Good News!

Obsidian Release v1.1.0 (Insider build)

Released December 5, 2022

New shiny things:

Introducing the Canvas core plugin. You can now lay your notes out in an infinite, spatial canvas.

Nice. Meanwhile, LogSeq's "Whiteboard" feature is now in closed alpha. It's very cool. Interesting to see this trend taking shape.

Nice. Tempting to subscribe to get this feature now.

Do you know if you can have multiple whiteboards?

Obsidian Canvas supports as many canvases as you wish.

Amontillado wrote:

Nice. Tempting to subscribe to get this feature now.

Do you know if you can have multiple whiteboards?

As many canvasses as I want? How disappointing - I don't deserve things that nice!

I'm also a complete dolt. I thought Obsidian's entry level was a $25 subscription. I was wrong. $25 isn't that much and it's one-time.

I'm now an Obsidian Catalyst. It's a big deal, but I promise not to forget my roots.

The canvas feature is very nice, although with danger. I worry such superpowers could be misused. I suppose that's a chance we'll have to take.

Paul Korm wrote:

Obsidian Canvas supports as many canvases as you wish.

Funnily enough, I was just wondering about precisely such a feature as I thought how wonderful it would be to combine Obsidian notes with something like my Apple Numbers whiteboard layout.

And behold, some benign deity heard my heartfelt prayer, and answered with an unexpected miracle!

That looks amazing.
This is definitely tempting.

Interesting - Obsidian is a companion product from the same two or three people who created Dynalist. If you pay for the insider version of Obsidian, Paypal reports it as a payment to Dynalist.

I wouldn't call Obsidian a "companion" to Dynalist, though it true that Shida and Erica built both. (Obsidian has lately taken on more devs to that team.)

Anyway, I suspect what happens here is that customers were pushing Dynalist's boundaries, at the same time the software's tech stack was getting long in the tooth. So, instead of enhancing Dynalist they started over. Plus, Dynalist is outline-oriented while Obsidian most definitely is not.

Amontillado wrote:

Interesting - Obsidian is a companion product from the same two or three
people who created Dynalist. If you pay for the insider version of
Obsidian, Paypal reports it as a payment to Dynalist.

Point well made. In truth, I've never run Dynalist and am not familiar with it at all. I saw "Dynalist" on the Paypal receipt and jumped to conclusions.

Paul Korm wrote:

I wouldn't call Obsidian a "companion" to Dynalist

The canvas is an outstanding feature and works good for me! I'm trying some stress tests with 100 and 1000 items on the canvas and it's quite promising! 100 works great, 1000 not so good. Searching is good. 1000 is perhaps an unrealistic expectation given the framework. It would need a carefully thought out and specific interface. Maybe like the Brain but I'm not really fond of that except that it's really fast.

Dynalist is still supported, but isn't being developed much at all, for the last 2 years or so, since they started Obsidian. It still works just fine, and has numerous excellent features and is generally pretty fast. Workflowy is super fast again and actively developed and has added many cool things in the last few years. The best other options in this space are checkvist and legendapp (was moo.do), both of which are very nice. Anyone interested in web outliners should try all four of these.

I started using Obsidian about a month before they increased the Obsidian Sync price, and hadn't been long enough a user to know whether I wanted to subscribe (I now just do it through iCloud and it works fine.)

But this $25 one-time purchase price...I think I should jump on it now, because I'm all in on Obsidian now and $25 is way more than worth it.


Amontillado wrote:

As many canvasses as I want? How disappointing - I don't deserve things
that nice!

I'm also a complete dolt. I thought Obsidian's entry level was a $25
subscription. I was wrong. $25 isn't that much and it's one-time.

I'm now an Obsidian Catalyst. It's a big deal, but I promise not to
forget my roots.

The canvas feature is very nice, although with danger. I worry such
superpowers could be misused. I suppose that's a chance we'll have to
take.

Paul Korm wrote:
Obsidian Canvas supports as many canvases as you wish.

The Longform team could take a few hints from Canvas. Longform is great, but as far as I see there's no way to add an existing note to a Longform project. You can transclude an existing note into a Longform note, but it would be nicer to be able to feed off the rest of the vault like Canvas does.

The $25 is a contribution toward development, but is not required. All the contribution gets you is early access -- usually a few weeks before updates are released to everyone.

steveylang wrote:

But this $25 one-time purchase price...I think I should jump on it now,
because I'm all in on Obsidian now and $25 is way more than worth it.

A great video on the Canvas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPescoJzcFA&t=102s

I was a bit skeptic thinking that the Canvas stores everything in the Json file.
Apparently, the latest version supports creating new notes from within the Canvas by hitting Shift+Enter: Tinderbox/Scapple style.
That is wonderful.

I've steadily converted all my task management duties over to Obsidian.

It takes a while to master core plugins like Tasks, or external plugins like Dataview, but boy is it worth it.

Finding a "perfect" task management approach is remarkably difficult. But the range of options you have with Obsidian is so ridiculously large, you can experiment with pretty much any model that occurs to you.

The various smart searches/filters make it extraordinarily easy to focus on specific items of information using tags, paths, dates or pretty much anything else.

And of course you can keep all your precious references, notes and amusing anecdotes in there as well.

Deciding on the best form of organisation takes time. But I'd rather take time in a hyper-flexible program like Obsidian than be constrained to a specific model by excellent but dedicated apps like e.g. Things.

I'd very much like to learn about how you do this, Bill. Care to share a bit about specifics?
Steve

MadaboutDana wrote:

I've steadily converted all my task management duties over to Obsidian.

It takes a while to master core plugins like Tasks, or external plugins
like Dataview, but boy is it worth it.

Finding a "perfect" task management approach is remarkably difficult.
But the range of options you have with Obsidian is so ridiculously
large, you can experiment with pretty much any model that occurs to you.

The various smart searches/filters make it extraordinarily easy to focus
on specific items of information using tags, paths, dates or pretty much
anything else.

And of course you can keep all your precious references, notes and
amusing anecdotes in there as well.

Deciding on the best form of organisation takes time. But I'd rather
take time in a hyper-flexible program like Obsidian than be constrained
to a specific model by excellent but dedicated apps like e.g. Things.

It really is astonishing how well Obsidian has evolved into a general-purpose toolbox. I saw a post the other day from a mom who has built a very intricate system for keeping track of her life in Obsidian. Some of it was quite creative, like using the kanban plugin not for tasks but as a visual multi-column index of Obsidian pages. Obsidian has become a little like Emacs org-mode for non-technical people.

One of my concerns with the Obsidian system though is that it relies too much on plugins that don't always work together. For example, there's a calendar plugin and a "full calendar" plugin, but neither one of them appears to be able to show tasks from the Tasks plugin actually on the calendar. There's another calendar plugin that does this, but it doesn't integrate with the other two calendar plugins. Then there's the daily notes plugin that's built-in, and the periodic notes plugin that replaces daily notes but works a little differently. And there are at least two plugins that provide outlining, but in slightly different ways.

As good as the canvas thing is, it might make sense for the Obsidian developers to focus on building core functionality where there is clear overlap in the plugin ecosystem, like calendaring and outlining.

--Chris

MadaboutDana wrote:

I've steadily converted all my task management duties over to Obsidian.

It takes a while to master core plugins like Tasks, or external plugins
like Dataview, but boy is it worth it.

Finding a "perfect" task management approach is remarkably difficult.
But the range of options you have with Obsidian is so ridiculously
large, you can experiment with pretty much any model that occurs to you.

The various smart searches/filters make it extraordinarily easy to focus
on specific items of information using tags, paths, dates or pretty much
anything else.

And of course you can keep all your precious references, notes and
amusing anecdotes in there as well.

Deciding on the best form of organisation takes time. But I'd rather
take time in a hyper-flexible program like Obsidian than be constrained
to a specific model by excellent but dedicated apps like e.g. Things.

Thanks for the FYI. Yeah, I've been skating by using it free for personal use. But in the few months that I've used it, Obsidian has become one of my favorite pieces of software of all time, so happy to chip into the pot.

Instead of spending time looking at and trying out new PKM apps, I mainly just look forward now to the Obsidian Roundup on the weekends to see what new updates and plugins are coming out. ;-)

Canvas is off to an absolutely tremendous start IMO, with a great foundation to build on.

Paul Korm wrote:

The $25 is a contribution toward development, but is not required. All
the contribution gets you is early access -- usually a few weeks before
updates are released to everyone.

steveylang wrote:
>But this $25 one-time purchase price...I think I should jump on it now,
>because I'm all in on Obsidian now and $25 is way more than worth it.

I'd be happy to share what I've learned/done so far. It'll have to wait a bit so I can get the details right.

I too have started to use the kanban plugin as a kind of tag/subject tracker – it's a great idea, and works remarkably well.

I've been experimenting with different ways to enter tasks, taking ideas from all the major task management apps (Todoist, Things, 2Do, OmniFocus, etc.), as well as some neat ideas from independent apps such as Notebooks, NotePlan and Purelist, and have finally – for the time being, at least – found an approach that seems pretty robust.

However, I'll never be free of the CRIMPer's drive... ;-)

I'll be in touch!

steve-rogers wrote:

I'd very much like to learn about how you do this, Bill. Care to share a
bit about specifics?

It is astonishing, you're absolutely right. I'm amazed to find myself taking to it like a duck to water; I'm normally very suspicious of apps like this, because they can so easily turn into rambling chaos (hint: Emacs!). But Obsidian is, in fact, doing precisely what you suggest: only incorporating plugins once they're tried, tested and solid. That's the essence of the Core plugins. That the development of these plugins isn't always strictly coordinated doesn't surprise me in the slightest – I'd much rather they only incorporate plugins once they're absolutely sure they work. Currently there are many different approaches to Calendar apps, and they've clearly decided to see which ones are most promising, and which are most disruptive.

As for the Community plugins: I've been impressed by the developers' professionalism. Most of them list issues with their plugins, making it clear what their weaknesses are and which other plugins they will/won't work with. This means you can easily experiment with plugins to see which work, and what their impact on the rest of the ecosystem is. It's so easy to switch plugins on or off, it's clear that Obsidian is essentially designed as a platform for experimentation.

The best plugins have astonishingly complete documentation. Sometimes, like all open-source developers, the programmers take a significant swathe of knowledge for granted. But in most cases the processes are easy to understand and well explained.

So far, I'm profoundly impressed!

Cheers,
Bill

Chris Thompson wrote:

It really is astonishing how well Obsidian has evolved into a
general-purpose toolbox. I saw a post the other day from a mom who has
built a very intricate system for keeping track of her life in Obsidian.
Some of it was quite creative, like using the kanban plugin not for
tasks but as a visual multi-column index of Obsidian pages. Obsidian has
become a little like Emacs org-mode for non-technical people.

One of my concerns with the Obsidian system though is that it relies too
much on plugins that don't always work together. For example, there's a
calendar plugin and a "full calendar" plugin, but neither one of them
appears to be able to show tasks from the Tasks plugin actually on the
calendar. There's another calendar plugin that does this, but it doesn't
integrate with the other two calendar plugins. Then there's the daily
notes plugin that's built-in, and the periodic notes plugin that
replaces daily notes but works a little differently. And there are at
least two plugins that provide outlining, but in slightly different
ways.

As good as the canvas thing is, it might make sense for the Obsidian
developers to focus on building core functionality where there is clear
overlap in the plugin ecosystem, like calendaring and outlining.

Just two weeks after beta release, Canvas plugins are already starting to come out:

https://github.com/Quorafind/Obsidian-Canvas-MindMap

Obsidian Canvas MindMap: A plugin to make your canvas work like a mindmap.
- Press Enter to create brother card;
- Press Tab to create child card;
- Delete card to rearrange layout automatically;

Canvas is now available to all, not just insiders

Pro Tips for using the canvas are here: https://obsidian.md/canvas#protips

Obsidian also published the file format for .canvas files -- which contain the JSON data that the Canvas plugin uses to build the Canvas view. This will be of no interest to 99% of users, but it might encourage some developers to produce exports in .canvas format for display in Obsidian -- since Canvas displays images and web content that could be useful.

https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-api/blob/master/canvas.d.ts

Cyganet wrote:

Canvas is now available to all, not just insiders