After reading a comment here about how google docs had awesome markdown handling (I didn't know it supported it at all) I tried it out and it was bad to the extent that I don't think I'll use it again. I can't remember everything, but for instance it kept the syntactic newlines that should be swallowed during rich text conversion and IIRC it had issues with code too.
And then you have to edit it thereafter with their WYSIWYG editor. I was hoping there was an actual "markdown mode" where I could avoid getting into wars about whether this bullet point is in a new list or part of the previous list, etc.
IIRC there's no way to get markdown back out either, once you've realized you made the wrong choice.
Interesting, in my Arc browser, I just tried File -> open -> upload -> blah.md and it does seem to render fine. This exact thing did not work a few weeks ago, meaning the various header markers etc showed up as raw "##" etc, and I had to further select something like "open as new doc" to finally make it look good.
Obsidian has become almost an operating system for working with markdown. Its Live View / Edit mode is excellent (WYSIWYG) and its ability to accept pasted content and handle it appropriately is good and getting better. Its plugin/extension ecosystem is robust (and has a low barrier to entry), and now that it has a CLI I expect to see an acceleration of clever workflows and integrations.
No affiliation, just a very happy ~early adopter and daily user.
Wow, that's a strong opinion and harsh words that come across as really entitled, and probably unfair. From my PoV, they're a tiny, scrappy, transparent and likeable company who built and maintain a fantastic software application that radically improved ~everything about my daily workflow and PKM. I get more value out of Obsidian in a day than most other apps in their entire lifespan. The core app is free! They have to eat. I'd probably throw $ at them even if they didn't charge a few bucks / month for Sync. (Which works flawlessly.) Sure it'd be cool if you could self-host their Sync module -- but many Obsidian users use other DIY approaches for sync; in the end it's markdown files on a local disk, do with it what you will.
