordStar files can be recovered. The main problem would be extracting them from the antique hardware that they’d have to be on. Could even be CP/M.
And WordStar predates most of the personal computer age (WordPerfect became market leader sometime in the mid 1980s) so I doubted there would be many people with theses written with it. Though in that era it was quite common for theses to be written on university mainframes, and they probably would be hard to squeeze the data from now. And Atari and Amiga programs might be a struggle, but again ought to be possible.
Fascinating Story. If CP/M had been adopted by IBM, computing would have been much different.
Wordstar (and the dot commands) for its day was very popular. I had an Osborne 2 aka a portable sewing machine.
iirc WordStar files were plaintext. But not entirely ASCII.
Markdown has much in common with LaTeX. Just create a file using proper Latex commands and you are good to go. Beautiful documents from a Microsoft Notepad file.
True, but not quite what I was referring to. I mean that, for instance, if my quote marks are straight instead of curly, or if I can’t use tabs to format paragraphs, it drives me up a wall. There are a bunch of things like this, things that word processors handle without thinking, but which require significant finagling to implement in Obsidian.
For me what is different is the native support for backlinks (and the graphing).
As to the definition - The term comes from the word wiki wiki, which means “fast in Hawaiian”
For me Obsidian is incredibly fast - so its is wiki wiki.
I have been using Confluence since 2007 - and since then it has become quite slow.
I much preferred the earlier versions which were text based where you could type [[