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Comment by kepano | Hacker News Reader

This is a good reminder of why storing Obsidian notes as individual Markdown files is much more useful than stuffing those notes in a database and having Markdown as an export format. The direct manipulation of files allows multiple apps to coexist and do useful things on top of the same files.

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That was the reason why I gave up Joplin very quickly. The last Joplin thread, here on Hacker News, has also shown once again that some still do not understand why "But Joplin can export Markdown from the database!" is not the same as simple, flat Markdown files.

Yeah, that's also why I dropped it. Got too complicated when I wanted to start linking my notes into my work timesheets.

May I ask what you switched to? Running into the same issue.

Not OP but Obsidian (as mentioned) and Logseq are both good options.

Not OP, but I switched to notable which also uses plain markdown.

I use Obsidian and Markdownload (a Browserplugin).

On desktop, my favorite text editor plus my favorite file browser. On Android, Markor.

Obsidian is what I stuck with after seriously trying 10+ notetaking apps.

It has native clients for Linux, Android, and all files are plain MD.

I can freely sync everything with third party apps. Total freedom.

Last time I used Joplin (many years ago) it stored notes as flat Markdown notes with YAML headers. I stop it using because it gave me lots of headaches and at the end of the day your favorite file browser + your favorite text editor is a far superior solution than a jack of all trades that excels at none. My notes stack is neovim + fzf + git.

It's very possible to have multiple apps coexisting using a database. Although I'll certainly concede that it's probably a lot easier with just a bunch of Markdown files.

Sure, it's possible, but whichever app owns the database ultimately controls the data, the schema, etc. The file system provides a neutral database that all apps can cooperate within.

I guess what really matter is ultimate ownership of the data, if it's a sqlite-like db or a bunch of markdown files in my machine I can work with them, but if it's on a cloud (someone else's computer), then I'm doomed.

Why does any app have to "own" the database? I don't see this as being a restriction any more than it is with Markdown. Arguably even less so with a database since you have access to transactions.

If you made a new app what is "the" database you would write to? There isn't an existing standard for this aside from the file system.

That's a fair point in the sense that you're always guaranteed to have some file system already :)

Yes it was one of the best product decisions y'all made. Been so useful to have direct access to the files and options on how my data is processed and backed up.

The OP and your comment just made me cancel my Milanote subscription, export all my notes to markdown and start using Obsidian (to later experiment with this Reor).

As a side-effect, I just noticed that I prefer a long markdown file with proper headings (and an outline on the side) than Milanote's board view, which initially felt like a more free form better suited for unorganized thoughts and ideas for writing that I had (I use it for my fiction writing).

I still can have documents as a list of loose thoughts, but once I am ready to organize my ideas, I just use well written and organized headers, edit the content and now I have a really useful view of my idea.

Is a filesystem not a database with a varchar unique primary key, a blob data attribute and a few more metadata fields?

Files seem less useful for small bits of information. I feel the urge to fill a file with a minimum threshold. A database makes more sense for that.

>I feel the urge to fill a file with a minimum threshold.

Honestly that's more you subjectively than database v files.

Everything about database v. files is subjective like that. Filesystem is a database, just with more established tradition around schema and use patterns, and system level APIs.

On the other hand, you get to implement concurrent access yourself. Multiple apps working on the same files simultaneously only works when none of them makes a mistake with caching or locking.

I got an iOS journaling app on beta. It’s offline, no sign-in, no lock-in, social, etc. Saves to plain text. Syncs to your desktop if needed.

https://xenodium.com/an-ios-journaling-app-powered-by-org-pl...

Absolutely! Really respect the work you folks are doing.

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