But I still don't know what Obsidian gives you besides letting you write in Markdown instead of HTML. And that is basically a Markdown to HTML converter, as you pointed out.
You are dismissing what people are telling you. Several have pointed out that Markdown is easier to read and write when taking notes. For example, lists where each item has an additional ~14 keystrokes per item, links which have an additional ~20 keystrokes.
Your answer was that that doesn't matter. If that's your view, you are welcome to it, but that's why /other/ people choose Markdown over HTML for notes.
Not dismissing it at all. My original comment asks that very question. I was just wondering if there's anything else that Obsidian offers besides Markdown syntax, since hyperlinking documents and application-agnostic data formats are also features of HTML.
I don't understand where all the feelings are coming from. :)
Because you're not actually caring to listen to what people are saying.
People do not find writing SGML-based formats ergonomic for focusing on the content of their writing. SGML-based formats are great for formats that need to be both human-readable, but also unambiguous and extensible for machine parsing, but awful when the task is purely just producing writing.
If I need HTML from my writings in Markdown, there are a plethora of tools to handle that; I don't need to waste vital brain bandwidth on writing perfect spec-complaint HTML when Markdown handles only the task of writing structured text and does it well.
Markdown does not handle layout, and barely handles tables. It is the technological equivalent of HTML 1.0, and does not contaminate itself with the task of presentation like how the evolution of HTML over the years has.
You just dismissed what I said. One primary draw of Obsidian is the ability to write in Markdown.
> I was just wondering if there's anything else that Obsidian offers besides Markdown syntax, since hyperlinking documents and application-agnostic data formats are also features of HTML.
Yet you reply asking if there is anything beyond Markdown. That's dismissing what a lot of people have reiterated: Markdown is the main thing.
You keep looking for a different killer feature because you are dismissing everyone else's killer feature.
It's hard to overstate the flowstate Obsidian enables with live / wysiwyg editor view -- enjoy the clean look of rendered HTML while typing simple markdown and kbd shortcuts -- "the whole is greater than the sum
of its parts". There are many other reasons I love Obsidian, but most of all it's the core function -- the editor interface, atop my local, private markdown files.
We could have that exact same workflow and user interface with HTML.
I (presumably along with the person you’re replying to) don’t understand what value Markdown as the storage format is providing here exactly but I can think of many limitations it imposes.
Right, but the scenario we are describing explicitly makes the “in the raw” part not particularly relevant.
I’m not against markdown as an idea of file format, I’m just saying that it has some pretty clear limitations that I think are very much within the scope of what I want out of a tool like that and that weird MDX format they have as a substitute is a step backwards in my opinion.
But I still don't know what Obsidian gives you besides letting you write in Markdown instead of HTML. And that is basically a Markdown to HTML converter, as you pointed out.