My approach to Obsidian is to utilize as few plug-ins as possible. This is because Simple is Maintainable and any special syntax enforced by a plug-in (like the Dataview Plug-in) will make My Notes less portable and more tightly coupled to Obsidian and those plugins. This means I’m losing some of the potential Obsidian Niceties, but doing so willingly. This is an example of Choose Your Own Trade-Offs.
I decided to Make the Decision that Informs all Subsequent Decisions:
I will defend the portability of my notes through the commitment to plaintext & durable, open file standards.
This does not mean “use no plugins”. This means the plaintext principle I’m following needs to be considered.
Specific Examples
- I am using the Dataview Plug-in in a very limited capacity
- I am not using the Excalidraw plug-in, but instead using Excalidraw and saving the results as SVG or PNG with the drawing data baked-in.
- I will use the Obsidian Linting “Linting” plugin to enhance portability