Obsidian in public beta

Started by Paul Korm on 5/27/2020
Luhmann 10/5/2020 4:43 am
It is hard for me to evaluate based on price since I got in on Roam as a beta user and so still haven't had to pay. Obsidian is free for everything except publish, so if you are price conscious that is a big advantage. You don't mention Dynalist which is close to Workflowy and offers a generous free plan as well.

A lot depends on how you take notes. If you use a lot of short notes then Obsidian is better, if you prefer to have pages with complex notes that can be grouped by tags, then Roam is best, though you can do some of that in Workflowy or Dynalist as well. If you like to incorporate spreadsheets and kanban boards, etc. then Notion might work - but I never liked Notion.

Personally, Roam is my favorite right now.

Simon wrote:
For those starting fresh are there feature advantages to Obsidian over
Roam (apart from price and local storage)?

I mainly work with notes and have looked at Notion (an application
tinkerer's nightmare!), Roam (quite pricy), Workflowy and Obsidian.
Luhmann 10/20/2020 8:10 am
In the latest "insider build" Obsidian has found a way to have block level linking and embedding by adding a unique string of characters to the end of any linked paragraph. This brings it a step closer to having the functionality of Roam, although it still remains a very different kind of application.
Paul Korm 10/20/2020 12:36 pm
Insider releases usually come out about a week or less before the public release. Release notes are here:

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsidian-release-v0-9-5-insider-build/7260

The "block linking" (technically it is no such thing) is a step into Kludge Land. As the release notes say -- it reduces compatibility with other plain text or markdown editors because it depends on adding characters that other editors cannot parse. So, for example, if one were using Marked 2 to parse and print Obsidian files, then Marked will treat the characters literally.

Professionally, I think this change is a mistake and will be regretted -- time will tell -- but since it is optional I don't care. The Roam fans will be skeptical.

Luhmann wrote:
In the latest "insider build" Obsidian has found a way to have block
level linking and embedding by adding a unique string of characters to
the end of any linked paragraph. This brings it a step closer to having
the functionality of Roam, although it still remains a very different
kind of application.