Roam v. Obsidian

Posted by NickG
May 25, 2021 at 08:20 AM

Roam local uses the browser cache - it’s not a full, file system-based implementation. So you can’t, for example, select a local location for your database and then access it from other apps.

Data is in a proprietary format, can be exported as Markdown or JSON, but has its own peculiarities so can’t be guaranteed t work as expected in other apps. And, as I noted above, you can’t access it directly - has to be exported first.

Roam has many attractive attribute, but there’s no doubt in my mind that some of its core implementations are half-baked, local being one. It’s very much work in progress, not yet a fully formed service. They charge a premium price for the service, but don’t yet provided a premium service.

Christoph wrote:
Luhmann wrote:
>>Note: originally Roam made storing your files offline a premium
>feature,
>>but they lately lifted all restrictions so anyone can have as many
>>offline databases as they like.
> >Sounds interesting. Are offline databases in Roam as functional as those
>in the cloud? Are they in a proprietary format or can they be easily
>processed by tools other than Roam? (Obsidian uses only Markdown files
>which can be easily processed and used outside of Obsidian.) Removing
>the ability to have local notebooks was the final straw that made me
>move from Evernote to Obsidian.