I’ve been using Joplin for a while and I really enjoyed it because it’s a really good alternative to Evernote and I like very much Markdown. I even gave a little money to Joplin developper to thank him for his good job.
All this was good even if some capabilities were still missing like an easy way to link notes together as easy as in a desktop wiki like zim. I also wanted a graph view to navigate among my notes. But none of the app I was trying was giving satisfaction.
Until the recent day i have discovered Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/).
Obsidian is also an electron app but it has what i was looking for !
A desktop application (no server) with markdown notes, wiki links and of top of that a graph view to navigate into your notes.
So I moved for Obsidian which is a totally new application wich totally corresponds to my needs. So this post will be my last 'cause I switched for Obsidian.md
I just wanted to help people like me who are searching for this kind of power tool which let you build your really personal knowledge management system.
Indeed the issue with closed source apps is that they can bait-and-switch you since they know it’s often hard to migrate to a different app once you’re used to it. Also Obsidian doesn’t have a mobile app, which would be an issue for some users.
I really hope that there is going to be internal links (wiki-style) soon so that with Joplin, it would be possible to have a desktop wiki that surpasses Zim by far.
I have used Obsidian and came back because despite the lack of graph view, zettelkasten and a note multiplexer, Joplin is the most structured note taking app. Obsidian is a great product. Especially considering it is still in beta. But leaves a lot to be desired not in the buggy software, but the way the software is designed and structured. But that could be just me.
Here is my learnings from Obsidian and Zettelkasten I have been following since recently.
Graph view is an amazing feature, it really changes the way you think about your notes. And the link that powers it is just great.
Zettelkasten method is the next possible upgrade an ordinary note can have. Links make all the difference really.
Obsidian is buggy (again, it is in beta) and theming or even font/font size is a huge pain. Super small fonts and I have to use the web console to manually change the font and font size.
They allow you have local notes through their personal license. But again, not privacy, security focused I felt. Maybe it is just me or because it is a proprietary software.
Also, Zettelkasten method kind of encourages you to take notes. Currently, I like to keep it as small as possible because I know it might be forgotten. With notes connected the way in a Zettelkasten, the more notes you have the more fun and knowledge base you'll end up having. So I have noticed that I write more notes while I was using the Zettelkasten method.
What would I want to see from Obsidian in Joplin?
Graph view and the links would be the only two things really.
Links are in conversations here and there in the forum, so expecting something soon. You can also link them in Joplin but not the way of a Zettelkasten
@inkspreads I’ve tested it for me too and I agree to your assessment. For me however, I didn’t see any benefit of the graph view but that may just be because I didn’t get it right yet. I can imagine that this is an interesting idea for some people.
I think a Graph View would be useless unless the way links are created, and tags are not created within note. I used to be on the side of adding those features to Joplin, but now think that Joplin is not meant for Zettelkasten, it is just a great note-taking tool.
I recently tried to set up a workflow with both Joplin and Obsidian. I use Joplin as my Inbox. I set it up with a PARA method and just keep adding more things to it (i.e. collecting). I also write my journal there, adding my fleeting and literature notes there. At the end of the day, I go through everything I wrote that day and move some good thoughts to my Obsidian.
I think they work great in tandem. Joplin is great because I can add notes on any device, online and offline. It is much more convinient than paper or any other medium. Obsidian works great as a Zettelkasten, with its links, tags and Graph views.
I think more people sohuld consider using them together as opposed to making Joplin into Obsidian.
I don't know. It would be two apps for notes. Not sure everyone likes it. But I am OK without Graph View in Joplin Indeed, it should be a plugin and not a core feature for Joplin.
But! I will appreciate having a pop-up window to see all global, internal and internal backwards links for a note in Joplin. It will help in switching between notes.
There is still more potential in the graph that Obsidian is working on. Several projects are / were started in the attempt of creating some sort of graph based knowledge management / exploration tool.
https://infranodus.com/ is an analysis tool that reveals relations and patterns in data as a graph. I found these automated graph generations pretty neat.
TheTedNelson in one of his prototypes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72M5kcnAL-4) showed linking of specific sections of a note to sections in other notes with them being visualised in the same window. (not a graph in this case)
https://www.dendron.so/ by a Kevin S Lin, is another open source application which is aiming to incorporate graphs as well
I am not participating in a debate whether there should be a all-purpose application, or to use multiple tools for the purpose. That is more of a subjective topic.
However, I have come to love Joplin, and would like it to draw some inferences from other projects out there, and possibly even cooperate. I believe that graphs and visible linking of notes are essential to the knowledge base I am creating as I go through life, and if one day some one plans to work on this, I suggest Joplin to form a strong philosophy of how things should work instead of mirroring features.
This is a very interesting feature, I might consider implementing it after finishing clicking the link in the vscode editor. In addition, I will not migrate over because of this feature, maybe obsidian's ui is more beautiful (vscode basically does not allow custom ui), and search is very very useful (this is almost impossible to achieve in the vscode plugin), but there are still some Other problems (solve some problems, bring some problems), including synchronization, mobile terminal support.
As far as we are discussing Obsidian here, I want to know is there any way to migrate to Obsidian with all the tags? And migrate back if needed? I suppose no.
No, but that why there's the plugin system. People can now write their own exporters and importers.
Joplin itself will not add any more importers/exporters to the core. Laurent mentioned the reasoning a few times on this forum.
