kepano

Should science fiction be burdened with citations? Convincing someone doesn't have to be the goal of all prose and poetry. Some writing can exist just to evoke a feeling or offer ideas to ponder.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

The data is stored as plain text files on your device so there are several free options you can use depending on your combination of operating systems and devices. iCloud, Git, Syncthing, and many community plugins.

The challenge with Canvas is that there is no standard format for this type of data. As @milch mentioned Obsidian's .canvas format is simple JSON, that is stored locally. Like .md files, they are individual .canvas files in folders on your device. It remains to be seen whether .canvas can stand the test of time, but at least the data is in a format that will make it easy to convert to and from, and is relatively human-readable given the constraints of having to store positional data. There are efforts to grow the adoption .canvas, but like Markdown it will take time for that ecosystem to develop.

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.

I appreciate the nod to "File over app"[1] in the announcement. It's so cool that a Markdown file with code blocks can be the source for complex data visualizations and dashboards. Interoperability of this kind makes me giddy. I played around with editing an Observable site from Obsidian and it works great[2].

[1]: https://stephango.com/file-over-app

[2]: https://twitter.com/kepano/status/1758202572446581025

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.

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.

You raise good points, and it echoes advice I have given many times — follow the funding path that makes sense for you and your business.

That being said, I do think times are changing. I don't think Obsidian could have been bootstrapped as easily 5 to 10 years ago. The leverage we get from cross-platform frameworks, scalable server architecture, etc, make it possible to stay small. LLMs will even further enhance that leverage for entrepreneurs.

I have explored just about every way to build and fund a company, including the VC route. The 100% user-supported path is by far the most fun (to me).

For portability and durability of your data I find that "File over app"[1] is more important than open source. These are all separate vectors:

- VC vs user-supported

- Files vs databases

- Open formats vs proprietary formats

- Open source vs closed source

- Extensible vs non-extensible

- Private vs privacy-invasive

An open source app can still be VC-backed, store its data in a proprietary format, have terrible APIs, and include telemetry.

1: https://stephango.com/file-over-app

I cannot let this opportunity go by without quoting On Exactitude in Science by Borges in its entirety

". . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science

There is now :)

This is a priority for the Obsidian team over the next few months. This should get a lot better soon.

You can find an explanation of the Android permissions on the Obsidian Help site: https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian/Android+app#Storage+permis...

Obsidian can't use scoped storage because:

> 1. Scoped storage doesn't provide a way to watch for external changes, which is critical when using Obsidian with a third-party syncing tool.

> 2. Scoped storage performs many extra permission checks for every single file access, causing significant performance degradation when opening and using Obsidian.

Are you using Minimal theme? It was an issue with Minimal that was fixed, if you update your theme.

My approach is a form of progressive summarization. I pull out salient bits from my notes roughly weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.

I link to the source in Obsidian so I can always get back to my desired level of granularity.

This really depends on the software in question. I think it's appropriate for apps that are expected to be frequently updated and/or have variable costs to the maker.

I made this one you can try: https://stephango.com/obsidian-web-clipper

You can find screenshots by going to the Wayback Machine, e.g.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210212001340/https://obsidian....

I made a theme for Obsidian linked below. As a result I got to know the founders, and helped design the 1.0 version of the app. This eventually led me to join the company as CEO. I had previously founded and run two startups, so that helped too.

https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-minimal

Obsidian Importer allows you to easily convert your Evernote notebooks to Markdown files that you can use with any Markdown-compatible app:

https://help.obsidian.md/import/evernote

The Obsidian Importer is free and converts your data to Markdown that you can use with any Markdown-compatible app:

https://help.obsidian.md/import/evernote

"Hurt" is not quite the right word. "Hurt" seems related to "suffering" which the essay is attempting to separate from "pain".

New information is going to reconfigure your thinking to some degree. Like scarring your muscles through exercise you can get used to the feeling of your thoughts being reconfigured.

If you watch young children learn anything, you will see that process of reconfiguration happen before your eyes. The pain involved in that experience may not be particularly hurtful (though sometimes it is).

A small tweak would be to use a background color on the render-container similar to Andy Matuschak's site — or a border/shadow on the side of each pane

https://notes.andymatuschak.org

Edit: Deploying a change to Publish sites that should make the scroll area clearer :)

Having used Obsidian in long nighttime flights to Europe, I have made very similar modifications in the past, but this seems more polished. I just wish I had an OLED MacBook!

This is what I do for my personal blog and it works great.

It's the same story over and over (Deliverr, Flexport, Amazon, Shopify, etc)

1. the entire ecomm supply chain got way ahead of their skis during the pandemic thinking boom times would never end

2. no matter how good your software is, supply chain is cutthroat — a motivated low-tech salesperson can always undercut you

3. margins are razor thin, so if you're subsidizing prices with VC money to buy growth you can easily rug yourself

4. when the storm comes to supply chain, the ones who stay alive are those with the biggest balance sheet and diversified business (e.g. Amazon)

Obsidian has a feature called "Shared vaults" which teams use to collaborate. You can also use a shared Git repo, or other cloud/network storage (e.g. Dropbox)

https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Share+remote+vaults

MonoLisa