I fail to see how printing your notes to proof with a pen is ‘extreme’ or an ‘edge case’ relative to printing notes that are going to be read by a large audience.
2 Likes
By large audience I mean several persons. But in general printing md files is very painful process. I don’t recommend doing it directly using Obsisian->Export to pdf. Instead you should convert md to docx using Pandoc’s --reference-doc command line argument.
See also this article about using Pandoc (on mac you need to use Homebrew to install Pandoc).
A key, fundamental missing use case. Quick print a note.
1 Like
How is quick printing a fundamental feature to you?
For example I use printing for three cases: printing permanent notes that I stick to doors in my house, as a sport coach I print material for my training, and lastly I print material for sessions with my therapist. All of these use cases require precise printing control which is not part of markdown file format. Hence a tool like Pandoc should be used to convert markdown files to docx files in order to gain printing control when working with markdown.
It simply is, it’s considered table stakes.
I’d be hard pressed to find a popular desktop application that does not have a native File, Print option. Can you?
Personally, I prefer to reflect and edit my docs on hard copy away from my computer to minimize distractions.
I’m not clear on why you are pushing back so hard on this feature request? Many others have expressed their interest in this capability.
5 Likes
Another workaround — open the .md file in another app that has printing capabilities.
1 Like
I just want to challenge how people do their work, in this case printing. Challenging doesn’t mean that I don’t respect the way others want to do their work. In your case you are providing hints how printing could be very valuable feature.
I don’t care whether Obsidian adds a print function or not; I have many apps that will print md files and the extra time required to open a file in one of them and print is relatively trivial but not nil.
One reason that the developers might choose to continue not to add it is about cost-benefit. Once added, it would require maintenance; and it’s not necessarily easy - issues like layout and pagination would have to be tackled (I’m not sure if the current print to PDF options would be sufficient), even if it’s decided that there’s no need to go to the lengths that Scrivener or Word do. afaics, most users use Obsidian purely in a digital form; even publication being online. So the benefit would be for those who do want print (times their gain in convenience and time over using alternative methods) compared to the cost of the immediate and future coding (including the time involved in dealing with future linked complaints and further requests). Would have been seen as essential twenty years ago, now I’m not so sure.
I am gonna chime in briefly since I see this discussion getting heated. Please keep this civil!
The printing capability is the same/tied to export to pdf. IF we end up implementing this, it’s gonna print the PDF you currently obtain.
Another pain point is that export-to-pdf (and print) is using a desktop-only API and is not available on mobile.
1 Like
I believe they already took the burden by implementing pdf export. It’s very awful and there’s no easy solutions to make it better. Obviously they cannot remove it once they decided to implement it. Maybe it was their biggest mistake they have made so far considering how well other features are implemented.
Thanks everyone for the spirited discussion.
I manage 85 employees across 4 facilities in 3 different cities. I’ll meet with inside sales, outside sales, production, IT, purchasing, and accounting teams, plus vendors & customers.
I use Obsidian to help me stay organized. I use daily notes as well as topical notes. I often need to quickly organize a bullet list or outline for a meeting, and having a direct print function would save me gobs of time & aggravation.
Not having this print feature means I use an application that is not my beloved Obsidian to do meeting prep, which puts me at a disadvantage and overworks my alt-tab muscles. The worst part is taking me out of my standard work flow right when I need it most.
2 Likes
Coming back to bump support for this again. I’d not only like to print the formatted note but also the source view note. I can’t believe it’s that enormous a deal to connect to the existing API, but I’d like to hear an explanation why not at least. It’s absurd to have to go through a multi-step workflow to do something this basic.
So many have shared sentiments of simple printing needs. Mine aren’t. It’d be a shame to think that if this actually does see the development light of day then it’s a “what you get in the PDF export is what you get” sort of situation.
Indeed, I’d urge a robust printing solution. A few features of a robust printing core plugin might include:
- Print preview
- A new “Page Break” command
- Margins
- Format styler: default font, size
- Format styler: header 1 font, size
- Format styler: header 2 font, size
- Format styler: header 3 font, size
- Format styler: header 4 font, size
- Format styler: header 5 font, size
- Format styler: header 6 font, size
Hi @ObsidianMike . What do you think about this FR:
Basically if implemented it would allow your printing dreams come true when you just copy and paste content from Obsidian to MS Word or LibreOffice. Select all or Cmd + A should work nicely when copying non‑yaml content in live preview mode.
Thanks @blue_emperor for the suggestion. I have not tried a Shell command as a workaround. Frankly, I don’t have the bandwidth to figure this out and implement it across all of my computers and printers and locations. Maybe it’s not that bad, but I definitely feel like an old guy who just wants the machine to do what I want LOL!
1 Like
The copy-paste idea from @a2jc4life would actually work fine for my use case. Right now I can copy-paste into LibreOffice et al. but I lose my formatting so it’s not worth doing. If formatting would transfer, that would be close enough to solve my biggest near-term printing issue.
Good! They should implement the copy as html feature in the next 6 months. I hope they listen especially you.
1 Like
Please implement “Print” for markdown notes or alternatively implement a “Print as PDF”.
Exporting to PDF then opening it in a PDF viewer and then printing it from there, selecting and copy/past into another program or whatever is a total workflow killer. Claiming that printing markdown notes won’t be rendered correctly is a very lame excuse. Incidentally, I am not talking about printing from a third-party plugin (which understandably may or may not render correctly).
It also astonishes me that this is not possible. Printing is such an extraordinarily basic function.
Having to do the whole export to PDF, and then print thing is a serious pain in the neck and it destroys my workflow. OK, that might be a little bit of hyperbole, but it takes a lot of bandwidth & extra time. Not to mention all the clutter of gazillions of PDFs stacked up all over the place that I then have to manually manage.
As many others have said, a simple file that looks exactly like the PDF export it’s all we’re asking for.
Sure formatting options and such would be nice, but a simple list or page with directions covers the majority of my printing use cases.
If I need something fancy I can go the whole Pandoc route, but that’s using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat for day-to-day printing.