The notes are very much markdown files. There is a very small number of extensions the Obsidian developers created (e.g., a syntax for linking to a specific paragraph within a note) that are not markdown, but it's very easy to not use them.
I'm using the exact same folder of markdown notes in parallel with Obsidian, The Archive, 1Writer, Calca, TableFlip, Python scripts, and Keyboard Maestro macros I have written and everything works flawlessly together.
To me, the killer feature of markdown notes is not the future-proofing, but this kind of seamless interoperability.
I don't much want to get into a debate over semantics, but markdown plus extensions with useful information (like links) does not qualify in my book as markdown. Sure, if you want to limit yourself to the parts that are interoperable go ahead, but then you're not using some of the best parts of Obsidian.
In that case, GitHub doesn't support Markdown, then, considering it shits the bed on one of the most crucial parts of the Markdown design: line-breaking behavior to preserve the readability of the "raw" form.
(Watch now as everyone rushes in to try to say that this behavior is an exception, as if you just brought up that their favorite uncle has some unsavory qualities.)
Agreed. And what is exactly expected to be done, if sticking to strictly "Markdown spec"? You can't do anything meaningful with such a small subset of language features, where as Obsidian and Obsidian Plugins are all about extending Markdown to provide additional features ontop of the language, but stored in plain markdown.
This would only be non-Markdown if it fundamentally broke something in Markdown. Ie lists no longer worked, or *bold* was used to link documents, etc.
I'm not arguing against anything you've written. None of it changes the fact that you're dumping your notes into a format that only works properly with a single proprietary app.
Your Obsidian vault is a folder of Markdown files that use [[links like this]]. You can load your Obsidian vault folder in the open-source version of VSCode with either the "Foam"[1] extensions or Markdown Memo[2] VSCode extension. [[This style of link]] works great with either. I think I also saw a new feature (or plugin?) for VimWiki that allows [[links]] to work even when the target is in a different subfolder, but I haven't tried it myself so don't quote me on that. There are also other programs that use this style of linking.
You can alternatively set up Obsidian to use [regular markdown links](regular.md) , it's just not the default setting.
What's the definition of properly though? It opens and works fine.
If you're saying "Features that only exist within Obsidian won't exist in other apps!" then.. yea, that's true. However features that _do_ exist in other apps, like the loosely spec'd `[[link]]` will work in many apps. Same with latex, github extensions, etc.
> markdown plus extensions with useful information (like links) does not qualify in my book as markdown
Almost every useful markdown system extends markdown arbitrarily. Markdown is standardized much like SQL is — a standard exists, but it standardized very little; mostly just defining the look & feel of the extensions
I am really curious: Why does restructured text get so little mindshare? I used it once to make an ebook into a website, using sphinx. The format is easy to write and read and it has extensibility as a builtin.
For me, reST had the big issue of not being as quick to type as markdown. It's a better standard, that's true, and especially the table features are A LOT more useful than MD, but I've always felt a lot more mental resistance and less compatible tooling. I basically picked up MD on the side (on SO and GitHub), but reST I would have to learn.
I'm using the exact same folder of markdown notes in parallel with Obsidian, The Archive, 1Writer, Calca, TableFlip, Python scripts, and Keyboard Maestro macros I have written and everything works flawlessly together.
To me, the killer feature of markdown notes is not the future-proofing, but this kind of seamless interoperability.