My understanding is that Craft keeps their data/notes in JSON format, not strictly individual Txt or Markdown files. I may be wrong and missed the news that they changed the file format to Markdown as has been speculated by posts on this and other forums.
The notes (the ones stored locally) are JSON. Yes that’s “plain text” but not in the the commonly-used sense. “Plain text” notes can be opened and immediately edited – and most importantly read – in TextEdit and anything else that edits such files.
I readily admit I do not know the difference between a JSON and a plain text formatted file but I sent a Craft note to my desktop and opened it with TextEdit.
JSON is a “plain-text” formatting option (as opposed to something binary, obfuscated, compiled, etc).
JSON is somewhat akin to XML (or HTML), in that, while you can see the original text in it, there may be some additional formatting added (which makes it easier for computers to parse/process it) so you may see extra information in there, such as parenthesis, brackets, commas, semicolons, etc.
I suspect what many folks mean when they refer to “plain text” is something like: “It is stored exactly as I type it, without anything added or taken away.”
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Your response is why I love this forum; I learn something almost every time I “visit”. Thanks!
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Those features are very cool. My primary use case for Obsidian is long term knowledge and thinking. I want to build ideas over time. Ideally what goes in will still be useful in 20 years.
I am using it for more than that, of course, but given how great each of these apps are, I’m doing my best to focus on my main use case and picking what feels right for that.
DEVONthink is where I keep any files that I need to reference. Im trying to keep obsidian as a place for my thoughts and notes. If I need something from an email, I copy and pasted in. But honestly it all starts to feel like cruft after a week. Might be different for other people, but for my jobs and use cases, it loses value quickly.
I have thought about whether to use craft or agenda for things like meeting notes and project references. Unsure about that at the moment.
Craft is definitely a great app that would absolutely work for what I’m doing, but if I don’t make a choice and a stand, I’ll make myself crazy.
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With you but on the Craft side. One gotta make a decision and go deep instead of staying at the surface and considering if it’s right all the time.
I view being a Mac user similar. I’m a Mac user and I don’t spend much time mulling over if the Mac is better or worse than Windows or Linux on a pc. I spend the time getting better at using a Mac instead.
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I’d forgotten about Treepad!
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Ain’t this the truth. I’ve been experimenting recently with using Craft as an Obsidian replacement, in large part because Obsidian, as nice as it is, is never going to be a truly native citizen to macOS (or iPadOS/iOS for that matter). And there’s something about Craft’s ability to format easily without messing with CSS or theming that is really great without feeling like being a OneNote or Word clone. But in the end, the killer feature is the “Group” to pages and subpages feature to really help keep a note from getting out of hand.
I understand that Obsidian works better with more atomic notes, but I’m not sure “atomic notes” works for me as a concept…at least, I haven’t been able to make it work yet. That said, Craft still needs quite a few features before I’m ready to give up Obsidian, if in fact I ever am!
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Question to you all deep diving into Craft: how is it’s database structures progressing? Last I looked it was still a good way off Airtable and Notion?
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It’s probably never going to get true databases à la Notion, if that’s what you need. That’s not the goal.
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Two more things that bum me and I’m running into with Craft compared to Obsidian:
- No embedding of anything anywhere; without going to full transclusion, documents can only be referenced through links, which is a pity because blocks do transclude way better than in Obsidian
- No deep links to embedded documents.
These seem critical for a true “tool for thought” workflow, which tips the scale notably towards Obsidian for that use at the moment.
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New update to Craft today: there’s a trash (finally) and search is now a lot faster. Nothing groundbreaking but a great quality of life update.
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On that search related note, I found this Alfred Workflow that seems to work just fine.
I’ve been seriously considering moving from Obsidian just because I’m much more inclined to a WYSIWYG editor than a dual-mode markdown approach…
I’m hearing that WYSIWYG is coming to Obsidian. I admit I’ve been conflicted on this. I finally realized why I was having trouble so I’ve made peace with how I want to deal with these apps as I noted here. Perhaps this will be helpful to you as well.
Also, the just released mobile Obsidian app is as good as the desktop version so now I can use Obsidian seamlessly for research.
Indeed WYSIWYG is going the be the next big thing in Obsidian. But I’m thinking it still won’t compete with Craft’s ability to polish documents. I still enjoy its native aspect very much, and despite Obsidian being far superior in power, I find I am always happy to write in it. In Obsidian, it always feels like I’m slightly fighting something. YMMV obviously.
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I agree wholeheartedly. The difference is that I don’t use Craft for writing per se. I find blocked paragraphs to be frustrating when navigating a document for medium to long-form writing.
I use Craft for notes and it is superior for that purpose. The “/“ functions are excellent and save a lot of clicks. I experimented with Craft for PKM and it is functional but not as good as Obsidian for this purpose. Not surprising given that Obsidian has been designed ground up for PKM. The release of the excellent mobile app makes it ideal for working on my iPad or MBP. I tried DT for PKM but it is clunky in comparison.
I’m using Scrivener and/or Ulysses for writing projects. I admit, sheepishly that I’m once again leaning toward Ulysses because of its focus on MD. This makes it more “compatible” with my research notes, which are MD files and accessed through Obsidian. I am also able to add the same folders (Vaults) I use in Obsidian as external folders in Ulysses, making all of my research notes available in both apps.
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ummm I just tested this and it works just fine. I had a message in my inbox, I clicked and dragged it into an open Obsidian note and it created this sort of link
[SheepShorts: Wolf Open House Meetings Begin Today](message:%3C364211923.2484010.1626102467736@mail.yahoo.com%3E)
Which I can command click in Obsidian to open the message up and see it.
What’s missing form that that you expect to happen?
I see that as a feature not a bug. I am Mac based but I can set up things so I can run on Linux as well and I like that I can make my vault on any device I decide to use now or in the future.
What d you mean by “atomic notes”? I’m asking because I am finding that I have a lot of index, TOC or MOC type notes in Obsidian that re basically an index into all the other notes. A big benefit to me of Obsidian is that I can link the same note from many of these index notes. So whenever I look for a note and I can’t find it in the place I look I add a link there to it when I do find it so my web is building automatically. Individual content notes in my previous systme tended to have several related items in a single note but in bsidian I am finding I split them into separate ideas and that it makes it much faster to get to a specific item later.