@Dor and @WhiteNoise, thank you both for your short and clear replies!
@WhiteNoise, the negatives you mention refer to markdown in general, I understood? Because all this stuff works perfectly within obsidian at least - actually both markdown and wiki links work exactly the same here (no problem linking to headings with markdown links either).
And you’re right, links to headings aren’t understood by other markdown editors, but at least they open the respective file for you when you click on the link - yet I just tested wiki-style links in 3 different markdown editors (re-text, ghostwriter and typora) and all three even didn’t recognize wiki links at all…
So I’m still not completely convinced, even if I like the idea of wiki-style links. But what I take from my experiments so far is the following:
within obsidian it doesn’t matter anyway - it all brings you to the same results;
but markdown links can at least be opened in any other editor (even if it doesn’t take you to the exact heading), whereas a couple of editors doesn’t recognize wiki links.
Actually, for now, only a small number of editors do recognise them.
It’s important to understand the difference between the links and their use cases.
Standard markdown was for web pages etc. Links were infrequent, usually to external files but with an option for internal. Documents were otherwise standalone just like a word processor.
Wikis were all about links, mostly internal.
The first placed most reliance on specifying the precise file and path - speed mattered less because they were done less.
The reverse for wikis because linking was done so often the wiki was its own construct so there was no gain spending time specifying file and path more than necessary.
Obsidian and the other knowledge based note programs are built around linking and so ease and speed matters. That’s why they all go for wiki-links. They all, more or less, go for markdown because it is plaintext (therefore easy to process) and is a pre-existing standard of sorts. They all add extensions when they need something that doesn’t exist in a markdown standard - nothing new there.
Realising the power and popularity of the linking paradigm, older programs are rushing to add wiki-links.
Editors don’t have the same need, and most of their users are just using them as document processors. They will change slower, and only if they perceive their users regarding it as a must have feature.
I think that day will come, you may not.
For now standard links will cost time and effort in Obsidian and other programs that allow wiki-links.
Wiki-links will cost effort and probably time if you often use editors that don’t understand them.
The best future proofing guarantee is the ability to convert (Obsidian has said it will provide a converter to standard links).
Would you be willing to give some examples of these older programs? If I’ve used (or am using) any of them it might give more understanding of the nuances regarding wikis.
Thank you so much for listening to your users and implementing this feature. Is it possible (or could it be implemented) that there’s a setting to use relative links and to create a hard-coded backlink with standard markdown links?
I have an existing markdown notes library that I’ve curated by hand (with some help from VS Code extensions) and feel drawn to Obsidian because of its mission to use a vendor agnostic format like markdown. However I’ve been burned in the past by adopting ‘flavors’ of markdown that were promised to be gaining popularity and widely supported. I’d like the option to, by default, use standard markdown reference style linking.
This feature seems to allow that but does so without acknowledging folders. I.e. Obsidian will do [Folder/note](note.md) instead of [note](./../folder/note.md). This seems to break in any other editor I tried. The functionality I’m envisioning is:
I have folder structure:
folder-a
– note-a.md
folder-b
– note-b.md
In note-a.md I type [[note-b]] at the top of the note
This expands to:
[note-b][]
This is some other text in Note A
[note-b]: ./../folder-b/note-b.md
In note-b.md
Some text I already had in note b
[note-a]: ./../folder-a/note-a.md
This is a clean way for both notes to have a strong connection using standard markdown syntax.
Perhaps I should just create the VS Code extension myself, but judging by this thread there’s a solid interest in standard markdown linking. Also, I love what you’ve done with Obsidian and would love to dive in head first. This is the only deal breaker for me.
I’m trying to use “standard” markdown links in notes that I know I’ll need to use on a mobile device with IAWriter (at least until Obsidian mobile exists), but it appears that standard markdown links are still not clickable in edit mode. Is this (lack of) functionality intentional?
[[to_somefile2|This is a link]]
[This is a link](to_somefile)
In the first case, in edit mode, the link is underlined when the mouse hovers over it, and a cmd-click opens the link in a new pane.
In the second case, the link is completely non-functional in edit mode. You must switch into preview mode in order to follow the link and open it in a new pane.
Why is the behavior different for two links with ostensibly identical functionality: one standard markdown format and one wikilink format?
@Silver You are correct… However, don’t you think either should work - or, at the very least, there should be some visual indication that the link is clickable? The wikilink is underlined when you hover over it (so it’s evident that some operation may be possible with it) but nothing changes visually with the MD link, even when holding cmd and hovering over the link portion (not the name!) of the MD link.
