Obsidian as a VSCode extension

Feature archive
1

(I apologise if somebody already suggested this, I searched but failed to find anything).

So, my question is why not implement Obsidian as a VSCode extension? In that way the Obsidian engineers may focus on the features that make Obsidian unique and leave general editing and visualisation stuff for VSCode to take care of.

Is there some technical problem? If so, please explain.

2 Likes
2

Have you tried Foam? https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

1 Like
3

Yes, I did. It’s not there yet (i.e. stability and feature range), IMO. But it definitely has promise and I’ll check on it again.

1 Like
4

Not everyone is familiar with, nor likes, VSCode - it is, after all, a programmers’ text editor, not a knowledge-management tool, so targeted at a very different niche.

If Obsidian were to become any other app’s ‘plug-in’, it might gain some users, but will alienate others. IMHO, Obsidian works nicely on its own.

6 Likes
5

Exactly the point I’m trying to make: VSCode is a reasonable text editor and substantial resources are dedicated to its further development. Why the Obsidian community doesn’t take advantage of this (free) offering and focus its (comparatively limited) resources towards strengthening its knowledge management-related features? Why lose time re-inventing the text editing wheel?

(I don’t mean to sound pressing, I’m just interested in the technical reasoning behind this choice).

6

You don’t have to use Obsidian to edit text if you like VS Code instead. You can edit the files in any other text editor.

1 Like
7

Off the top of my head:-
Foam already exists
It reduces optimisation potential
It makes creating mobile versions harder
It reduces the size of the potential user base. By quite a lot I should think. I certainly wouldn’t consider it.

2 Likes
8

they’re dedicated to the furtherance of its own purposes as a code editor

9

There’s also Memo

3 Likes
10

I was not aware of this. Thanks a lot

11

I agree with @justindirose. I write and edit my files in VSCode. I only view them in Obsidian for the graph…which is very rare.

2 Likes
12

Awsome! Thanks for sharing memo, @Dor!

13

Like others said, VSCode can do some heavy lifting for us, but it have many limitations. Some of them are listed here: https://github.com/svsool/vscode-memo/issues/1#issuecomment-655004112 (I’m sure you’ve already read that).

We’re not considering making Obsidian into a VSCode, especially with its current scope. Further discussion is still welcome, but I’m archiving this so we’re not implementing it.

3 Likes
14

we need the freedom of doing our things, and the repetitive work is affordable.

1 Like
15

Definitely DO NOT WANT Obsidian to compete with or go in the direction of VSCode.

I also don’t want Obsidian to be a VSCode extension. That doesn’t make any sense to me…

Obsidian is already awesome and does what it does really well! It’s so easy to use, has a great UX/UI, and dead simple to setup and get started, I think those all lead to a potentially wider adoption among non-tech users.

3 Likes
16