April 8, 2021
Obsidian Icon
Using Obsidian
Product: Obsidian
Price: Pricing - Obsidian Free for personal use.
Obsidian is described by the developers as:
Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.
I need to restart.
Obsidian is an Electron program. I hate those. They feel like a compromise. In fact, by design, they are the lowest common denominator for any platform that you can run them on.
Obsidian runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It doesn’t support any of the features which make Windows, Linux, or macOS special or unique. I don’t know anything about Windows or Linux. I know the macOS and I am going to point out things that Obsidian doesn’t support on macOS:
- Services menu.
- Text replacements and settings in the Keyboard preference pane of macOS. No two spaces turn into a period. No capitalizing the first letter of a sentence.
- Doesn’t use the system dictionaries.
These are features unique to macOS and they are not supported at all. I hate the experience. Why am I writing about Obsidian?
Obsidian brings a new take on the task of note-taking to macOS. It is built around the concept of linking notes together, explicitly making obvious the links between your notes. The core feature of Obsidian is the ability to link your notes and make visible the interconnected linked knowledge base that you have built with your notes.
Along with that focus on creating links, Obsidian has the following features which are relevant to me.
Pure Text Files
Obsidian files are Markdown-formatted plain text files. They are local, I keep them in the Dropbox folder. Plain text files give me the ability to switch from the program if I want. I am not locked in. The files are accessible and editable in any text editor.
If I decide to adopt a different text editor, I can move on without any pain.
The Ability to Access Multiple Folders
Obsidian is not restricted to a single folder. The program conceptualizes folders as vaults and a vault can have multiple folders in it. You can switch to different vaults, depending on your needs. In addition, you can assign different themes and features to individual vaults.
Full Support of Markdown and Other Goodies
Along with its wiki-style linking, Obsidian supports CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown.
You can have mermaid - Markdownish syntax for generating flowcharts, sequence diagrams, class diagrams, Gantt charts, and git graphs., slides, and other javascript-based additions.
If you haven’t been exposed to Mermaid, it might be worth your while to take a deep dive into it.
Obsidian has a slides plugin that lets you create presentations in Obsidian. Another feature that might be something you want to take a deep dive into.
Customizable
Obsidian window
Obsidian is heaven for anyone interested in tweaking their editor. You have complete control over the look of the program through themes. There are a bunch of those available in the program and you can edit them for your own needs.
Keyboard commands are customizable. You can assign/change any of the keyboard commands which ship with the program. This enables macOS standard keyboard commands. You can define them yourself.
Extendable Through Plugins
Obsidian has a published API (in beta) for extending the program through third-party plugins. Early adopter developers are adding a slew of third-party plugins to the program and they have enhanced my use of the program.
The plugin architecture makes it possible for users to add features to the editor and it lets non-developers benefit from the creativity and ideas of the user base.
I am going to highlight three plugins that I find useful:
- Typewriter Scroll Obsidian Plugin: Has added typewriter scrolling and focus mode to the program. Two features I was missing from iA Writer now available in Obsidian.
- Paste URLs into selected text “notion style”: Highlight text, paste an URL, and that turns it into a Markdown-formatted link. Convenient and easy.
- advanced-tables-obsidian: Improved table navigation, formatting, and manipulation in Obsidian.md: Makes the process of creating, editing, and presenting tables easier and prettier.
User-designed plugins let users customize and extend the product in ways that a developer alone can never match. It is what makes Atom, Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Vim, and GNU Emacs special. I am excited to see this feature brought to a note-taking application.
Knowledge Management
This subject is new to me.
Obsidian is focused on the concept of creating and maintaining a second brain. The design of the product, the features it introduces, and the execution are geared towards the concept of a second brain. In other words, knowledge management.
There are a bunch of folks who are trying to think through this and come up with solutions designed to make you and your note-taking system efficient. Two examples:
- The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information - Forte Labs
- Linking Your Thinking Workshop
I have no idea of the relative efficacy of these and other alternatives. I am in the process of exploring the ideas and trying to make sense of them.
This is what I do know:
- I read the book How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens, Sönke.
- I explored the Zettelkasten Method site and have used the product The Archive (macOS) • Zettelkasten Method. I wrote about it, The Archive Adds Zettelkästen to the Note-Taking Arsenal - Bicycle For Your Mind.
I used to view my notes as a collection of information. A subset of my notes is geared towards that goal. I install a new Alfred workflow, I need to remember what the triggers were to launch the workflow, I have that information in a note. It is not going to be a part of a thinking exercise in the future. It is an information unit which is going to be useful at a future date.
Now I also create other kinds of notes. Notes that are geared towards the end goal of clarifying my thinking about a topic. I view them as inputs to aid my ability to think. I create these notes with the notion that it would be pleasurable to read them again. That means I care about what I write. I try to see how it fits into the constellation of thoughts I have had around that topic. I link to other notes which deal with the same topic or express similar notions. It is a deliberate activity rather than the dump of information which I used to consider the main purpose of my note-taking. It is a new way for me to think about my note-taking.
Caveats
Niklas Luhmann was an extremely productive social scientist and he used a note-taking system (Zettelkästen) to help him think things through. Adopting or adapting his system, for your thinking is not going to make you as productive as him.
Going into the weeds on a Zettelkästen system like How Long a Zettel is Too Long? is not going to make you as productive as Luhmann either. I am not sure that it is going to make you productive at all.
Concentrate on the thinking. Don’t get distracted by the tools or processes which aid your thinking. Focus on the act of thinking, pay attention to the process of moving from point A to point B, explore the assumptions behind that move. Understand and challenge those assumptions. Refine your thinking. Rehash your thinking. Reform your thinking. Reject your thinking. Think. Write it down. Read it. Write some more.
This field of Knowledge Management has given birth to a cottage industry of “experts.” How does one define “good” thinking as opposed to “bad” thinking? What are the measurable units? How do you know that one process being sold is better than the other?
Obsidian reminds me of Tinderbox: The Tool For Notes. There are folks, folks who are smarter than me, who swear by the effect Tinderbox has had on their thinking. Didn’t do anything for me. I tried. I got the University to buy me a copy. I bought the Tinderbox Way. Read it several times and couldn’t figure out how best to utilize the program to help me. After several attempts, I gave up. I couldn’t understand Tinderbox.
Obsidian Map
I don’t understand the utility of this either. What does it tell me? It is pretty. I need to explore this idea because I don’t get it.
My advice:
- Be skeptical. Don’t copy anyone’s system.
- Think and write. Write and think. Repeat ad nauseam.
- Surround yourself with people who are brighter than you.
- Argue with them.
- Be honest with yourself. Question your assumptions. Question your logical progression. Recognize that you are fallible and probably close to being an idiot. You don’t have all the answers. Try to improve.
Back to Using Obsidian
I use Obsidian like a text editor. I like the linking and back-linking but that is not the focus of my use of Obsidian. My interest is in using the product as the application for all of my writing. It is a replacement for Sublime Text, BBEdit, iA Writer, or nvUltra.
It fulfills that role for me. These are the things that make it suitable for the task of my primary text editor:
- Great Markdown support.
- Typewriter Scroll Obsidian Plugin gives me typewriter scrolling.
- Folding of headers.
- Ability to handle large files.
- Customizable keyboard commands.
- Easy switching between oft-used files through obsidian-shortcuts-for-starred-files
- Fantastic theme and its settings. Minimal theme for Obsidian and its Settings plugin to control colors and fonts in Minimal Theme
Obsidian can be “The One Text Editor” for all my needs. It is not for the following reasons:
- Obsidian is a memory hog. It isn’t the fault of Obsidian. All Electron apps are.
- The non-native nature of Obsidian irks me. I miss the Services menu. Typora, an Electron app, supports Services. It is doable, wish Obsidian would support that. Would make life easier for those of us reliant on Services.
Obsidian is a good solution, but both Sublime Text and BBEdit are better solutions for my needs.
Recommendation
If you are an academic, try Obsidian. As an aside, if you are an academic, please concentrate on your teaching. Don’t ignore the teaching to focus on your research. I know it is not your fault, the institutional incentives are geared towards research, but the focus of a University should be on teaching and not on producing research nobody but other academics are going to read. This is a phenomenon that plagues the social sciences and it is disgusting.
Obsidian is a great app for the dual activities of thinking/writing if you are willing to put up with the non-native nature of Electron apps. It brings innovation to the field of note-taking and the plug-in infrastructure is exciting.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie.
Resources and Other Takes on Obsidian:
An interesting perspective on Obsidian: BSAG » Obsidian
A list of Obsidian resources: Obsidian Resources - Dynalist
An opinionated take on notes and note-taking: Evergreen notes - Andy Matuschak Notes - Obsidian Publish
From the guy who wrote the book on “Smart Notes”: how to take smart notes - YouTube
A different perspective: Learn to play the fool - Austin Kleon
The Second Brain. Building a Second Brain: An Overview - Forte Labs
Detailed User Experience with Obsidian: 100 Days in Obsidian, Pt. 1 – Interdependent Thoughts
Another Perspective on Obsidian: Loving right now: Obsidian.md
Obsidian
macOS
text editor
March 22, 2021
Text Editor Preferences
I came across two articles which intrigued me.
Nova Review: Panic’s Code Editor Demonstrates Why Mac-like Design Matters - MacStories
I looked at Nova and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t for me. I am not a programmer, code is not my focus. I want a capable text editor and Nova was focused on code. But the descriptor “Mac-like,” got my attention.
What is “Mac-like?” I have been thinking about this for a few days now. I know it when it is not “Mac-like.” Try any Java app and you will know what I am mean. But those are the extremes. What distinguishes one product from another in terms of “Mac-likeness?”
The easy criterion is an evaluation of the support of macOS technologies. Does it support the Services menu? Does it support Versions? Is it integrated with the OS, or does it stand on its own? There are several of these that you can use to determine whether a program is “Mac-like” or not.
The focus of the article is “Mac-like design.” What is that? They look the same to me.
This is Sublime Text editing this article.
Sublime Text
BBEdit editing this article.
BBEdit
This is iA Writer with the same article.
iA Writer
Jason Snell, a respected member of the macOS community, in Mac apps yes, text preferences no – Six Colors, focused on the following paragraph:
One of my main frustrations with pretty much all of the popular code editors out there (and I’ve tried most of them, including Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Atom, IntelliJ, and Eclipse) is that none of them are Mac-assed Mac apps. They’re all clearly cross-platform apps with design senses that differ significantly from those of Mac-first developers.
You can see a microcosm of this fact just by looking at the preferences of these apps. For many of them, the ‘Preferences’ menu bar item is actually a submenu from which you can navigate to ‘Settings,’ as well as other more nebulous options. If that doesn’t already offend Mac users, a common theme in those settings screens is for them to be literal JSON text files that open in the editor. You then manually edit the text to adjust options.
His comment?
As Alex writes, design matters, Mac-like design doubly so. And if an app decides to display its preferences as an editable text file, I’m never going to use that app. Hard No.
I find myself compelled to write about the efficiency of using text files as preferences for complex programs like a text editor. This gives me an opportunity to write about the preferences of Sublime Text.
The Sublime Text Preference Setup
Sublime Text has preferences it codifies in JSON files. There are a plethora of these.
- The Default Settings file and a User Default settings file
- The Language-Specific settings file and the User Language-Specific settings file
- The Distraction Free settings file
- Each package you install can have a default settings file and an User settings file.
Let’s deal with the Default Settings File.
Default Settings File
The Default Settings File in the beta of version 4 of Sublime Text is 780 lines of commented JSON goodness.
For instance,
// Set to false to prevent line numbers being drawn in the gutter
"line_numbers": true,
// Set to false to hide the gutter altogether
"gutter": true,
You don’t edit the default settings file. If you want to change the default behavior, you add the setting to your personal settings file. For instance.
// Set to false to prevent line numbers being drawn in the gutter
"line_numbers": false,
// Set to false to hide the gutter altogether
"gutter": false,
You would add the previous section to your personal settings file to ensure no line numbers and no gutters.
Another example:
// Disables horizontal scrolling if enabled.
// May be set to true, false, or "auto", where it will be
// disabled for source code, and otherwise enabled.
"word_wrap": "auto",
// Set to a value other than 0 to force wrapping at that column
// rather than the window width. See "wrap_width_style" for
// extra options.
"wrap_width": 0,
This is the section which defines the properties of word_wrap. Or how or where you want the word-wrapping to work.
My settings:
"word_wrap": true,
"wrap_width": 90,
I want word wrapping to be on and to wrap with 90 characters on a line.
This is my settings file:
{
//Words added to the dictionary
"added_words":
[
"blog",
"workflow",
"Facebook",
"hoodie",
"github",
"macosxguru",
"gmail",
"thingie",
"Deselect",
"Mamoni",
"Solarized",
"Obama",
"Pastebot",
"Dropbox",
"overthinking",
"wasn’t",
"didn’t",
"couldn’t",
"hadn’t",
"wouldn’t",
"aren’t",
"isn’t",
"weren’t",
"amongst",
"doesn’t",
"shouldn’t",
"hasn’t",
"monospace",
"enduringly",
"Keychron",
"workspaces",
"outliner",
],
// Controls auto pairing of quotes, brackets etc
"auto_match_enabled": true,
//exclude from GoTo searches
"binary_file_patterns":
[
"Public/"
],
//Requirement of MarkdownEditing package
"blacklist_syntaxes":
[
"Markdown"
],
//look of folders in the sidebar
"bold_folder_labels": true,
//look of caret
"caret_extra_bottom": 5,
"caret_extra_top": 5,
"caret_extra_width": 2,
"caret_style": "wide",
"color_inactive_tabs": true,
//default theme and color_scheme
"color_scheme": "Packages/Color Scheme - Default/Breakers.sublime-color-scheme",
"theme": "Adaptive.sublime-theme",
// Draws text centered in the window rather than left aligned
"draw_centered": true,
"draw_white_space": "none",
"enable_live_count": true,
"fade_fold_buttons": false,
//files to exclude from side bar
"file_exclude_patterns":
[
"*.pdf",
"*.dropbox",
"*.nottingham",
"*.ark",
"*.reportark",
"*.png",
"*.gif",
"*.jpg",
"*.exe",
"*.dll",
"*.obj",
"*.swf",
"*.dbf",
"*.lib",
"*.cdx",
"*.cfr",
".UlyssesRoot",
"*.ico",
"*.lnk",
"*.bak",
"*.sig",
"*.xls",
"*.doc",
"*.docx",
"*.xlsx",
"*.xps",
".DS_Store",
"*.class",
"*.psd",
".Ulysses-Group.plist",
".zedstate",
".EagleFiler Metadata.plist",
"*.db"
],
//font and size
"font_face": "Input Mono Narrow",
"font_size": 18,
"highlight_line": false,
"highlight_modified_tabs": "enabled",
//default packages which are ignored by me
"ignored_packages":
[
"2pdf",
"ActionScript",
"ASP",
"Batch File",
"C#",
"C++",
"Clojure",
"CSS3",
"D",
"Erlang",
"Go",
"Graphviz",
"Groovy",
"Haskell",
"HTML5",
"Java",
"Lisp",
"Markdown",
"Matlab",
"Objective-C",
"OCaml",
"Pascal",
"R",
"Scala",
"SublimeCodeIntel",
"TCL",
"Text Pastry",
"Textile",
"Vintage",
],
//Words Ignored by the spell check
"ignored_words":
[
"Das",
"Devonthink",
"Sensei",
"Slugline",
"Typora",
"app",
"backend",
"brainer",
"fn",
"freeform",
"screenshots",
"solarized",
"spellcheck",
],
"keymaps":
{
"show_pretty_keys": true,
},
"line_numbers": true,
"line_padding_bottom": 6,
"line_padding_top": 6,
"match_brackets": true,
"match_brackets_angle": true,
"match_brackets_braces": true,
"match_brackets_content": true,
"match_brackets_square": true,
"mini_diff": false,
//Required by OpenWith plugin. I can open a file in another editor.
"open_with":
[
{
"command":
[
"open",
"-a",
"BBEdit",
"{filename}"
],
"name": "BBEdit",
},
{
"command":
[
"open",
"-a",
"iA Writer",
"{filename}"
],
"name": "iA Writer",
},
{
"command":
[
"open",
"-a",
"TaskPaper",
"{filename}"
],
"name": "TaskPaper",
}
],
//saves the current document when you move away from it
"save_on_focus_lost": true,
"scroll_past_end": true,
"show_git_status": false,
"show_line_endings": true,
"spell_check": true,
"translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
"trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,
"word_wrap": true,
"wrap_width": 90,
"auto_complete": true
}
The settings are self-evident.
Is this painful? They grow on you. If you spend time with the editor, you aren’t going to consider whether this is “Mac-like” or not. You are going to know how it works and that is the important consideration.
Language Specific Settings
MarkdownEditing - Packages - Package Control, which is the package I use, to write Markdown, supports Markdown, MultiMarkdown, and GFM (Github Flavored Markdown). Each of these variants have their own preference setup. I use MultiMarkdown. I am going to focus on that.
This is my MultiMarkdown specific settings file:
// These settings override both User and Default settings
// for the MultiMarkdown syntax
{
"auto_complete_delay": 30000,
"auto_complete_selector": "source, text",
"auto_match_enabled": true,
"color_scheme": "Packages/Color Scheme - Default/Breakers.sublime-color-scheme",
"theme": "Adaptive.sublime-theme",
"highlight_line": false,
"highlight_modified_tabs": true,
"bold_folder_labels": true,
"enable_table_editor": true,
"extensions":
[
"mmd",
"mdown",
"md",
],
"font_face": "Input Mono Narrow",
"font_options":
[
"subpixel_antialias",
"no_round",
"directwrite"
],
"font_size": 18,
"line_numbers": true,
"line_padding_bottom": 6,
"line_padding_top": 6,
"mde_match_header_hashes": false,
"save_on_focus_lost": true,
"spell_check": true,
"table_editor_syntax": "Auto",
"translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
"trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": false,
"word_wrap": true,
"show_git_status": "false",
"mini_diff": "false",
"wrap_width": 90
}
Not complicated. Takes getting used to but the settings are self-evident. And customizable by variant of Markdown. Some of the settings are duplicates of my default setup but I include them in the MultiMarkdown settings because I like them and don’t want them to change if I change the default.
The Sublime Text preferences allows me to customize the environment depending on the file I am editing or the syntax I am using. For instance, I deal with TaskPaper files in Sublime Text and for that I have a different font and a different theme from the one I use with MultiMarkdown files.
Distraction Free Settings
Sublime Text has a different set of settings for the distraction free mode.
{
"font_face": "Input Mono Narrow",
"font_size": 20,
"font_options":
[
"subpixel_antialias",
"no_round",
"directwrite"
],
"color_scheme": "Packages/Color Scheme - Default/Mariana.sublime-color-scheme",
"theme": "Default Dark.sublime-theme",
"wrap_width": 90,
"line_numbers": true,
"gutter": false,
"save_on_focus_lost": true,
"auto_complete_selector": "source, text",
"auto_complete": true,
"typewriter_mode_scrolling": true
}
One of the advantages of Sublime Text is that I can activate typewriter scrolling only in full screen mode. In regular windows, typewriter scrolling isn’t active.
Tweaking themes
I like the default theme that Sublime Text ships with. But I don’t like the color of the cursor. I want to change that, but I don’t want to have to change the theme for every update of Sublime Text. I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Sublime Text lets me edit the default themes and keeps the edits in a User Settings file, separate from the theme file. When Sublime Text gets updated, my theme changes stay the way I had set it up.
These are my changes to the default theme:
// Documentation at https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/color_schemes.html
{
"variables":
{
"blue3": "hsl(198, 100%, 56%)",
},
"globals":
{
"caret": "var(blue3)",
},
"rules":
[
]
}
I got the iA Writer caret into my theme. I am pushing the blue cursor across the screen.
The Modern Text Editor
BBEdit is the benchmark when it comes to the descriptor of a Mac text editor. It has a long history of being the text editor in the Mac market.
Explanations for the Preferences are on Page 219-248 in BBEdit User Manual(13.5.1). That is 29 pages of explanations for what the settings do. In addition, there are, what BBEdit calls Expert Preferences. These are statements which you have to input in the Terminal to get particular behavior that you are interested in.
BBEdit is defined by the continuous iteration it has gone through. Everything has been tweaked and polished to arrive at this state.
The preferences are well-designed, comprehensive and, if I may say so, “Mac-like.” They are so only because of the heritage of BBEdit, not because it is “Mac-like” to tweak default statements in the Terminal.
The modern text editor is a complicated beast and developers are trying to design a preference system which consumers can understand and use. The ability to set your preferences for the editor in a text file is an attempt to do that. It is different from the approach that BBEdit uses, but it is not an aberration. The Unix ethos which is fundamental to the modern day macOS, is equipped with two text editors, Vim and Emacs, which both use text file based preference setups.
The consideration should be efficiency and not a nebulous quality like “Mac-like design.”
I have to revert to what I wrote in the last article:
The best text editor is the one you know how to use.
If you are happy with the text editor you are using, keep typing. Spare me the assertions about what is “Mac-like design” and what isn’t.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie.
text editor
macOS
Sublime Text
Bicycle For Your Mind
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