Yep, it’s disappointing. I think it’s reasonable though, the CommonMark standard is missing some nice things like highlights and wikilinks. And I don’t know how they would do embedded notes otherwise.
I’m working on publishing a folder of my Obsidian notes on my personal site, and I ran into an issue with wikilinks being incompatible with Hugo, the site generator I use. Fortunately, there’s a few tools to convert wikilinks to Markdown, and Obsidian has a setting to use Markdown links instead of wikilinks. Typing [[ still triggers autocomplete, which is nice. I just have to avoid using other Obsidian-specific features like highlights, embeds, and callouts in that specific folder.
Sadly, I think CommonMark went the wrong direction. Trying to come up with one Markdown to replace them all is a losing battle, and I think always will be.
Better: find a way to integrate the various flavors of markdown extensions.
I’ve managed pretty well with the inline extensions (highlight, strikethrough, comment, etc.) using the custom syntax tools in both Drafts and NotePlan. The result is that I see highlighting whether I use {==CriticMarkup==}, ==GitHub style (I think)== or ::whatever this one is::; the same is true of ~~various~~ {--forms--} of --strikethrough--… it takes a little regex work, but it seems very doable – there aren’t many actual conflicts.
The same would be true of various modifications of wiki linking, if only the syntaxes didn’t break the basic version.
That’s what’s moving me away from using markdown. It’s ending up like proprietary formats. The markdown you use in one app is not parsed in another. Ulysses Markdown XL for example is no better than .docx when you need to move your data.
In reality the best markup language is HTML5 which at least has a standard. Plus formatting is separated to CSS 3 which also has a standard and they are way more feature rich the markdown ever was and can be read in every browser.
First, I thank you for the people who voted (almost all active members did).
There is no surprise that Obsidian is the mostly used PKM app. However, I did not expect that Devonthink is so well received as a PKM tool. I know Devonthink is a very powerful tool, I myself use it as an extended document management system / finder. It did not occur to me that Devonthink is so well regarded as a note taking / linking tool
Eaglefiler is the other surprise for me.
Now I have to see how I can learn from your workflow,
I would agree. My needs in this area are modest. I just try to stick to the lowest common denominator in the limited suite of Markdown editors that I use.
I’m trying to get my wife to take on the knowledge management system for the business and our home/life.
She is very new to Mac and tech in general really, but she loves physical organisation, so I think it’s a project she’d really love to take on and learn.
What’s some suggestions for the easiest system to use? One that’s really for beginners to knowledge management and even tech in general.
(Something I don’t have to learn first to teach, lol… I want this to be the part of the business and home she champions!)
My requirements are:
iOS app
AND somewhere that we can:
hold client notes and meetings
read it later links
invoices, bills, PDF storage
document storage (not even sure if this exists in a PKM)
I guess one of the above may suit your needs for now. Personally, I suggest you try out these apps, I think most have free trial periods. UpNotes may be most cost effective for your needs
Despite working in I.T. when it came to my individual needs I was an average office user. So my system has always been simple. For many years I used Apple Reminders, Calendar, and Evernote on Mac and IOS. I’ve always preferred paper for note taking in face to face meetings. This allows me to keep my attention on the people not my tech. Afterwards I review and scan notes as soon as possible.
I started looking around when Evernote started having problems and found G Suite could directly replace much of what I was doing in EN. Today I still use Reminders and Calendar, but now Google Docs and Keep have replaced EN. Instapaper is my choice for read it later.
But if you’re not a fan of Google I thought you might find this interview interesting.
I would add KeepIt and Notebooks to the list. I guess there are some note linking capabilities but it’s not their central idea, but from your use cases it seems more you are after a some kind of personal vault.
My beloved EagleFiler would fit the bill except it does not have a mobile version.
I originally built it as an alternative search function that showed more of the context around a search result (i.e. the entire paragraph or “block”), then quickly came to appreciate that it functions as an interface for a collection of lines/paragraphs/“blocks” that contain a search term. I use it to power inline tags (via the syntax definition below) and a few other bits of functionality.
My most recent update on this block filter action includes the option to output a collection of “blocks” (aka the results of a query) to a new draft. I’ll probably post that when iOS 16 is released if there’s any interest…
A syntax definition
A syntax definition with simple support for Raindrop (among other things) and inline tags:
Drafts on a timeline
This was the last public version of a timeline action I posted. Can’t remember if I’ve tweaked it since I posted it…
There’s also a mermaid action for graphing from Drafts— the timeline there is a useful alternative:
I’d LOVE to build some integration between Drafts and MarkWhen. It’s much more visually appealing than the options I’ve worked with via Drafts actions, I’m just not sure how might make that work, or if it’s even possible right now…
Ok. You got me. Does this rely on sending your data to an outside server?
I’ve been trying to figure out how to better integrate Mermaid with my plain-text notes. I use mermaid a fair bit now, but have to use Pbsidian to view the diagrams. Most Obsidian themes are lousy for this – they constrain the diagram to less than the full width of the editing pane; I’d also like to be able to display diagrams for, say, mermaid code in NotePlan, Drafts (yay! Thank you), nvUltra and other plain text apps. This seems like a good start.
