What would be great is if the notes app was able to link to the folder structure on the machine.
So imagine you have an index created in your notes app, you are looking for something on your machine, so you go to the notes app and search and find it, then you want to click on that folder location in your notes app and it opens up a window with that folder location in a file explorer!
That would result in great uptake of the index and JD system.
I’ve thought of a number of workarounds over the years, though never implemented them — since the Johnny ID system and fast OS searches seem to obviate the need. One (which works in Apple) is to put a hash code in the file comments in the OS, and then you could note that in your index to search for a particular file.
If I remember correctly, Obsidian allows something like this.
Always done in my script that normalize JD structure names and generate a TOC with a links to folders: GitHub - EvgenyVenalainen/jd-folders-tool: Johnny.Decimal folders normalization tool
Logseq allows to link files/folders directly from the index
(It’s just a markdown link)
Demo of The automatically generated index.md file for JD structure inside PARA viewed by Obsidian: https://youtu.be/NCQlNadQBzU
Yep, Obsidian does this.
I’m testing this setup (as an Obsidian newbie).
11.14 Licenses and inside a file called 11.11 Licenses.md and it will show the contents of that file when you click the folder..md and .pdf I think.Bingo. A notes app and file browser in one.
Once we’ve properly switched over to Obsidian I’ll document this on YouTube.
Downside of this approach would be if you have a lot of high memory files in your Index: keeping everything in an Obsidian vault will slow it down massively.
In my case, the Products folder of my JD system is over 140GB. It’s better for me to keep the index separate and use the Hookmark utility to insert a link to the physical location. This pic shows the index entry for one of my clients, with the name of each project as a wikilink, a link to the folder associated with this client on my hard drive, and similar links to the working Affinity Designer document, and shared Google Drive folder for sending finished documents to the client.
How does this affect Obsidian if you’re using it local-only, i.e. not Obsidian Sync?
That’d be my use-case, I think. Just point it at an existing folder of stuff, which is synchronised locally using Syncthing.
I’m hoping the overhead would be minimal? Obsidian isn’t going to try to ingest those files or anything, is it?
No, it won’t ingest those files, but it will try to load them each and every time. Especially if they’re indexed with the Omnisearch plugin.
As far as I know, this will only be a problem if you want to run Obsidian on an iOS device, using either iCloud or the official Sync service. Perhaps with Sync you can tell it what to sync and what not to; that might work. I don’t have experience with Syncthing; downloaded it but didn’t have any luck getting it to work. If it can sync a huge vault between devices with no noticeable lag, I’d be interested in learning more.
Sure can, assuming your network can handle it of course.
We use it to manage all of the JD business here. The D85 Johnny.Decimal structure, which is ~500GB, is synchronised between my laptop, Lucy’s laptop, and the ’server’ which is an always-on Mac mini with 16TB of attached storage.
Once it’s running it just works. You do have to be careful if you rename a folder that contains a lot of data, as it seems to cause a re-synchronisation of all of that data.
Oh and I think there are mobile clients, but that’s really not what it’s for. It’s for laptops and desktops.
Let us know (start another thread?) if you want a hand setting it up.
Ok, sounds a bit more complex than I’m ready for. I don’t have a device to act as an always-on server, and good mobile access is vital.
I have been very busy and so away from JD for a while, but wanted to know if this Obsidian workflow has been implemented, tried and tested. I think this issue is what keeps me from implementing JD, and probably others THE MOST.
JD at first glance can be overwhelming and comes across as complex to the newbie, but in reality it is very simple.
The setting up of the index in a markdown notes app, to which one should go first is the tipping point issue, I personally believe, that if with a click can lead one to the folder, is the feature that will make JD perfectly useable
I haven’t seen an implementation yet. But I’ve looked in to this in another context.
The problem is that operating systems aren’t keen on implementing ways that allow any random program to open an arbitrary file system location. This is a security nightmare.
So various hacks exist, but that’s what they are.
Going the other way, from file system to app, can be trivial depending on the app. Obsidian and Bear both have first-class URI schemes that allow you to construct a URI that will open a specific note.
From Obsidian, you can just drag a note out to your file system. It won’t move the note: it’ll create a shortcut that takes you back to that note. The shortcut even opens Obsidian if it isn’t already. It’s really nicely implemented.
If anyone does want to try hacking this, you use the same sort of method as that Obsidian URI documentation but rather than starting your URI obsidian://, you typically start file://. The internet will take you the rest of the way.
But like I said, your OS doesn’t love that, for good reason. Don’t expect it to just work.
Briefly, on the mac OS, I tried using a hash tag generator to specific files, which I’d put into their comments, and then could use Spotlight (or presumably one of the third party tools) to quickly locate.
