Idea
Right now the Graph in Obsidian allows for a visual representation of the network created by links in the notes. For anything that requires more than a simple diagram for understanding complex topics, a defined semantic relationship is one of the best ways. Allowing the nodes to link to deeper notes would allwo for both testing oneself’s understanding as well as creating an ontology.
Current situation
Mermaid allows for creation of what’s effectively a
- very basic concept map
- and with some work an Argument Map (though supporting
Argdownwould be nice as well)
The Graph is still fairly hard to use effectively without filtering.
Solution
Most of these will probably go back to feature requests for Mermaid; as Silver has suggested I did want to file a feature request here as well.
1. Impoved links in Diagrams
Linking in Mermaid is quite tedious and doesn’t always work as expected ^[Obsidian Links in Mermaid don't work for notes in vault root directory] ^[Mermaid: Internal links in diagrams lead to blank ("break Obsidian")].
Linking with a simple [[Wikilink]] would be highly appreciated.
Similar request: Concept map like Tinderbox
2. Markdown text in diagrams
Diagram.codes ( online editor to try it out) does this well. Having a functionality like this would integrate very nicely into the whole concept of a markdown-based personal knowledge management system. Headings alone are not sufficient for concept mapping.
This how it looks in my MarginNote:
3. Automatic Mindmap view from Headings
H1 = central node
H2= Node below that
H3 = child node of relative H2
H4-H6 = same
One advantage would be that this would allow for displaying the text below the heading like above with Markdown support.
4. Automatic Mindmap view from lists
- advantage: allows for deeper mindmaps than headings
- disadvantage: While headings come - like the outline - from the document itself, this would need to be created separately
- central node
- node below that
- child node 1
- child node 2
- node below that