I tried using the URI-scheme and vault-parameter some time ago on linux, to open specific vaults via script. Surprisingly, this did not worked at all. Even worse, the whole scripting of obsidian is horrible even on the fundamental levels, and it failed on pretty much any normal job. Though, this is not such a surprise, considering that it's complete foreign to linux any kind of integration. At the end, it's a closed space, not like an editor, open to the rest of the system.
I like Obsidian, but I really dislike the annoying design-philosophy which restricts my usage.
For example, it's not possible to open any random folder with it, you need to first register the folder as a vault, and then can open the vault. It also doesn't handle file links under Linux correctly. For whatever reason, any link pointing to a file inside the vault, disappears. Probably some flaw in their file system-abstraction, but that made several workflows for me impossible. And then there is the problem with every vault having its own isolated configuration. Basically, every vault has a folder ".obsidian" which contains all installed plugins, configurations and whatever. For any new vault, you need to link this folder, and for whatever reason they are still unable to let obsidian handle this automatically.
Overall, Obsidian is designed to have mainly one, or at least just a very low number of vaults. But considering how poor obsidian scales with file numbers, this is not working well for every one. For me, this removed any motivation to use Obsidian for everything.
Obsidian is vault-centric and has some harsh limitations in what workflows it allows because of this. It doesn't matter whether vaults are folders, because there is more to this than just the folder. This is really annoying, because Obsidian is a one of the best markdown-editors at the moment, with a good plugin-community, unlike others.
You can also use Foam, a FOSS VSCode extension that is compatible with the basic markdown files from Obsidian. You can just open your vault in it and it will probably work if you're not using the fancy features in Obsidian.
Well it occurred to me after reading this thread that I could edit my Obsidian vault via vim. Of course, that's only for basic text editing capabilities everything else has to happen inside Obsidian.
One thing that bugs me with Obsidian: I cannot create a link to a specific obsidian vault on desktop (Windows). The thing is I often take small notes and opening an Obsidian (or any other app) is usually too much work for me. Instead, I prefer to create file shortcuts on desktop to just double-click them later when I want to access the data.
The thing is Obsidian vault is not represented by a recognizable file; it's a folder. So there is nothing to click at to automatically open it in Obsidian and consequently there is no way to create a shortcut on desktop that would open the specific Obsidian vault.
Yes, I know, I can launch Obsidian app and start from there but it is too much hustle when you have several frequently used vaults.
Also, the standard F2 shortcut for the usual item renaming does not work and it adds friction.
Interesting that you have so few vaults. I have dozens of them, each for a different project, or for different aspects of the same project. The way folders work in Obsidian is quite bad, when I am creating a new note it insists in putting it into the top folder instead of in the folder where I am currently in, so I prefer to keep it flat. I am just using the default setup and cannot be bothered much with plugins. There is no proper API documentation either.
Obsidian is really nice, and quite powerful, especially thanks to plugins. It's also moving fast, the developers are very active. I used it for a while to move on from org-mode, but kinda lost interesst because of certain excentrics it has.
One specific problem that killed it for me temporary is the lack of support for multiple vaults, to the point that there is not even a truely centralized global configuation. Everything is saved in the vault itself, including plugins. Vault is the name of the data-directory, basically your workspace. For someone using multiple vaults (work, and private stuff) on multiple systems, this really kills any motivation to use it. Did this change in the meanwhile? I losly follow the changelog and haven't seen anything yet regarding this things, but maybe I just missed it.
Other than thoise specific problems, it's awesome how activate and vibrant the community itself is. There is a very active forum and discord-server, and many awesome plugins coming from the community are available. Obsidian has really the potential to leave org-mode behind and become a serious alternative for the rest of the world.
It is a great editor. Your points are spot on. The vault-centric use of Obsidian is limiting, and has stopped me from using it as my main editor. I use it only for a single synced vault. All other md files are edited using other tools.
I've used obsidian with nb before but you can't just open nb inside your vault and have it immediately work. nb uses .index files at the root of each directory to know what to display in the cli (I assume so it doesn't have to do a ton of I/O operations). You'd probably need to spend a bit of time understanding that stuff so you can write up a script or something to coordinate between the two. I ultimately just ditched obsidian and went with my afore mentioned apple notes/nb hybrid approach.
If you haven't tried Obsidian, I would. It has the features you were looking for. The downside being it is directory (vault) based as well and doesn't really offer the ability to edit one off files.
Obsidian vaults can be converted into formats that work with competing PKM tools. I swapped back and forth between Obsidian and an open source tool based on Visual Studio Code for a while.
I have switched to Obsidian and I use multiple vaults for multiple purposes.
One is for work, one is for personal projects and notes.
One for Books and Movies I watched or want to watch.
And one for Zettelkasten[0].
Obsidian is extremely customizable and user-friendly. And to make things even better, which is a must for many people including me, it saves the files as .md in the local storage.
You can even sync it among n devices for free using Box, Sync, Mega, OneDrive, Dropbox or whatever floats your boat.
Just as a quick exercise, I spun up a fully functional Obsidian clone that runs in the browser that works locally, in four hours using React- just in case the company goes under in future. It works great.
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