Note Taking Apps

Note Taking App Selection

Obsidian is a note taking app, that aims to function as the user's second brain or linked knowledge base.
obsidian website
Obsidian is not going to be instumental in learning to code and implementing the same in the form of the softare we write. However, Obsidian serves as a convenient way to write down notes and document our learning process. This will ensure that we not only get today's project done, but preserve and re-use our learning in the future. The reasons that we choose to use Obsidian here are:
how to choose the best fit note taking app
- Better than other note taking apps. Apps like Notion, OneNote (from which I will have to transfer notes) & EverNote focus on a clean UI & UX for note taking. However, Obsidian, Roam Research etc help us in organising our notes through links, the same way that we think. Further, these apps have a large number of plugins that allow us to customise the environment to our liking. Obsidian having the larger community library and easier conversion to web pages becomes our number one choice.
- Better than visual studio for editing markdown files. Obsidian comes with a wide range of tools and plugns that make it a superior note-taking app. Since we waste no time in converting markdown to a we-ready format, this is the best way to keep our learning in public website up to date with our notes live.

Introduction to Obsidian

Installation

- Go to the obsidian site and click on "Get Obsidian for macOS".
- From the downloads folder, double click on the .dmg file, and then drag the obsisian logo into the applications folder.
- Right click on the obsidian volume on the desktop and eject. Then delete the .dmg file.

Getting Started

- Open obsidian from the applications folder.
- Select "Open folder as valut" and select the "_notes" folder from the digital-garden folder on your laptop.

New Note

- Click on the "New note" button at the top left, shaped like a folded paper.
- The title (file name) can immediately be changed. And then the contents can be edited.

Linking Notes

- Insert link to <name of linked note> in any other note, by adding the text [[ <name of linked note> ]].
- In order to navigate to the linked note, hover over the link and click ⌘ and the the "Open link". Alternately after left clicking anywhere on the link text, one can select "⌘ + Option + Enter" (Check Hot Keys).

Tag

- Insert "#<tag name>" to create/add a tag inside a note. Note that there should be no space between the "#" and the <tag name>.
- Tags can be used to call out the keywords and concepts in a note. It can also be used to call out the status of a note (complete/incomplete etc) and any other similar information.

Formatting

- Italics - Within *<text>*.
- Bold - Within **<text>**.
- Lists/Bullets - "-<Space><Text>". Hit tab to go to nested level.
- Numbered list - "1.<Space><Text>"
- Header 1 - #<Space><Text>
- …
- Header 6 - ######<Space><Text>

Inserts

- Pictures can be inserted:
  - External images (outside of vault) - <img src="<relative path to image or URL>">
  - Internal images (inside vault) - ! [[ <relative path to image> ]] .. The ! Is to ensure embedding. It is recommended to keep an Assets folder within the same subfolder as the note, in which all images will be stored.
- Inserting videos:
  - Add an iframe container and an iframe inside it, with the youtube link. sample
- Inserting PDFs - Better PDF Plugin
- Insert any clickable link as "[<link>|<text to replace link>]"

Search

- Select search button from top left.
- When you type to search there are prompts which help search for paths, file names, tags, text etc.

Settings

- Editor
  - Default editing mode -> Live preview.
  - Fold heading.
  - Show line number.
  - Turn on Spellcheck.
  - Show frontmatter.
- Core plugins
  - Backlinks.
  - Ougoing links.
  - Tag pane.
  - Templates.
  - Slash commands.
  - Audio recorder.
- Files & Links
  - Automatically update internal links.
- Appearance
  - Go to the folder selected as vault and click "⌘ + Shift + .". The hidden .obsidian folder will appear.
  - Within this folder create a "snippets" folder and a "obsidian.css" file within the snippets folder.
  - Now in Appearance (settings) refresh the "CSS snippets" section and switch on obsidian snippets.
  - This will now allow us to apply our own custom css to change the look of our markdown text.

Hotkeys

Go to Settings -> Hotkeys and check out different shortcuts. Add or change the key combinations for different shortcuts as you please.

Themes

- From Settings -> Appearances -> Themes -> Manage, we can select some themes developed by other community members.
- I like Obsidianite, since it brings a clear contrat to different text elements, and makes it easy to glance at notes quickly.

Obsidian Organisation

Organisation Philosophy

Notes organised through folders, tags & links. User has to decide what combination of them to use.

Folders

- Same folder structure that exists on any computer.
- When multiple files have the same name (different folders), those files will be tagged by their relative address.
- However, using the free obsidian publish alternative, files must have unique names, even across folders. Therefore it is important to try to maintain that.

Links

- These should be used to capture specific connections or references between notes.
- Depending on the purpose that the link serves, that should be textually called out.
- Make sure that links are setup such that one can easily and quickly navigate to anything of relevance.

Tags

- Multiple tags fit into a single note.
- These should be used to attribute characteristics which span across folders and may not be of a fixed number per note.
- There should only be a low number of tags (~10) for them to be useful.

Recommendation

- Use folders & subfolders to organise notes by space, genre, topic etc.
- Use YAML metadata (front method) to provide key information (date, title, topic, tags etc) in all notes.
- Use a hub and spoke model, where each folder has a 'hub" note, which only serves to organise other notes in the folder, providing links to all of them.
- Use the dataview plugin to create a table of contents in each hub note.
- Through out the note insert inline links to all relevent and referenced notes.
- At the top & bottom of each note, provide an easy to fill table with links to notes/pages above, all the way back, next note and previous note.

Plugins

- Code snippets created by the community/obsidian team that help solve specific/involved use cases.
- When in doubt "⌘ + O" is to open any file and "⌘ + P" is a command palette for shortcuts and plugins.
- Settings -> Community Plugins -> Safe mode off.
- Settings -> Community Plugins -> Browse.
top obsidian plugins :
- Better Word Count - Can select a fixed section of words and get a specific word count.
- Calendar - Allows us to create notes for each day, and has functionality built on daily note keeping.
- Hotkeys++ - Provides shortcut keys for things like mass converion to lists.
- Natural Language Dates - Helps convert MLP (today, tomorrow etc) into dates, and therefore links to daily notes.
- Note Refactor - Allows us to select text from a note and split into other notes, by headings or other customisations. This is useful when you are starting with a map of contents and gradually expanding it into bits of notes.
- Mind Map - Creates a mind map of the note (flow chart from headers & bullet points for hierarchy).
- Review - Allows us to schedulespecific notes for review on an upcoming daily note.
- Sliding Panes (Andy's Mode) - Used for easy sliding between multiple panes. Not highly recommended. It is recommended to try and keep number of open panes limited to begin with.
- Smart Random Note. Generates random notes to review and think about.
- Advanced Tables - By using pipes (|), tabs and enter, it understands that a table is being navigated, and it auto-fills a fair bit. It also has an advanced tables side bar, which is ueful.
- Paste URL into Section - When a portion of text is selected, if a URL is copied and then "⌘ + P + Pate URL into Selection" (to replace it), instead, the selected text will act as a hyperlink.
- Dataview - plugin video . Using metadata in notes. Can use a metadata section at the end. Front method: Can use a YAML section at the beginning (between a pair of ---). These use key value pairs (<key>: <value>) to add data. A useful on is "tags: <tag1>, …, <tagn>" Benefits: Metadata auto-generated and separated. This information can be queried through the dataview plugin.
- Lists, Tables & Tasks - SQL like syntax can be used in order to generate these lists from the file names and other metadata within all files/notes in the vault.
- Obsidian Git - This plugin can be used to automatically backup the obsidian vault to a git repository. We will use this to backup not only the obsidian notes, but to handle routine git backups to our repo. For this the full repo folder (not just notes) should be selected as the vault. It is important to only make edits to the .md notes files and none of the other git files. The command palette along with git pull, git commit and git push should be used to keep the notes and the website in sync.
- LanguageTool Integration - This plugin helps with spelling and grammar checks in the notes being made.

Projects

At this stage, it would do well to put our learning to some practical use. Therefore, a small digital garden project would serve as a useful recap, with a very cool output.