Comment by braden-lk
1 day ago
Big obsidian fan, but I will say: notes being “just markdown” is not entirely true depending on how you use obsidian. If you are a plug-in heavy user, and those plugins introduce new syntax and lots of JavaScript functionality, you are accumulating a bespoke custom syntax that only works on your copy of obsidian with your set of plugins. Obsidian and those plugins are still free and are a huge benefit, but just something to keep in mind regarding data hygiene and longevity.
True, but the format is still text. In a "catastrophe", you can always just a) ignore these, or b) write custom code to process them (e.g. port the plugin to VSCode or whatever).
Still far better than a proprietary format.
A proprietary format with an export function allows you the same inconvenience of having to write code for processing.
Not true for a variety of reasons:
1. You're relying on the external service to continue providing the export functionality, or else doing regular backups.
2. The format of the exports might be proprietary, so it might be orders of magnitude more difficult to parse.
3. The export might not contain all the data.
4. Even if the export isn't to a proprietary format, it might be to a format that's much harder to parse than Markdown. Markdown is not only a standard, it's fairly readable even without any parsing, as opposed to, say, exporting in HTML. Losing some functionality (often minor, depending on what you use Obsidian for) is better than losing more or all functionality.
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No. You might not be able to load the program to get to the export button. They might paywall it away. Etc.
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If you're willing to reimplement them in your own obsidian-like editor anyway, I don't quite see the difference
I wouldn't so I keep to markdown and minimize plugins where aplicable, if I need to run for the hills, I don't expect to lose much
Very much this. I cannot even fully agree with "plug-in heavy" remark: I mean, how heavy must it be, to be considered "plug-in heavy"? I consciously tried to limit plugin usage. But it really gets pretty wild soon. I was relatively lean for maybe the first 6 months, but when some patterns of how I use it become clear enough, it becomes pretty evident how inefficient many super-common situations are and how I can fix them just by installing a plugin.
Fast-forward a year, and all your vault structure implicitly relies on the quirks of Obsidian search behavior, the markdown you write is extremely obsidian-flavored markdown, and you don't even remember how to write LaTeX without LaTeX-Suite shortcuts.
I've been using Obsidian for years now and besides some experiments use zero plugins. What inefficient patterns are you running into?
I've thought about this and I think Templater and Dataview are the two plugins I'd miss if Obsidian was sold to a VC tomorrow and enshittified.
And I'm pretty sure both will be forked and modified to run independently of Obsidian within a week of the theoretical enshittification.