Very interesting take on what Obsidian does well and does not do well. My web clippings are all articles I annotate in Rradwise reader. The resulting annotations (highlighted pieces and my own notes) are already imported int oObsidian so I have no problem with using Obsidian for that. I’m not a big web clipper anyway so my use case is far more limited than yours.
Similarly I never save reciepts in my note syete,. I do scan some of them but mostly that’s for IRS backup only, I never actually refer to them except during an audit which is, thankfully, very rare. So also a case I never use on my machine.
However, misc notes like trip confirmations are usually in the form of a PDF for me so they go into Obsidian and I can view them there. Household notes are a big part of what I store in Obsidian. From building and room sizes, paint colors, how to reset the solar recirculating system, all of our pet, guard dog and personal medical information (sheep medical data are all in LambTracker soon to be AnimalTrakker). Instruction manuals are all PDFs and most are in Obsidian, at least the ones I refer to often.
I don’t annotate images, I’m actually having a hard time understanding what you mean by annotating images. Could you explain that? I’m interested in finding out what youy mean by that. I keep metadata on images but it’s all in Lightroom.
Also not entirely sure what you mean by how Obsidian stores attachments being an issue. I have min scattered throughout the vault as required. Stand alone images are in an attachments folder but that’s slowing going away as I just mcoe them all into the main vault folder and link them. I’d like to know how you store attachments that is different from that.
I’ve never understood the appeal of Apple Notes. For me it’s both too little and too much. Can’t sync except via iCloud, not powerful, minimal ways to search and link and basically unable to be shared with anyoone else easily unless they are in the Apple ecosystem. Sicne all of those are issues for me I’ve never enven doused notes excet as a waypoint for info between formats.
The main issue I have with Apple Notes is that you are then pretty much locked in with limited export options. This is a major showstopper. I made that mistake once already with OneNote (but tbh at the time it was the best option for what I needed so I still keep some historical notes there).
Obsidian, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t OCR images or files. So if you have a PDF that you saved a while ago but don’t remember exactly what you called it, a search for “board meeting” may not work if it’s not explicitly listed in the name of the file. In EN, if “board meeting” shows up within the file itself, then it will return that in the search results. Just for that alone I don’t like the idea of saving attachments in Obsidian. I think EN, Dropbox are better solutions for that – for me anyway.
In terms of annotating images/files, I mean marking them up. For me personally, I generate a lot of screenshots to help people use my apps (I’m an analyst/developer), and with EN the functionality is built in to add arrows, highlight etc.
I wouldn’t say I save them into my note system either, I save them into Evernote – my document catch-all system. This was my point earlier on - there’s documents, files, misc junk from all around which I wouldn’t call “notes” and don’t think Obsidian particularly suits these types of documents/files. I think Obsidian is more for your own writing and maybe the odd file. But just because that’s how I think doesn’t mean I’m right or that I think anyone else should agree.
Correct. I never search for contents of a PDF. In fact, if I have to use search at all I’ve already failed. In my world I should be able to go directly to the location of a PDF file on any topic. I have a set of rules for file naming and locations such that I can find them easily. The way I’d have saved the PDF for a board meeting would follow this pattern YYYY-MM-DD_Organization_BOD_mtg and the resulting file would be in the folder for that organization and breaking my typical 1 layer deep rule, within a folder called Organization_Meetings For organizations I do keep their files in a separate top level folder so I can easily hand the history and data off to a new officer when necessary.
Interesting. I also am a developer and I do add screenshots to my documentaiton but I never have added any drawings on top. Instead I have a screen shot and then a description of the tasks that each button or data entry field does and how to use it. What do you use drawing on the screen for? Seriously interested. I’ve never thought of or seen app documentation that had highlighted screen shots so I’m not sure I understand what value it provides or how it might be used or maybe even what they really are.
My document catch all system is Finder. It’s available all the time and easy to use.
So I’ve found that using a combination of Omnisearch, and just folders of PDF (or image) files, I can usually mimic a lot of what you get out of Evernote. It doesn’t do super well with handwriting, but it does handle PDF text pretty well. I typically find what I’m looking for 9.5x / 10x.
What I ended up doing is replacing the default search shortcut with Omnisearch, so now when I open Obsidian and hit CMD+SHIFT+F, I get Omnisearch instead.
But I do agree that handling of things other than text files are less than ideal inside of Obsidian. At least compared to Evernote. I like the all encompassing nature of Evernote, where you can have a single source of truth on something and nest all the documents inside of that. Especially when I’m, say, planning a trip. Having one document that has my itinerary, supporting PDFs, links to details, etc… is super handy.
How to documents for navigating an app. I put arrows on the screen that point to buttons, text boxes, and then on the side I number them to show the order of operations.
I use tools to crop and zoom in as well, all built into EN
I experimented a week or so with OF+EN+TaskClone. Overall, I like the integration. However, EN had a slight lag when typing on the iPad with the Magic Keyboard. Have you experienced that?
Could you upload an example? I’ve always just used words to describe the actions available, but so farit’s almost always just a tablet app so a smaller screen in general…
I work for a hospital so I’m not able to share screens/documentation we have. I marked up your forum post though as a quick example. This is overly simplistic, but it illustrates the point. Imagine a more complex screen with dropdowns and options. Using markdown like this I can “guide” people on their way through the app.
While I commend your concern here, are you ok with uploading that content to Evernote? Also, make sure to disable the AI stuff as that will propagate your content to another 3rd party (probably OpenAI, but who knows).
I hear you. I don’t store any patient information stuff in my EN (I work as an Analyst as well with programming dabbled in). It would likely be fine to share the odd documentation I have on MPU as it’s just an app screenshot with no data, but why advertise it, I figure.
I write how-to guides for some of my employer’s niche workflows (i.e. things where we say “this is how we do X task”, as opposed to following the developer’s guide). I’ve never thought to save all the marked up screengrabs though. I add them to the guide then delete from my system. I’d probably just steal them from the guide if I needed the image again, but it doesn’t occur frequently enough for me to bother saving the screengrabs. (And actually sometimes I find it’s nice to re-do the screengrab if I have to amend a guide. Perhaps the app layout has changed slightly, or perhaps a user said that something wasn’t clear.)
Anyway, just thought I’d remark on that because it’s not really occurred to me to save all the screengrabs before!
