Obsidian vs. Craft vs. Roam

brookter · March 12, 2021, 7:34am

It’s not something I have to do all that often in DT3, but when I do I use a Keyboard Maestro much like ryanjmurphy does. I only mentioned the drag and drop method because I came across it by accident and thought others may have missed it too…

iApple · March 12, 2021, 9:57am

Ok, you meant with KM. Thought it was within DEVONthink so spent sometime trying to find those commands

Bmosbacker · March 12, 2021, 1:07pm

I stumbled upon this article and thought it might be of interest to some in this thread. It is dated August 2020 so Obsidian has advanced since this was written. Personally, I’d find his approach to using Obsidian for task management overly tedious and fiddly compared to an app designed for the purpose but his take on Obsidian vs Roam is interesting.

brookter · March 12, 2021, 5:18pm

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I don’t really use many apps on their own. They almost all come with the footnote [and KM]…

I use custom shortcuts a lot, but very rarely change anything in System Preferences > Keyboard because it’s a pain keeping them synced across devices. Instead my custom shortcuts are in KM (many on palettes) so if I create them on the laptop, they’re automatically available on the desktop & vice versa.

Coulmac · March 12, 2021, 8:31pm

Interesting thanks And I had not come across Complice before it was mentioned in the link, also interesting

KevinR · March 13, 2021, 1:27am

Holy cow it’s almost instant! Wow…

iApple · March 13, 2021, 1:42am

ryanjamurphy:

You could execute the script via any other app or service, though, including DEVONthink itself.

The script:

tell application id "DNtp"
	set theSelection to get selection
	set theList to ""
	repeat with eachRecord in theSelection
		set theTitle to name of eachRecord
		set theLink to reference URL of eachRecord
		set theList to theList & "- [" & theTitle & "](" & theLink & ")" & return
	end repeat
	set the clipboard to theList
end tell

Thanks again for these. Spending up my workflow.

ryanjamurphy · March 16, 2021, 10:40pm

Folks indexing their Obsidian notes in DEVONthink might appreciate a shiny new plugin I’ve just released:

anon41602260 · March 16, 2021, 11:01pm

Um, nice. Thanks for the work. But … why? I index notes from folders in Obsidian in DEVONthink, Obsidian (of course), and TheBrain. Any change in any of those is reflected immediately in the sole copy of the note. So, why would I want to “open” from Obsidian into the DEVONthink markdown editor, or vice versa. I just work on the note in the app I’m working in.

That’s sort of the point about indexing.

ryanjamurphy · March 17, 2021, 2:20am

It’s a fair question. The plugin includes options for both opening the note in DEVONthink and and revealing it in its DEVONthink group. DEVONthink’s file system UX is much easier (and more powerful) than Obsidian’s, so the latter is my real use case.

For instance, I’m currently working a project with over 100 related PDF files and some other spreadsheets. I’d rather jump into DEVONthink to poke through these assets than use the Obsidian sidebar. This provides a quick and (cognitively) efficient way to do so.

I also imagined, though, that this’d let people take advantage of DEVONthink’s AI features to find related notes and the like.

A side effect of building it is that it helped me realize it might be possible to build a quasi-API for AppleScript for Obsidian… but that’s for another day.

Edit: now that I think of it, the DEVONthink→Obsidian jump might be even more useful for folks, since Obsidian can’t take advantage of typical “Open In…” features.

MitchWagner · March 17, 2021, 2:52am

Interesting!

I’m indexing Obsidian with DevonThink and using smart rules and tags to sort documents into the appropriate DEVONThink groups. I’m looking forward to seeing how this works.

Thanks