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Obsidian vs Logseq conundrum
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Posted by Tumbleweed
Mar 14, 2024 at 03:54 PM
I decided at long last to go with Obsidian. But there is something missing. Namely, linking to some concept, and then clicking it to make a page gives an empty page. On Logseq, the relevant linked blocks (and even unlinked blocks) are already populated there.
There are Obsidian plugins which improve on the native backlinks at the end of documents, namely Influx (no more development sadly) and Strange New Worlds. And those are pretty cool, but they don’t actually populate a page.
Also, as someone posted on reddit, in Obsidian “There seems to be consensus that ‘folders are unnecessarily restrictive’, but… that same problem is just moved down to the note-level.” This has been my experience as well.
Looking at Logseq, the link handling is great, but indeed it is a bit “clunky” and hard to navigate to information. On the other hand, the idea of daily journal being the only entry and atomic notes is really appealing. You could certainly make a detailed Contents page as they recommend.
Any thoughts on this? I am still leaning toward Obsidian, but the lack of unlinked references not appearing is very annoying - these require a specific search to find. I am aware I could make a tag tree, but this would probably end up worse than a straight folder structure in any other program. Lastly, when you have a topic, say “Obsidan” where you keep Obsidian tips, and then you link that inside pages on some aspect of organizing Obsidan (say “Obsidian for research”), you have the annoying issue that now you have to organize where the “Obsidian” link-page is shown, and the other notes pages. I could go completely flat, but some notes like “Meetings” and “Contacts” surely need some organization, right?
Does anyone have ideas on how to accomplish a more seamless collection and navigation of PKM in Obsidian? Or a compelling reason to use Logseq instead, where notes are interlinked by default but finding them again may be challenging?
Posted by Lucas
Mar 14, 2024 at 05:00 PM
You don’t have to choose. You can run LogSeq and Obsidian on the same set of Markdown files. As long as you don’t have LogSeq set to do things like timestamps, this dual approach seems to work well. A few tweaks in each program may be needed—- for example, determining where Obsidian should store daily notes and in which format—- but I have used the dual approach for a long time. YMMV.
Posted by Tumbleweed
Mar 14, 2024 at 05:29 PM
Thanks, that’s great to hear!
I tried the Logseq Contents as they intend it, ie. [[]] for topics which are simply tags with the #. It works very well to automatically create a cross-referenced knowledge base. And then the pages themselves (likely daily journals) become completely irrelevant. And if you forget a tag, no worries as unlinked references are also included! There is absolutely no friction with this method.
So for knowledge management features, Logseq is truly amazing. Obsidian is of course superior for look and feel, speed and size of db, plugins, dataview, canvas, drawing. It’s actually a shame it doesn’t offer the option of going block based with automatic cross-referencing, which really makes organization completely unnecessary - with the folder/link/tag structure it has, I see all the power being used to suck users into constant tweaks of organizational method.
I will use Logseq as the main PKM and daily driver. And then try Obsidian to see if I can get it working to any great extent. Perhaps that would be to “clone” the Logseq contents somehow, or just for the occasional long-form input.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 14, 2024 at 07:03 PM
It’s well worth trying Tangent on the same data repository; that works very well, and it’s much less “weighty” than Obsidian, while having some very nice knowledge management features.
Tumbleweed wrote:
>Thanks, that’s great to hear!
>
>I tried the Logseq Contents as they intend it, ie. [[]] for topics which
>are simply tags with the #. It works very well to automatically create a
>cross-referenced knowledge base. And then the pages themselves (likely
>daily journals) become completely irrelevant. And if you forget a tag,
>no worries as unlinked references are also included! There is absolutely
>no friction with this method.
>
>So for knowledge management features, Logseq is truly amazing. Obsidian
>is of course superior for look and feel, speed and size of db, plugins,
>dataview, canvas, drawing. It’s actually a shame it doesn’t offer the
>option of going block based with automatic cross-referencing, which
>really makes organization completely unnecessary - with the
>folder/link/tag structure it has, I see all the power being used to suck
>users into constant tweaks of organizational method.
>
>I will use Logseq as the main PKM and daily driver. And then try
>Obsidian to see if I can get it working to any great extent. Perhaps
>that would be to “clone” the Logseq contents somehow, or just for the
>occasional long-form input.
Posted by tberni
Mar 14, 2024 at 08:41 PM
Tumbleweed wrote:
>Or a compelling reason to use Logseq
>instead, where notes are interlinked by default but finding them again
>may be challenging?
I recommend that you make use of tags and operator queries (which can be saved and generate an instant results page in table or list format), I think this will make it easier for you to control the search for information and the general organisation of the whole system.
You can also take a look at “namespaces”, which allow you to hierarchise datasets. But you should use them carefully so as not to distort the spirit of Logseq as an associative system (you can find out more on the Logseq forums).