Allow Flexible Resizing/Moving of Connection TextBox & Arrows in Canvas

[jentrepreneurj]

Use case or problem

Like many people, I’m using Obsidian Canvas to note-take and represent concepts visually.

The biggest issue with Obsidian Canvas is how inflexible it is with trying to organize information neatly. In this particular case, moving the arrows/wraping the connection textbox is causing some issues.

Here, I don’t have the ability to adjust the textbox for the “connection text”, and it gets blocked by the chunky textbox

Here, somehow the arrows get jumbled up and looks extremely untidy. There’s no option to move parts of the arrows away, nor are there algorithm to de-jumble these arrows, making the experience of notetaking much less pleasant.

Proposed solution

Create a more robust, standardized whiteboard experience like Miro, Affine, and even Canva - simply have a proper whiteboard experience with the ability to resize textbox, set text size, move arrow edges, etc. - all of the whiteboarding feature in the apps i shared above has a consistent user experience unlike Canvas.

Thanks a bunch!!!

[harr]

I wish Obsidian had a smarter layout engine, that would resolve those cases automatically:

• wrap labels to fit available space
• adjust curvature of edges so that edges originating from same point don’t overlap

I think Obisidian’s Canvas should follow a similar philosophy as Markdown and require as little manual formatting as possible for individual items.

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@jentrepreneurj

Here, I don’t have the ability to adjust the textbox for the “connection text”, and it gets blocked by the chunky textbox

@harr

I wish Obsidian had a smarter layout engine, that would resolve those cases automatically:

• wrap labels to fit available space
• adjust curvature of edges so that edges originating from same point don’t overlap

I have also written about similar problems in this feature request:

Canvas elements respect other elements in their arrangement / Alternative logic for arranging elements on the canvas

Use case or problem As I wrote earlier in a couple of my comments: … one of the drawbacks of canvas is that elements do not take into account other elements in their arrangement, which makes canvas look less visually presentable, less visually ordered, and, as a result, the information visualized on it becomes harder to read and understand. My suggestion is that canvas elements should take other elements into account when arranging themselves. As is clear from my two comments above, this ap…

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@jentrepreneurj

Here, somehow the arrows get jumbled up and looks extremely untidy. There’s no option to move parts of the arrows away, nor are there algorithm to de-jumble these arrows, making the experience of notetaking much less pleasant.

Other feature requests that may help with this problem:

• Canvas > Using dot to make complex arrow connections in Canvas
• Canvas: Arrows of rectangular shape

[jentrepreneurj]

Would you not think Canva whiteboard or even draw.io should basically be the standard for all whiteboarding app?

It’s frustrating how even modifying the edge is not an option… honestly the only downside is that Canva whiteboard is not scalable in the long run. Otherwise I’d 100% switch over and even pay a subscription. T_T

[harr]

I agree that Canva, Miro, draw.io, Freeform and many others set the bar for whiteboard apps. But: Is Obsidian Canvas a whiteboard app? Should it be a whiteboard app?

Personally I’ve changed my mind since my initial experiments with Canvas.

At first I was comparing Canvas to mindmapping tools like Mindnode. I ran into the same limitations as you did and I was very disappointed.

Then I saw Canvases showcased on Obsidian’s Discord server and in some Youtube videos. And I discovered the website https://infinitecanvas.tools/ which shows images of mood boards and of book pages laid out on the floor. These images made sense.

Now I think of Canvas like a pinboard or like a layout table for existing notes.

With this expection in mind, Canvas turned out to be surprisingly useful.