Since more than a year, I have been slowly programming an Obsidian to Latex translator (had to write mine, cause the existing ones don’t unfold content from embedded notes, which I heavily use). Now it works seamlessly and is ready for deployment.
I managed to write a full paper, with equation referencing, cross-references, citations, figure size management, you name it.
POSITIVES:
It’s friggin’ FREE! Overleaf costs something close to 15dollars per month
Absolutely easy to write equations and do everything you do in Overleaf, but even easier and faster
Minimalism: I use zen-mode to hide everything, and it feels so natural and easy to concentrate. Even without the zen-mode it’s easier to concentrate.
Link other parts of my note-system to the paper. I have my notes in the same ecosystem and can link them to the text. For example, if I make a claim in my paper, I can write in the comments %% [[relevant_note]] %%, wherein the relevant_note can be a hypothesis, a note from literature, some simulation/experimental results.
Modularity. I can search for “writing” and “intro” and it takes me to the introduction note (I use many small notes), which makes life easy and I find it easier to concentrate when editing small parts.
Equations are easier and faster. If you use the "QuickLatex for Obsidian"plugin, that is
NEGATIVES
Navigation to the appropriate text is slower than in Overleaf, since I am a heavy user of embedded notes. This means that I have to search for the text in the note, then open the note, and THEN edit it. In overleaf, you just edit the text directly.
You cannot collaborate with others in the free version of Obsidian
You cannot write comments in the way you can in Google docs and mention other people (unless you pay)
Up to my knowledge, you cannot define custom functions like you do in LateX
All in all, I’m happy that the conversion tool works.
However, for collaborating with others, I had to write the final parts in Overleaf.
First of all, congrats!
It’s just a pity that you can’t write full LaTeX in Obsidian and see the result in Reading Mode or something like that. I rather wanted to write /latex/ in Obsidian [I’m a humanities grad, so i don’t… have a lot of use for the maths plugins, but I guess y’all are the folks the LaTeX thesis and diss templates are for, still, aren’t they? the stem people?] especially since there’s nothing else really screaming “hey, I do digital humanities” about my dissertation.
Thank you! Let me know if you use it and run into any issues!
Hmm, to use LateX within Obsidian. Why though? The Markdown format is much simpler and cleaner than LateX. I agree, the printed result of LateX looks really nice. There could be a plugin within Obsidian that shows the printed result in (quasi) Real Time.
If you prefer using the LateX writing syntax, then I guess Overleaf is for you. Overleaf is quite neat for writing. It is just more “code-like” than writing in Obsidian, and most importantly, you can’t use your already written notes and create links within Overleaf. Hence the need for a converter (at least for some people).
Congrats! I too have been using Obsidian as my full workflow “idea to manuscript” processing system. Modern problems need modern solutions and all that LOL
I’ve cobbled to together a BibTeX based bilbiographic network graph manager, a productivity manager, and, here trying to solve this exact issue, a document printer:
The approach that I’ve taken is to use pandoc as the document generator, and the plugin does all the translation/transpilation required, including handling of citation links, images with width attributes, callouts etc., with support for special codeblocks like mermaid, drawio, svg.
Also special support for features that same publications require, like separate bibliography etc.
Feel free to integrate into your system as needed … but be aware of the dev state:
And thanks for the link. I will check it out more thoroughly. I looked into the plugin that unfolds the embedded notes. Looks simple enough (albeit unfolding notes starting in a new line and when they are syntaxed as simple links). I am particularly interested in the draw.io integration!
I am not sure how I can integrate your code. I have no experience with typescript.
I use a different system for citations (I use the item number of a publication and the converter recognizes that it is a publication and converts it to \cite{pub_num}. Though I guess I can allow the user to select which style works best for them.
