Ask Lemmy

Can you add personal notes that are longer than hashtags to your links/articles in Obsidian?

There's a few ways to do that, easiest would probably be foot notes? But since it's mark down you can also format links like on Lemmy so you could hyperlink your notes, have your notes and then use the footnote as a citation, quick highly edited example:

You can also go the canvas route if you're one of those people. Quick example that took me literally two minutes:

Can you do the above on Cherrytree?

I don't have it installed at the moment to show but yes, Cherrytree also supports markdown formatting. So yes, but it does not have canvas support and its internal linking isn't as flexible.

Are there any disadvantages of Cherrytree over Obsidian?

The main disadvantage is relative lack of features and plugins. If Obsidian is doing something you don't want it to, or you think of a way to be more productive or more precise in your notes, there's a plugin for it.

Cherrytree is a lot more... indie FOSS developed, and has just a smaller userbase so less plugin support, fewer features, dated interface, and a much bigger emphasis on nesting notes.

Oh right.

So the big information storage difference between the two is Cherrytree has 'nodes' and Obsidian has folders and notes.

Every "Node" in Cherrytree is an editable note, every single one, and all nodes can be nested under each other like files.

So you can have a root node with literally thousands of pages of information.
    And then a new node under it with the same amount
       And so on, on the node itself, not as a note under a file folder

Which can be useful for some information management systems and ideas. Obsidian is a file/folder structure but its major thing is you can link to any other note by referencing it in brackets, so [[Example Page]] would directly link to the page in the above screen shots. I don't know if Cherrytree ever got internal links like that, but in Obsidian, once you get used to it, you'll be able to create a massive tangled web where you can go unlimited notes deep with as specific of information as you might want.

-What makes Obsidian not very private?

Cherrytree has the option to be a single, encrypted passworded file. Your entire notebook, no matter how many thousands of notes, no matter how many images and even webpages you save in it, is a single encrypted passworded file.

Obsidian doesn't have that option, it uses a file/folder structure. So anyone on your PC (if you don't have any other way to lock out users) can find your notes and open them. If you host the database and files remotely, then there's the only barrier is whatever password your remote host provides, obsidian has no security whatsoever. It's also not FOSS, which can be a draw back, and their own hosting service they offer has had some controversies.