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Comment by Vingdoloras | Hacker News Reader

How does Obsidian's text editing experience compare to VSCode? I'm using VSC for everything at the moment, which includes a workspace roughly structured into GTD categories via subfolders, filled with markdown documents. The only thing that keeps me curious about Obsidian is the note linking/network visualization and features related to that. But I'm so used to having dev tool levels of text editing available in VSC that I can't bring myself to try switching Obsidian.

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That’s actually one of the main reasons I like Obsidian - that I can easily use vscode with it. Obsidian’s backend is just markdown files on the file system which you’re free to edit with another editor at the same time as you have Obsidian open (it’ll notice file system changes and update any open documents near instantly). I even have a plugin setup that when I hit a keyboard shortcut it executes the necessary vscode command line tool to open whatever I’m viewing in obsidian in vscode.

Same here, but other side of the chasm.

I use logseq for note keeping but I just want the text editing experience of vs code.

I'm not sure why they all roll their own editor. Can't it be a plugin?

Fyi, if you are ever looking for a fun project you might be able to implement this. The vscode editor source is available as a library https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/

Seeing vscode users want their knowledge base in their editor makes me think of the parallel to emacs users.

I think you might be confusing the two different meanings of editor here.

1. Editor as in a complete program that is VScode and everything it entails.

2. Editor as in the actual text editing experience with syntax highlighting, code completion, etc.

You are likely thinking about the first type. Where the person you respond to is talking about the second one. The experience of editing markdown in VScode is a very pleasant one so I can see why people would want that editing experience in other markdown based note apps.

I tried Dendron, and I preferred to have a fully separate editor.

This way I context switch completely away from code.

Also it annoying to swap workspaces and keep the up.

Thanks for this, I'll give it a go.

I can see how having the environment be at least cosmetically different might help though. I feel like there must be a good enough solution to that, I'll have a poke around

> I'm not sure why they all roll their own editor. Can't it be a plugin?

There are multiple reason, like editors having too much of their own baggage, or not being meant to be used as a foundation for a mature app. But I guess mainly it's a matter of licensing, and building your own editing-experience.

VS Code is for plaintext, while obsidian has deep rich-text-handling. It's probably not that easy to combine both flawless and still supporting all the plaintext-editing.

In Logseq, you can open the current note in the default system editor - I do this for long form note taking (in my case in emacs) but everything is back in the Logseq graph for connection and search and all its syncing goodies.

You should have a look at Foam: https://github.com/foambubble/foam

There is a Vim plugin for Obsidian, so for me the editing is pretty similar. And I guess it's a good indicator that a plugin for your taste may also exist.

For actual coffee editing, there is also https://github.com/sunxvming/obsidian-vscode-editor

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