Notices by kepano (kepano@mastodon.social), page 3

somehow we accepted that this is what a room looks like at night

@joshwayne I may have to start doing that too

what if email was file over app?

m2dir is a proposed format to store emails as local files

https://bitfehler.srht.site/posts/2024-04-15_m2dir-treating-mails-as-files-without-going-crazy.html

I've been trying to think of every mixed RTL/LTR edge case I can, and finally feeling good about it

if you like to write in both directions within the same note, #obsidian 1.6 will provide the smoothest experience I have seen — will be in the next beta soon

a seven-person team trying to advance the idea that users should own their data vs. three multi-trillion dollar companies fighting for the opposite

Still very WIP, but I am revamping the #obsidian UI for right-to-left languages such as Arabic, Dhivehi, Hebrew, Farsi, Syriac, Urdu.

So many little questions I had never thought about:

- Which way does a "back" arrow go?
- Do progress bars fill right-to-left?
- Are slashes in paths reversed?
- Do window buttons get mirrored on major OSes?

This has been an eye-opening experience. Using start/end values rather than left/right is something I will think about with every project going forward.

click the toggle on jsoncanvas.org to see the JSON Canvas site in JSON Canvas format

Exporting = one-way door
File over app = two-way door

Do not mistake the map for the territory.

Many apps allow you to export your data. That's better than nothing, but not the same as editing files directly. An export is a representation of your data. It's an output of the source. It's a one-way door.

The file over app philosophy does not make a distinction between data and file. Both are one and the same. The source is the output, and vice versa. It's a two-way door.

1/2

I appreciate the nod to "File over app" from the Observable team in the latest announcement.

It's so cool that a Markdown file with code blocks can be the source for complex data visualizations and dashboards. This means the files are interoperable with #Obsidian

Here I am running an Observable site from Obsidian

These are all separate vectors:

1. VC vs user-supported
2. Files vs databases
3. Open vs proprietary formats
4. Open vs closed source
5. Extensible vs non-extensible
6. Private vs privacy-invasive

An open source app can be VC-backed, store its data in a proprietary format, have terrible APIs, and include telemetry

Why @obsidian is 100% user-supported and not backed by VC investors

Skiff raised ~$14m in VC to build an open source alternative Google Suite. Now it's being acquired by Notion and the code has been taken down.

All software is ephemeral. File over app.

For the last few months I have been learning piano with no prior music theory knowledge and the most frustrating part is how terrible musical notation is.

I am on the verge of rage-creating a new musical notation system 😭

If you have a Dropbox account, a new toggle has appeared for "Third-party AI" which is enabled by default

You can turn it off by going to your account settings

getting there🕵️

A math teacher at Grand Valley State University used #Obsidian to create a course textbook with exhaustive linking:

https://publish.obsidian.md/mth225

I like this structure because you can easily dig deeper on any concept you don't understand. Very well done!

People saying there should be fewer manifestos — I disagree, there should be far more manifestos. Everyone should have a manifesto.

Try to write down the 5-10 things you truly believe in. At minimum it's a good exercise.

File over app

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.

Keep reading: https://stephanango.com/file-over-app

Why keep a diary...

One of my few prized possessions is this 70-page autobiographical book by my great-grandfather who was born in 1902 and was a farmer in France. Only a few copies were printed.

His chapter titles are truly amazing, each is about 1-2 pages:

- I saw the beginning of electrification
- I saw the first cars
- I saw the first airplanes
- I smoked my first cigarette at 7 years old
- I saw a total solar eclipse
- The telephone
- 1914: The war
- I had the Spanish flu

etc

From a traditional business perspective the Obsidian approach has many downsides:

we can only focus on 1-2 things at a time, we can't build lots of stuff in parallel like a bigger company can

we have to cover our costs, we can't subsidize pricing — charging a fair price is a disadvantage in the market

we have no lock-in, our users can leave at any time easily