For me, while some of the features are there via the basic Markup text editor, they aren’t well integrated and useful for a true Outliner mode, like Logseq or Roam. It’s currently clunky in Obsidian to curate thoughts and move sections around.
It’s really the combination of these Outliner elements that originally made the super-clean Workflowy UI so popular (and inspired Roam).
For example, in Obsidian, while you can start with a bullet and can then automatically generate a bullet on the next line, you aren’t held in that mode and can easily break out via normal editing, like backspacing, etc. It’s “fragile.”
Of course, you can’t easily drag bullet sections around (by default).
Small touches matter as well. For example, the fold triangle is present all the time vs hover only which just adds extra visual complexity to the workspace that isn’t needed (vs. Workflowy or Roam where hovering the line reveals the fold triangle and is a nice visual touch to remind there is more tucked underneath).
That’s what I love about Obsidian, is their attention to detail around the UI and how clean it is. Would love to have a single tool for both outlining and writing and hoping they bring the same clean UI to an integrated Outliner mode.
