For me, definition list is vital for personal knowledge management and should be built into Obsidian. It is a concise and formatted way to provide clean definitions (including paragraphs, code blocks, equations, etc.) to terms, that lists and tables cannot substitute.
It is part of the extended markdown syntax and has been implemented in many markdown systems as people have pointed out already. Compared to callouts, this should be a relatively easier implementation for something so important and overdue. Love to see the result when the great Obsidian team delivers!
If this workaround allowed for using [[ ]] links within the HTML styling, it might get us most of the way to useful.
Unfortunately, dl/dt/dd does not allow Obsidian-style links.
Have tried a few other sloppy HTML/CSS hacks like sup/sub to include inline definitions with links back to the terms, but the first-principles goal of inline, intra-file, at the level of individual terms (not the inside-the-box, webpage-proxy, whole page or nothing-type) disambiguation remains unsatisfied.
Methinks thar be a disconnect in jargon that’s preventing this essential though apparently as-yet unmet function from being realized.
And they seem to reenforce the webpage-proxy-cognitive frame (e.g. edit → preview → display | separating the inseparables of content from its context or creation from its usage), which limits development of broader, more robust, yet more essential/rudimentary tools for managing knowledge in Obsidian.
Seems we’re in search of a single, simple solution to multiple, complex problems/use cases.
It’s this kind of low-hanging fruit, the direct inverse of a “solution looking for a problem,” that precedes its “plucking.” Either via paradigm shiftwithin a product or its corollary, market disruptionwithout.
Or I suppose there’s the tragic third option for the fruit of frame-bound problem-solving: withering on the vine.
Forgive the nihilistic polemic. Must’ve poured too much Nietzsche in my morning coffee…
To your point, 40+ post-count thread with healthy mix of VIPs, insiders, supporters, and members über-interlinked with similar threads, yet no direct comment from Devs is out of character for this forum and the Obsidian Community writ large.
We try to follow commonmark and they haven’t accepted this extension yet.
Regardless, at a certain point there will be a a major rework of the the parser libraries we use (both first party and third parties). At that time, we will look into definition lists.
There are no ETAs on when this will happen and this is not short term task. I am sorry.
@WhiteNoise thank you for your reply, but I’m not sure if the request linked would fulfill the purposes described here. A definition list is just another form of list rendered to HTML (similar to a bulleted list
and numbered list ) and as others have suggested should be a fairly simple implementation with the right parser. The liked feature request sounds like it’s more for defining variables since I believe that’s what YAML would be used for.
It would also be cool if it was possible to preview the definition like the headings. For example ![[Definition list#Demography]] or using a different sign: ![[Definition list:Demography]]
pretty please? My pup Evey also requests them. although I’m not sure how well she’d be able to use them… Even on her iBark… she’s got such a hard time typing, and gets frustrated so easily…