This is why I prefer clunky hardware with heating cpus and a slow disk. You can easily feel that you wrote bad code from audio and tactile feedback.

Which view/file caused this? v0.2.2 (coming soon) has significant performance optimizations for large files - deferred syntax highlighting, galley caching. If you can reproduce, please open an issue with details!

LaTeX support is a reasonable request! It's not on the immediate roadmap, but here's my thinking:

Options considered: - KaTeX/MathJax-style rendering (would need a Rust math renderer or JS bridge) - Typst integration (Rust-native, modern alternative to LaTeX) - External tool pipeline (render via pandoc/LaTeX CLI)

Typst is interesting since it's also Rust-based and simpler than full LaTeX. Would inline math ($x^2$) and display math ($$...$$) cover your use case, or do you need full document features?

Added to the roadmap consideration list. Thanks for the feedback!

Currently Mermaid doesn't support manual positioning — the layout is algorithmic (Sugiyama-style for flowcharts). Some workarounds: - Use subgraph blocks to cluster related nodes - Adjust edge order in source to influence layout - D2 (another diagram language) has better manual positioning

For v0.3.0's standalone crate, I'm considering whether to expose layout hints. What specific use case do you have — documentation, architecture diagrams?

Great catch! Mermaid styling syntax (style and classDef directives) is on the roadmap for v0.3.0. Currently the diagrams render with Ferrite's theme colors (light/dark).

For privacy, you're in the right place — Ferrite's Mermaid rendering is 100% native Rust, no JavaScript, no external services, no network calls. All ~6000 lines of diagram rendering happen locally. We're even planning to extract this as a standalone crate so others can use it.

Thanks for flagging this! You're right — Wooji-Juice's Ferrite is a well-known iOS audio recording app.

The name collision is unfortunate. We picked "Ferrite" for the magnetic/persistent storage connotation (ferrite cores were early computer memory). Different domain (text editor vs audio), different platforms (desktop vs iOS), but I understand the SEO/discoverability concern.

Open to suggestions if the community feels strongly about a rename! Though at this stage, with GitHub issues, releases, and now HN discussion, there's some established presence.

Definitely interested in the concept! Though it's not on the immediate roadmap.

A few thoughts: - Obsidian's plugin system is JavaScript-based, which makes sense for Electron. For a native Rust app, we'd likely want something like WASM plugins or Lua scripting. - v0.3.0 includes plans to extract the Mermaid renderer as a standalone crate and potentially the editor widget as a library — this modular architecture would be a foundation for future extensibility.

What kinds of plugins would you want? Knowing specific use cases would help prioritize. Custom renderers? File format converters? External tool integrations?

In the meantime, Ferrite has a "Live Pipeline" feature that lets you pipe JSON/YAML through shell commands (jq, yq, etc.) — not a full plugin system, but useful for custom transformations.

Thanks for reporting! This is a build environment issue - v0.2.1 was built on Ubuntu 24.04 which has newer glibc (2.39) and libssl3t64.

*Fix:* I've updated the CI to build on Ubuntu 22.04, which will make the .deb compatible with 22.04+.

This will be included in v0.2.2. For now, workarounds: 1. Use the `ferrite-linux-x64.tar.gz` (standalone binary) instead of .deb 2. Build from source: `cargo build --release`

Sorry for the inconvenience!

This is my only public Rust repo — I have some ongoing private projects in Rust, so I'm familiar with the ecosystem (cargo, crates, the borrow checker experience, etc.).

That said, to be fully transparent: as I disclosed elsewhere in this thread, the Ferrite codebase is 100% AI-generated (Claude via Cursor). I direct the development, test, and iterate, but I haven't written the Rust by hand for this project.

So my Rust experience is more "ecosystem familiarity + reading AI-generated code" than "battle-hardened Rustacean." This project is partly a learning exercise — seeing how far AI-assisted development can go while picking up Rust patterns along the way.

Not yet! [[wikilinks]] and backlinks are natural additions. I will add it to the Roadmap? Love community input on what Obsidian features matter most!

Yes! I was looking at it and hoping they had that feature already. I so want an Obsidian alternative to exist just in case.

Thanks for posting the GitHub issue!