Hey guys. I write academic texts in Obsidian – and I have the impression that a particular way of organizing knowledge graphically is unfortunately still not possible: kind of a way MarginNote offers. And I would love something like that within Obsidian.
There are countless whiteboard and mind-mapping plugins, each good in its own way (Obsidian Canvas, Excalidraw, Markmind, Enhancing Mindmap, etc.). Unfortunately, none of them accomplish what makes MarginNote so appealing – which is the hierarchical organization of individual knowledge fragments via drag and drop. Let me explain.
All of these tools do one of two things. They are either (like Canvas) basically whiteboard tools that establish linear relationships based on Markdown files: in Canvas, I can visualize a connection from one note to another. This works great especially for the dynamic embedding of everything Obsidian can do. But it’s not a relationship of things to each other in which some notes hang hierarchically under others. If I have a branch of thought stemming from a note, with 3 other notes attached to it as sources, it’s very cumbersome to move that entire branch, including its sub-points, to another place. (In MarginNote, moving a parent node automatically moves all its included child nodes.)
One might say: then just work with Markmap. But unfortunately, it doesn’t provide a satisfying graphic workspace; Markmap basically visualizes a textual Markdown structure. Also, Markmap is designed to organize hierarchy using headings: a (longer) text note that simply attaches to a Heading 1 isn’t really a thing there. It’s a great tool for organizing concise mind maps, but for a sprawling hierarchical knowledge organization, it’s not suitable. It’s mind mapping, not knowledge organization.
MarginNote can do all of that for me—including an outline view for arranging things. I’m aware that MarginNote can be more or less synchronized with Obsidian (though not in real time). But that’s somewhat buggy, closed source—and I don’t trust the synchronization (and the proprietary storage format is anything but human-readable). And I use Zotero, not its internal pdf reader.
So if there were a hierarchical, mind map–like knowledge organization tool, somewhere between Obsidian Canvas, Markmap, and MarginNote, letting you organize your knowledge graphically via drag and drop… that would be fantastic. Maybe someone wants to brainstorm a bit about how to make that happen?
