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Obsidian: A Mind Mapping Markdown Editor

by [anonymous]
27th May 2020
1 min read
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This is a linkpost for https://obsidian.md/

12

Obsidian: A Mind Mapping Markdown Editor
7meedstrom
3aausch
1meedstrom
1George3d6
2Three-Monkey Mind
2[anonymous]
4Said Achmiz
2[anonymous]
1McX
1George3d6
4[anonymous]
2Said Achmiz
2[anonymous]
4Said Achmiz
2[anonymous]
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[-]meedstrom4y70

For all the Linux-friendliness, it can be easy to miss that it's closed source. https://github.com/obsidianmd only lists nonessential components.

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[-]aausch4y30

How does it compare to https://foambubble.github.io/foam?

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[-]meedstrom2y10

Nice, I note that Foam is open source and uses markdown, the same as https://logseq.com/!

I wonder if the markdown documents are compatible? I know Logseq's markdown documents are compatible with Obsidian, so some people use both. At least back in ~2021, several commenters (on another website I forgot) found Logseq nicer for quick idea-generation and Obsidian nicer for exploration.

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[-]George3d65y10

Do you think this is better than having e.g. a personal wiki ?

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[-]Three-Monkey Mind5y20

This appears to be a personal wiki.

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[-][anonymous]5y*20

I think that'd work pretty well too, for roughly the same function. I don't know of any simple self-hosted local wiki software off the top of my head though.

I mainly shared this because it seems like mind-mapping is a common-enough use case for people in this community and people seem to be on an "alternative note-taking format" kick right now.

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[-]Said Achmiz5y40

I don’t know of any simple self-hosted local wiki software off the top of my head though.

PmWiki can do this, though whether it’s ‘simple’ is a matter of perspective. (It’s certainly easy to use.)

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[-][anonymous]5y20

Oh, sick. The standalone instructions don't seem too complicated.

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[-]McX5y10

You have TiddlyRoam a self-hosted local wiki with mind-maping, plus lots of plugins and themes. example

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[-]George3d65y10

But is there some functionality that this would provide that a wiki doesn't ? (or some nice interface for that functionality that a wiki doesn't).

Or is just the simplicity of installation and/or the simplicity of the data format ?

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[-][anonymous]5y40

I think the most prominent functionality is the mind-mapping. Wikis, AFAICT, don't have that. If you're visually inclined, having the graph layout and being able to traverse / see the connections could be useful.

Also, yeah, this runs locally.

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[-]Said Achmiz5y20

I think the most prominent functionality is the mind-mapping. Wikis, AFAICT, don’t have that.

Oh, but they do.

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[-][anonymous]5y20

Oh cool, I'm really unfamiliar with wikis, so I didn't know about these.

It's awesome that this functionality exists.

I only briefly glanced at both links, but I think they just output a static graph, is that right?

I guess maybe someone might prefer also using the graph for interactive traversal.

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[-]Said Achmiz5y40

The output is in SVG format, but the cool thing about SVGs is that they (a) can have hyperlinks in them, and (b) can be displayed in the browser. So the generated SVG is displayed in your browser, and each of the nodes are links to the wikipage the node represents, so you can indeed use it to navigate the wiki.

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[-][anonymous]5y20

Oh, nice! I didn't realize that hyperlinks were there too. In that case, yup, I can see that it does basically the same thing.

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I just saw this app today. It's made by the same people behind Dynalist, which is similar to Workflowy. I know other people on here have been on a big Roam kick, and I think Obsidian allows importing for Roam tags (or something, I haven't used Roam before.)

I think Eli previously asked for some mind-mapping software. This seems relevant to people who want a new way to do their note organization in a mind-mapping way.

The screenshot looks pretty clean:

obsidian screenshot

I'm also trying this out, and I'll try to post my personal thoughts later. They have a public roadmap you can follow. I've been using Typora as my editor of choice for a while now because it supports inline LaTEX and a nice markdown styler, but it looks like adding support for these two things is on the way.