AppFlowy VS obsidian-releases

💾 Source code: https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy 👕 Size: M 🛠️ Stack: Flutter, Rust

You can use Rust with QML[1].

QML is actually pretty amazing. I've been building my block editor[2] view entirely in QML while the model is in C++. This separation of logic and presentation works great. And yes, there are some crashes sometimes (that I find quite easy to debug thanks to the built-in debugger), but take for example a similar app that's built with Rust and Dart[3], in my testing there were still memory leaks that caused my computer to hang. It's better to know you have a bug than for it to be hidden from you.

I agree with parent commenter, saying these cross-platform frameworks will end up supporting the least common denominator set of features. But I found with external open source libraries, the community is catching up very fast. For example, you want the awesome translucency macOS apps have for your Qt app? Here you go[4]. Many such cases. It's also pretty straightforward to add your own custom OS-dependent code, especially so, if someone already open sourced his approach. I recently wanted to move the traffic light buttons on macOS for my app, but couldn't figure the Objective-C code for that. I ended up looking at either Tauri or Electron source code and found my answer.

[1] https://github.com/woboq/qmetaobject-rs

[2] https://www.get-plume.com/

[3] https://www.appflowy.io/

[4] https://github.com/stdware/qwindowkit

AppFlowy - GPL Licensed - their unique selling point is that they're farther along than SiYuan or Affine on their database table functionality. Both Siyuan and Affine have database tables for project management but Appflowy's solution is solid. https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy

Download from https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy/releases/tag/0.3.0

Just enabled it for AppFlowy macOS. https://docs.flutter.dev/perf/impeller#macos

AppFlowy has doesn't have links to pages, but they're working on it, and "This feature will be expanded to support Mention a block in the future." (https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy/issues/2196)

It seems like there's a lot of recent interest and effort in open-source or self-hosted Notion-like/markdown-with-widgets applications and platforms. AppFlowy (https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy) comes to mind; I attended one of their monthly "town hall" meetings a few months back, and looks like they're rapidly increasing in popularity. I think there was another similar project like this on HN front page last week, IIRC.

This makes me happy, because I switched to Obsidian primarily for local-first file storage in a platform-agnostic format. I've learned to love many things about Obsidian and am writing a few plugins myself, but there are still several Notion-esq functionalities I wish I had, and I find myself handing off between Obsidian and other webapps for certain effort, like team project management.

I used to get far more excited to explore new projects like BlockSuite, and I really appreciate their documentation, but I find it hard to justify allocating time to reviewing and trying out new tools when I still have much more improve on with my Obsidian usage; this is especially true of newer projects where I'm unsure of their shelf life.

To assuage my internal conflict I remind myself that I think plaintext is fundamentally the right choice for much knowledge collection, and I'm proud to say that if the internet shut down, I'd retain a significant growing fraction of my personal data.

The closest editor that follows our first principle is Obsidian editor:

The solution was already installed on both my computer and my phone: Obsidian.

> why does open source need to "win"

Open source does not need to win.

But your ability to be in control of your computer needs to be preserved. A proprietary fridge cannot control your diet, while a proprietary App Store can control what software you install on YOUR phone (unless you live in EU, hello DMA!). The tail wags the dog, so to speak. Proprietary software has also been shown to break user workflows or remove functions in an update while leaving users with no choice whatsoever.

One alternative to having open source win is to ensure software must come with a robust warranty and other assurances you expect from the things you buy. EU's CRA will make software vulnerabilities in WiFi routers covered by warranty, for example.

You can also ensure robust and interoperable data storage options. For example, https://obsidian.md/ stores all notes in Markdown, not holding the data hostage in case users will not like how future versions will work. GDPR actually has a provision for data portability (Art. 20), but it does not seem to have a requisite effect on the industry yet.

And until the above issues are solved, open source remains the best way to ensure that a software tail cannot wag your computer dog.

[2] https://obsidian.md/

So I've had my fair share of personal websites and blogs. I have built them on stacks ranging from the most basic HTML and CSS, to hosted frameworks like Wordpress and Laravel, to the more modern single page applications built in Vue and React. For a simple content blog I think you can't go wrong with a Static Site Generator though. These days I am almost exclusively writing everything in Obsidian. Which is great because its all in standard markdown format. This allows for a really neat and easy content publishing workflow.

Consider making an Obsidian[^1] plugin, or writing to Obsidian-compatible Markdown files :)

[^1]: https://obsidian.md/

Obsidian is a writing application created to allow for offline / private note taking in markdown format, in an interface that looks a lot like our regular programming IDE. It is very flexible, with a good collection of community plugins that you can use to customize Obsidian to your heart contents.

Obsidian support via our Obsidian Plugin