@publicvoit I share your concerns about lock-in. They’ve added features like bases and transclusion, which only work in Obsidian. But it’s still all just plain text under the hood — on your computer. And the core Markdown files work everywhere. It’s a much more open platform than (say) OneNote or Notion. (Still, not as open as Emacs.)
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@publicvoit I share your concerns about lock-in. They’ve added features like bases and transclusion, which only work in Obsidian. But it’s still all just plain text under the hood — on your computer. And the core Markdown files work everywhere. It’s a much more open platform than (say) OneNote or Notion. (Still, not as open as Emacs.)
@jarango Everything true.
However, I disagree with #Markdown: https://www.karl-voit.at/2025/08/17/Markdown-disaster/
It's way more open than, let's say, #OneNote & so forth. Unfortunately, it's far from being a #textformat that can be reused anywhere without problems. At least I need to convert MD all the time from one flavor to a different.
With more and more #Obsidian add-ons introducing their own syntax elements, you will end up with clear text files you still can't convert for a different tool without modifications. Good luck with finding out which elements are going to survive and which not. For a few files, that seems OK. If you have a decent #PKM like you describe in your awesome #DulyNoted book, it requires more effort.
For everything I need to use with #MD, I keep a syntax file with one example element so that I keep an overview & know what to convert how in case I need to reuse information stored in this MD flavor.
With org, I just push it through #pandoc & I'm done. 🤷
@publicvoit @jarango FWIW there's pandoc support for converting Obsidian Markdown to other formats. I added it a while ago but it hasn't been merged yet:
@publicvoit @jarango FWIW there's a pandoc support for converting Obsidian Markdown to other formats. I added it a while ago but it hasn't been merged yet: