xournalpp VS obsidian-excalidraw-plugin

I highly recommend Rnote to anyone on Linux that misses the "hodgepodge" notetaking of apps like OneNote. It works like a dream on touchscreens and drawing tablets, with a surprising amount of configuration under the hood.

Also worth noting is Xournal, an older but similar project: https://xournalpp.github.io/

I've been using Xournalpp[1] for many years, highlighting books as I read them, adding in text/hand drawn annotations in whitespaces if necessary. Unlike other PDF readers/annotators, it saves a separate file, so the original PDF is untouched. It can also export the annotated PDF as a new PDF with highlights and annotations.

Obsidian[2] also has PDF support, where you can open a markdown document side by side with the PDF to take notes as you read. I think it also lets you highlight the PDF itself.

Emacs I think has a similar feature, via plugins/org-mode(?) to the Obsidian setup.

And of course your typical PDF reader probably has support for highlighting PDFs too, but I find them clunky and they save by exporting a PDF, which can be a bit heavy-handed IMO compared to just saving the annotations/highlights as a separate file as Xournalpp does.

[1]: https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/

Currently, I am trying to build a small open source NLP project for which I first find text on a page and then translate it; see the current project state here: https://github.com/PellelNitram/xournalpp_htr. The purpose of this project is to make handwritten text in Xournal++ searchable for all users.

[Xournal++](https://xournalpp.github.io/) is in my option the best handwritten note-taking software out there, because it has all the coolest features (like LaTeX snippets and shapes) and it's open source too, so make sure to check it out!

I think I have somewhere around 1k notes. Startup time is not my concern as I keep it open all the time. It seems like I bumped into https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin/issu... tl;dr: Minimal theme doesn't get along with Excalidraw.

I use excalidraw for almost everything. Brilliant tool. I already mentioned it in another response in this thread but using excalidraw inside obsidian via https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin has been a game changer for me.

For those using Obsidian, the Excalidraw plugin plays really well within it.

https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin

Plug for Excalidraw:

https://excalidraw.com/

https://blog.excalidraw.com/

Which, FWIW, supports Apple Pencil and iPad quite well since 2022:

https://twitter.com/excalidraw/status/1491044642493992960

As well as a seemingly evergreen release of the Obsidian plugin that gets people Doge levels of Such Wow:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/s58d2o/just_dis...

Video walkthrough here:

https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin

The team based real time collaboration in Excalidraw+ is just fantastic. Glad to have a way to compensate the author:

https://blog.excalidraw.com/introducing-excalidraw-plus/

I love my setup, and if you are going to spend money on an S8 (I have mine with paperfeel screenprotecor). Make sure to donate to the maintainer of the excalidraw plugin, he is doing awesome stuff: https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin

For embedded drawings you can use Excalidraw for Obisidian.

As for community plugins, I currently have only the Excalidraw enabled on my Tab Ultra, but I haven't used it much so far.

The Obsidian Excalidraw plugin allows you to draw and write https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin

Excalidraw plugin.