Articles sync only if they have a highlight

[maxkokocom]

Syncing doesn't work for saved articles, it only works if I also have a highlight in any of them.

[hunterclarke]

Hey @maxkokocom, thanks for writing in.

As shown in the README, this plugin only syncs highlights and notes. We aren't going to support syncing full articles to your Obsidian vault.

[maxkokocom]

This kindof seems like the main feature on equal footing with highlights. One could even argue it's more important. What are the reasons to not to do it?

[hunterclarke]

Well we think our in-app reading experience is pretty great :)

In all seriousness, we think that integrations with note taking systems (Obsidian, Roam, Logseq, Notion, etc) are best served by being the place to put all of your insights from reading. For most of our users, the insights are located in their highlights and notes. In fact, for many of our users, transferring the entire article over would result in massive libraries of data that would muddy the note-taking experience in apps like Obsidian. It would render search completely useless.

On top of those philosophical concerns, there are implementation concerns as well. How would we convert the rich article experience over to Markdown for Obsidian? What happens to highlights and notes in that context?

We feel pretty strongly that this is the right direction for the product and the plugin. But I'd love to hear why you want the entire article in Obsidian. Is there something you are trying to accomplish that you can't with Matter + Obsidian as it's implemented right now?

[maxkokocom]

But you don't have to convert article to markdown or do any of that, the format currently used for highlight already is providing article URL, Author etc.

I did a quick hack job just now using existing _pageAnnotations function with a new let of let url = ENDPOINTS.UPDATES_FEED; which is set to:

UPDATES_FEED: `${MATTER_API_HOST}/library_items/updates_feed/`

As you mentioned you already have a reader. Obsidian is for notes/knowledge base buildup or a wiki purposes. Simply storing it and being able to tag it and put it wherever it fits individual user data/graph structure is enough.

This is the sync result I just got, it has empty highlights section, but works just fine:

## Metadata
* URL: [https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/08/17/why-are-chinas-young-people-so-disillusioned](https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/08/17/why-are-chinas-young-people-so-disillusioned)
* Publisher: The Economist
* Published Date: 2023-08-17
* Tags: 

## Highlights

[hunterclarke]

Oh I see! We were misunderstanding each other. You want a note for every article, but the note just needs the metadata, not the content of the article itself.

Got it! I still think this is a bit out of scope for note taking but I can I see value in this idea. I'll re-open this to see if we get any other users who think it would be a good idea.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[maxkokocom]

Great, thank you!

[nickevansuk]

I just came across this exact issue: I capture insights both in highlights and in notes within Matter.

If I have an article which only has a note, and no highlight, it doesn't sync.

I agree that articles without notes or highlights should not by synced (or at least this be configurable), as that just adds clutter to Obsidian when one reads lots of small articles in Matter. However I do think that articles with only notes (and no highlights) should be synced in all cases. If it was worth writing a note about, it's worth syncing?

Additionally I noticed that if I update a note after the initial sync, the sync does not update the note in Obsidian subsequently. Perhaps a separate issue / bug?

[hunterclarke]

@nickevansuk thanks for writing in! We choose not to update the note after sync. We have no way of tracking edits to the text within Obsidian (for example: adding backlinks, correcting typos, etc) and don't want to overwrite any additional data you've added to the note over time. It's a tradeoff.

[blaettlerio]

Also ran into this "issue".

Would also love to see - at least configurable - to sync either all Matter captures or at least as soon as I add some metadata like tags, highlights and notes. Currently only captures with highlights are syned to obsidian.

Use Case: When you send Youtube videos to matter there is always the description added but in the description I cannot add highlights. Therefore I need to request the transcript in order to be able to add hightlights (only 3 Transcripts per day).

Therefore I agree to @nickevansuk to have articles synced as soon as they get metadata.

[dan-iel-lee]

I'd also love the ability to sync matter metadata! My two use cases being:

1. Similar to @blaettlerio, I use Matter a lot for youtube videos, and it'd be nice to be able to have the note available in obsidian without having to request the transcript.
2. Sometimes, I'll make updates to my document level note in Matter after syncing the first time; these currently do not update in Obsidian. I guess this is a slightly different issue, but seems to be related.

[sambuca1g]

I would also like to see this implemented due to the similar use cases others mentioned. Although the repo is unmaintained and seems abandoned...