Why did you choose obsidian instead of emacs?

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Why did you choose obsidian instead of emacs?

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Three reasons:

  • looks nicer
  • extendable with Typescript which I know
  • uses Markdown (so it ca be used with any other markdown editor)

I tried ord-mode. That’s really powerful but when I’m out of my desktop I can’t efficiently take notes.

I didn’t choose Obsidian. I chose Markdown.

Previously I had a long relationship with TiddlyWiki. And while it’s very powerful I had a hard time with it when I tried to use other tools with my vault. One of the reason - it uses custom syntax.

One of the reason why I’m not deep diving into the Templater and Dataview plugins is the same. I had all that functionality in TiddlyWiki and more.

But I prefer more permanent and simplistic approach when it comes to my knowledge vault, now.

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Easy to answer : it was so difficult to start to learn !

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Same thing for tiddlywiki ! :wink:

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@szdavid Oh, I so much love TiddlyWiki what I would teach you how to use it if we hadn’t Obsidian :slight_smile:

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about third one: there are some discussion about capability and future-proof of md-files.

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I used to use Trunk Notes until it disappeared. I’ve tried a lot of different software packages and finally ended up looking at Obsidian based on a lot of comments I saw about Obsidian on reddit. It’s not easy to find a good note organization tool that is fully accessible to the blind. I’ve really fond of the Vim key bindings, I haven’t used emacs in eons.

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I love Org mode and used it quite a lot for a few years.
I even wrote my thesis with it:

I stopped using Org and Emacs for a few reasons:

  • tasks and notes management on mobile was always a bit of a pain (this is by far the largest reason)
  • performance on Windows was never really that great (I have to use it at work)
  • it’s a bit too time consuming, while I could tweak everything to my liking and I mean really everything. It was really worth the effort even though it was really nice to work in.

I already gave up on it before I’ve discovered Obsidian but it surely didn’t help.
The downside is now that I have to use multiple different tools instead of just a single one with a single interface.
And no I don’t think that it’s a case of a single tool for a single job.
I still think that something like Emacs with better mobile support and a more modern way to configure things would be the better tool.
In addition I think that the Org mode format would be far better to write than Markdown but that doesn’t help you if there aren’t any tools out there which support it.

Emacs was replace with:

  • VS Code + emagit
  • Todoist
  • Obsidian + VS Code
  • Google Docs
  • iOS reminders + Tasks lists in Obsidian
  • Probably something else which I forgot to mention
  • Toggl for time tracking
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Another former org-mode user here. Wound up switching away because there’s just no good org-mode mobile support (particularly on iOS) that I’ve been able to find. Everything that’s out there is very task-oriented, rather than note-oriented.

I’ve migrated everything to markdown now (which took a long time — I have almost 20 years of notes!), so I’m disinclined to go back. Though I do really miss the ability to track time in my notes and produce a report/invoice all in one app…

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Ah yes I totally forgot the time tracking part.
That got replaced with Toggl.
What I miss the most about Org mode was mixing notes and tasks.
That made working on projects so much easier.

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I experimented with org mode, but am not an expert. I found that there was always time and effort involved in deciding where to place information in the org tree (okay, there is org-capture, but this still assumes you will find information a home at a later date). With Obsidian you just need to get your thoughts down and hopefully Obsidian will “find” the structure.

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how about org-roam?

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I tried to set this up, but found the process difficult as an Emacs Newbie.

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org-roam is great but has zero mobile support.

I love org-mode too but using it on mobile sucks. Well orgzly on Android is better than nothing, but it’s really not on par (can’t use org-habits, edna, org-roam and probably a lot of stuff like tables with formulas).

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I’m working on a web app now that supports Markdown and Org Mode with Dropbox:

https://ryanpcmcquen.org/DrWrite/

It’s completely client side code (running on GitHub pages). I just started on it, so no guarantees on robustness, but it does work reasonably well on mobile and desktop. It’s super minimal. I am planning to write a plugin for Obsidian that will add Org Mode support as well (using the same CodeMirror library that DrWrite is using):

Here’s the source code for that web app, BTW:

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Thank you!
However I try not to use any cloud services for storing data.
Beside that the other problems with Emacs still remain and Org mode without Emacs doesn’t make too much sense.

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Obsidian took me minutes to learn. Emacs, definitely not so much. I only have so much brainspace for the tools I use to do my work vs the work itself. I will say that I did experiment with org mode for a while (using a plugin for Sublime Text, if memory serves) and I liked it a lot.

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Holler:

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Do you know of a good way do write Org mode files on iOS?

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https://ryanpcmcquen.org/DrWrite/

Note that the Obsidian plugin does work on mobile.