Roam v. Obsidian

Posted by Luhmann
May 25, 2021 at 11:26 AM

I can’t argue with that. I signed up early on and they allow early adopters to use their existing databases for free, although I can’t create new databases. I’m not sure I would be using it if I had to pay. Still, it is important to mark the difference which is that Roam is a database, with each “block” (paragraph) having its own unique identifier. That means it can do some things that a plain text system cannot (although Obsidian has been impressive in mimicking many of those features).

NickG wrote:
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.