What do you expect to happen if you make Obsi the default .md viewer and you open a markdown file that is not in an Obsidian vault?
Technically, Obsidian is really a “vault editor,” not a markdown editor. All of the features of Obsidian depend on a collection of markdown files, so what happens when you try to open something outside of those files is kinda undetermined.
On the other hand, you can’t make Obsidian the default app for files only in certain folders.
So, that’s why Obsidian doesn’t work intuitively in this scenario. Nonetheless, there is a feature request to make Obsidian the default .md editor over on the Obsidian forum.
There’s a Rube-Goldbergian approach for this! (Man I should patent this slogan! So much funnier than “there’s an app for this”!)
It will require using an Automator service to route wether the file should open in Obsidian (if file is in vault) or in your preferred markdown editor of choice (if file is not in your vault).
I personally think the devs should implement a kind of “shallow open,” opening up any markdown files in Obsidian’s editor view without the trappings of a vault, and putting a “move into Obsidian” button somewhere prominent. But that would involve a bit of effort!
Perhaps you misunderstood me. I am opening a file in the Obsidian vault folder. When iOS switched to Obsidian, the file I wanted open is not displayed in Obsidian. Instead, Obsidian is displaying “whatever-file it was opened before”. The file I tapped on Files app is in the same Vault that Obsidian is showing - it’s just not opening that file. I feel like it’s a bug here - the file association is correct, but the file is not displayed.
No, sorry, I miscommunicated—technically you shouldn’t be able to set Obsidian up as the default .md viewer, because it doesn’t know how to handle .md files outside of Obsidian directories. That’s the bug, far as I understand it.
In tandem, though, there’s an important feature request: allow us to make Obsidian the default app for .md files. This isn’t actually implemented yet, as discussed above.
You may want to report the open-in-Obsidian issue. Otherwise, here’s that feature request:
I’ve looked at Craft once or twice but it just never resonated with me. I found it very hard to work in.
You can also just print a note out of Obsidian and it automatically creates a PDF file.
I’m playing with a numebr of plug-in in an isolated test vault. Only those that pass muster get incorporated into my real main vault. I actually do have a rather large use case trying to integrate and correlate a large population of scientific articles complete with full bibliographic info in Zotero with my own notes, an eve larger population of my personal notes and ideas going back over 30 years, electronic books that I have annotations on in several different formats and an archive of things I need on occasion. For me Obsidian is going to be my second brain or external data storage system.
I know I’ve seen a youtube video somewhere of someone who does that. Both for all notes over the years on the same day in a month Liek ever year’s notes taken on 31 August and also for a better week or month or year view of the daily notes you can create in opbsidian. I don’t need that so I watched it, thought cool, and left it at that.
Interesting, I like the Obsidian Nord theme in light mode but the dfferent sizes for headers bothered me, So I have a version that just uses color to distinguish the header types.
Perhaps I should give Obsedian another look. When I first tried it, shortly after Sparky mentioned it in the show, I found it confusing. I love Craft. But my mind is always open.
As a Craft enthusiast who has committed to Obsidian instead I can tell you that I believe it is worth the learning curve. It is confusing at first but once you get your head around it I believe you will find it worth the time to learn.
Either color or size would be fine by me. The important part is to have some explicit form of differentiation. Size is a bit more obvious to my eye, but Kepano uses some really subtle size changes that one would definitely be excused to miss (see the difference between H2 and H3 bellow).
There’s an “Export to PDF” option inside the Command Palete. It’s native.
Yes, indeed you can and the results are pretty good. I prefer using Marked 2 rather than Obsidian’s built-in tool because it has a one-click option to produce continuous PDFs in addition to paginated PDFs. I find that graphics-heavy documents with a lot of embedded images and charts are easier to work with as continuous PDFs. (Provided you don’t actually need to print them out, of course! I usually save a document to PDF if I want to do some extensive annotations or as a hedge against dead image links if it’s something I need to stow away for future reference—i.e., situations where I don’t and won’t need a paper copy.)
Some applications’ print to PDF functionality will insert a page break right in the middle of an image, or, alternatively, leave a huge blank area at the bottom of a page to avoid splitting an image across two pages. Both drive me around the bend.
Great discussion here gang. My only addition would be that in my opinion there are a LOT of great PKM options right now and none of them are particularly right or wrong. Just keep in mind the cost of moving from one platform is expensive, so pick a horse, and plan on riding it a long time.
I finally ditched Evernote when the new Electron version (Evernote 10) came out, which is a disaster. Moved from Evernote to Apple Notes, then to Bear, back to Apple Notes, and now to Craft. I can’t afford to change horses again!
I’ve been relying on Craft for several months, but have been checking-in on Evernote periodically, mainly because of 3-column view Craft doesn’t (and probably won’t ever) support.
Looks like Evernote have made a lot of progress with the Electron app in terms of performance and bug squashing, and some decent new functionality.
Some parts of it are still startlingly poor though - eg deleting a note takes multiple seconds every time.
Fwiw, I’m still on Craft because the export options are better and Evernote clearly still has problems, but the green elephant is definitely making substantial progress since the mess of their initial v10 launch.
Yup. Evernote is coming back in strides, but it is also expanding to become potentially much more than it was, as they integrate light task management and beefed-up search. But especially the latter is behind an additional Pro tier payment option. It is completely beyond me how search, the base of Evernotes existence, is not included in full with the first payment tier. But as nothing else works for me as a repository I swallow the bitter pill and use it still. Devonthink is just synchronization and setup hell for me and way too clunky to handle - maybe with the field guide this will change…
In terms of Obsidian vs Craft: I really like the clean non-fiddly writing interface of Craft in addition to the subpages feature. This makes it so dang easy to group or ungroup certain blocks into a new context and form new nodes through linking to them afterwards. Of course, there is some way to have a similar workflow in Obsidian, which is the more capable option by miles. Image size variation and the insertion of page breaks alone make this an interesting option, especially for output.
As you can tell, I am still torn and am watching both apps closely. I have a feeling that WYSIWYG editing will come to Obsidian faster than MD file formats and true local file management to Craft, but we‘ll see…
Taio seems promising. I was hoping to use it as a Draft replacement but I am still trying to figure that app out.
In terms of writing friction, nothing beats Roam followed by Obsidian. I struggle with managing several notes together in Obsidian despite all the fancy plugins. I also dislike switching modes to preview text. I also wish they had linked (and unlinked) references within the note instead of that side window. Other than that it seems to work well for me.
