divedb VS obsidian-releases

Working on & off on a scuba diving site which allows you to log dives, sites, photos & sealife.

Currently only South Australian & Victorian dive sites, but probably the most extensive collection of either.

Live website here: https://divedb.net/

Source here: https://github.com/cetra3/divedb

Currently exploring activitypub integration, being able to log dives and have people follow/comment/react to them from the fediverse

I've moved my little hobby website to SvelteKit[1] from react and I am not regretting it.. yet.

The only main frustrations I have are:

- Library support is pretty lousy. You need to fudge things around to get working. I.e, with leaflet and others I have vendored in the libs and redone them.

- Incremental static refresh with svelte kit is not really there. I'd like a web hook or api callback that allows me to refresh certain static pages as I know that changes are made. Right now I'm doing a janky refresh using a file lock notifier & it's a blemish on an otherwise great framework.

- The URL routing in svelte kit is... a little ugly. It's really hard when you have an editor open with 5 `+page.svelte` files. I wish they re-introduced file name routes, rather than folder name routes. It is entirely a personal preference I know, but I have seen a lot of negative things around it.

[1] - https://github.com/cetra3/divedb - deployed at https://divedb.net/

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