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Comment by Vrondi | Hacker News Reader

I'm still waiting on one of these upstarts to implement the most essential features of the "first gen" apps, like inking/handwriting.

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Not everyone considers that essential.

I had onenote once, realized my handwriting was shit, and never tried to hand write notes again.

Handwriting I find completely useless, but drawing on a display can be quite OK even for me

theres a plugin for that - https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin

Unfortunately, I find the delay unacceptably high with this extension compared to first class support from apps like Goodnotes, Onenote and Apple Notes.

Still love Obsidian - just wish drawing on it was a viable option.

Yep, Obsidian's latex support makes it almost ideal for writing math notes.. but because you can't quickly drop in quick sketches from a stylus (something like the Bear notes app.. which misses too many other features) it kills Obsidian for this usecase :(

That's a great plugin! It even lets you create links to docs from within the drawing. And you can embed one part of a drawing in one note and another part in a different note. I also highly recommend checking out the creator's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/VisualPKM

This is one reason I can't stop using Goodnotes with an Apple Pencil: I like to handwrite. It's particularly helpful when I'm taking notes in multiple languages; switching keyboards every time I want to write a word in another language is a pain.

Try the "Excalidraw" Plugin for Obsidian.

I think the Excalidraw plugin solves a different problem. It’s great for creating diagrams, especially with a keyboard+mouse. What I’m looking for, though, is something like Apple Notes on iPad, where you can seamlessly write in your notes with your Apple Pencil. The Excalidraw plugin adds a lot of friction and complexity if all you want to do is write.

There's an excalidraw plugin that helps with this to a degree.

This plugin misses mark big time. I tried it and tried it again. Trying to love it... just couldn't compare with OneNote.

Likewise. I love Obsidian, I love my Apple Pencil - and the Excalidraw plugin just does not get me there, unfortunately.

Goodnotes, Apple notes, and OneNote still leagues better for Apple Pencil support.

I absolutely love this plugin. But I'm probably using quite differently from you since I barely use the pencil/draw tool at all.

There is one in Apple ecosystem. That is called Muse

Thanks!

Excalidraw works pretty well in obsidian. I didn't like it the first time but I'm increasingly getting used to it

What's your secret? I find it... icky (maybe too long of a delay?) compared to Goodnotes.

This is what keeps me coming back to apps like OneNote or Apples Notes. Obsidian and their ilk, for me, just encourage endless bike shedding and metrics that get in the way of the job to be done — taking and finding notes.

FWIW I only use Obsidian for note-taking, not metrics or graph views or bike-shedding. Markdown with two-way links and the occasional image, code snippet, or Mermaid diagram. Doesn't need to be more complicated than that!

Adding my voice to the cacophony. I don't use Obsidian but I do use Foam in VS Code. Daily notes and wikilinks is all I need. I've toyed with adding more metadata but it's just not worth the maintenance cost

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