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> but I feel desperately uncomfortable tying my notes to a piece of proprietary software

Obsidian is proprietary, but Markdown isn’t. And there will always be Markdown personal wikis. I guarantee it.

> What about if I want to style a real PDF in Asciidoc?

Pandoc can export MD to PDF, HTML, .doc, anything. And you can style with CSS.

But once you add spreadsheets and sketches into the mix, there’s basically no way around proprietary software.

What about org-mode?

I had a look at it a few months ago, and my impression is that while it's very powerful, it's not for the average user.

Heck, I work as a developer, spend a third of my day in the terminal, and I still wouldn't use it.

Org-mode is fantastic. Org files on Dropbox has been my standard note keeping and task management tool for close to a decade. But... it definitely has a learning curve as you simultaneously adapt your workflow to org and customize org to match your own desired workflow.

For me, it is undoubtedly the best task and knowledge management tool I’ve ever used. But, I accepted a long time ago that the Emacs requirement is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people.

The learning curve and attitude of the old guard are what pushed me away from org mode. I loved the structure and the promise of being able to code/adapt workflows.. and being able to merge config and comments (literate programming, is it?) to document the few changes I managed to make. But learning Emacs around it, especially on a Windows system just isn't worth it :/

FWIW, there's a VS code extension. I haven't used it yet personally but I'd like to try it out eventually. I use vim-orgmode, otherwise, and it's been great. I should note that I've never used the original org-mode in emacs so I'm not sure if it's missing features or behaves differently, etc...

I used Org for about 8 months last year, while I was testing out Spacemacs and Doom Emacs.

My experience was that the Org-mode in Emacs was great. Especially how you could capture notes with backlinks from any Emacs context, and the Agenda view it generates. I went all-in on the ecosystem and wrote my mail in mu4e, for instance, which can integrate with Org-mode for writing HTML mail. Being able to add inline LaTeX equations and syntax-highlighted code snippets to such emails was gold. Having easily executable script snippets embedded in sysadmin notes was useful as well.

As for other implementations of it — including vim-orgmode and every mobile app I tried — too many features were lacking or broken for it to be useful to me. In the end, I ended up going back to MarkDown when I left Emacs. The transition was quite painful; Pandoc helped a lot, but many things in my notes just broke during conversion, so I ended up just trashing most of my notes and spending an evening manually fixing the important ones.

While Org is free and open source software, and it’s often repeated that “it’s just plain text”... I’d like to caution others that if you really use the features it has to offer, you’ll be locked into it just like with most proprietary formats. If you’re not completely sure you’ll use Emacs for the rest of your days, MarkDown is a safer option for a knowledge base you wish to keep over time.

I recently moved from Workflowy to org-mode after being recommended by someone here and it has been a fantastic experience. Henrik's Doom Emacs distribution has really made the transition easy with its amazing out-of-the-box usability.

There is one minor feature from Workflowy that I miss though, which is is the ability to "zoom" into a headline. You can narrow subtrees, but its level won't be adjusted. I tried to use some horizontal scroll hackery but couldn't get it to play well when you're switching buffers. I'm not sure how to save those narrowed buffers across sessions either.

But in any case I definitely will stay with org-mode for quite a long time, it truly is a powerful piece of software.

Foam is the open source alternative to Obsidian.

https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

I use zim-wiki for my notes. Open-source and stores notes in text organised by folders. I like markdown but actually prefer the simple wiki syntax it uses.

If they need to create a PDF I use pandoc and if I need to move a table to a spreadsheet I just copy the text and use the text to columns from delimiter feature. Not sure if this help you or not.

Zim’s main drawback in these days is that it doesn’t have its own mobile app, and since it’s not based on MarkDown, you can’t use any existing MarkDown mobile apps with it.

That's true, I think they started looking at creating one but it never got off the ground. From my personal perspective I don't, and can't (I've tried), take decent notes on mobile. On the move I just use a jotter it's quicker and move flexible.

I use Zettlr. It's also a Markdown manager. However you can define a folder as a project. Which helps to keep related notes orderly. Also you can export the whole project or one note as a pdf (using pandoc) or docx, odt, html... You can attach files to your note too. That being said I really enjoyed the idea of Trilium. Especially the fact that you can write your own scripts.You may be able to add scripts and make spreadsheet or SketchUp files first class documents.

I recently discovered dendron (https://www.dendron.so/) to scratch exactly the same itch you have.

It is a set of vscode plugins, which help me manage a workspace of markdown notes. Fair warning: it can be a little overwhelming to get started. At least for me it was because I wanted to do everything the "right" way. Changing stuff and refactoring is easy, so now i just write things down and worry about structure as it grows.

So far, i really like it and the dev is very responsive on discord to fix issues i had with windows. He even offers personal 30 minute sessions with him where he tries to learn more about the way you'd like to use it.

boostnote.io might be a good tool for you. Its basically a markdown renderer + code coloring with some extra search and other features. The first version is open source and I believe the second version also will be (but not positive). you can also store your folder of notes in a dropbox folder and get decent syncing out of the box. I've been using it for two years now and don't have any complaints. I will have to admit I haven't moved over to their second version yet so I might be missing something.

Obsidian is basically a "markdown renderer + code coloring with some extra search and other features" too.

Notes in Obsidian are just regular markdown files that sit in a directory on your hard-drive. The notes can be version controlled with Git, synced with Dropbox, etc.

Yes I thought one of the things he didn’t like about Obsidian was it is closed source / proprietary. I do think they overlap pretty heavily. I’m personally going to give Obsidian a try tomorrow and see how it compares.

They aren't regular markdown files, they wont' be supportd any time soon by other markdown editors (i.e. there is currently no compatible ios markdown editor for it). They are regular text files though.

I'm using VS code and the markdown preview plugin, with a private repo on github. Works pretty good and would support other filetypes besides MD.

I am doing the same thing, additionally I have a cron job running which auto-commits every 5 minutes.

For mobile viewing I use the app GitJournal.

https://gitjournal.io/

> GitJournal

Thanks for this

--a fellow git + markdown + cron note-taker

Hi. I'm the author, please feel free to contact me if you have any issues and/or feature requests.

There's a collection of additional VScode plugins called foam you might be interested in.

https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

I'm using markdown files in a git worktree stored on iCloud. This provides fast syncing between my Apple devices and the ability to push everything to a git remote for peace of mind. On iOS I use iA Writer and on the mac I use vim (& wiki.vim) and command line tools like ripgrep. The only annoyance at the moment is that iA Writer doesn't support wiki links.

My setup is very similar, but I use 1Writer on iOS, which does support wiki-links.

Honestly, I recommend paper. I know, I know, no full-text search, no backup, etc. But files are really easy to misplace, accidently delete, or lose due to a hardware/software failure. They're just so small.

I've found that if I write something down on paper, I'll physically remember where it is. It's really hard to get past the permanent aspect of pen and paper, but once you do, and you're willing to write down imperfect thoughts with zero organization, it's wonderful.

> It's really hard to get past the permanent aspect of pen and paper

As someone that grew up without any electronics except a TV, how the world has changed ... now if you could pretty please get of my lawn :)

I like to take notes on paper however my notes are always messy. I'm not able to take notes on anything without having to go back and reorganise them, make sense of them, and add to them. Paper and pen (pencil in my case) are limited in this respect. I'd love to be able to take notes perfectly the first time but find I'll take notes and rewrite them in text (currently zim-wiki) which for me reinforces them in my mind. I can then add/change them when needed. My notes evolve over time, which means paper notes would have to be rewritten continuously with the same information with additions/deletions/expansions/etc. This is much easier electronically, especially when you version your notes (I do this with fossil in zim-wiki).

I find also pen and paper to be limited for programming notes.

Explore "Zettlekasten". There's a great book on the topic - "How To Take Smart Notes"

I do something like that using org mode in termux. It has really improved my note taking and personal information management. I do my workout logs, nutrition logs, language study, work task management, agenda, all in the same environment, and the format is open. Versioning and syncing is done with git.

org-mode is without a doubt the most comprehensive and powerful note taking software that exists today. It's so good that even non-emacs users should give it a go.

If you don’t care about mobile, Anno [1] is nice. It’s very simple; just a web-based UI for Markdown files. There’s an okay-ish PDF feature as well.

[1] https://github.com/gwgundersen/anno

I had a similar trajectory and settled on Bookmark OS. The Notes are not as feature rich as Obsidian but it's almost simpler is better for me https://bookmarkos.com

there are open source options for creating markdown wikis, that support (almost?) all platforms, and filesystem-storage as well.

I'm a happy user of Boostnote.

Have you tried Roam Research? https://roamresearch.com/

The comment you're replying to says:

> but I feel desperately uncomfortable tying my notes to a piece of proprietary software.