Comments and Notes panel

Plugins ideas
1

Hello everyone!

I am a avid user of Scrivener, but lately I discover Obsidian an fell in love. Of course there are many things in wich Scrivener is more “ready to go”. My point is, for Obsidian to substitute Scrivener there are some key features still missing. The most important ones are Comments and Notes.
I think the best way to implement would be a right sidebar where you can add comments to specific selection (like Scrivener, Google Docs, Word, etc.) and another right sidebar where u can write Document Notes and Project Notes.

I do not know to make this myself, but I think everyone would enjoy.

Thanks!

5 Likes
2

:+1: especially for Comments—regardless of whether you’re a Scrivener user.
(That said, I’d place Scrivenings above Comments & Notes, but they’re close. :smile:)

Notes Panes—half there

  • [✓] Any note/file can be dragged into the right sidebar, or a third editor pane.
  • [/] Scrivener links an inspector pane tab to the corresponding note in the editor pane, automatically changing it correspondingly when you change the Editor document. A backlinked note document might be less smooth workaround. A fixed naming convention is needed, perhaps by YAML aliases, lest filename-changes break links.

Comments Workarounds

Note Composer Settings:

  • text after extraction: link to a new file or embed
  • template: [[{{fromtitle}}|*]] {{content}}

Type text in place for comment, select it, “extract selection” (right-click), choose comment file for that document. The selected text is moved and links are created at a filename level in both places. Edit these with a ^ ([[filename^ |*]]) for a popup menu to point to the right blocks—the hard part. (Whatever goes after the | in the link is how your link will display in Preview/Reader mode.)

Enable Page Preview (core plugin) to see the comment on hovering links .
—This almost makes Outgoing links a Comment list with a bonus: you could use different files, such as your writing journal, to save the backlinked comments to.

1 Like
3

Im dying for a ‘side note’ for notes- ive used scrivener once and it was one of my favorite things(also the scrivenings- multiple docs as one- and being able to make files sub-files of one another).
But sidenotes is the main one- ive done that in EVERY app i could; in Onenote i just wrote in a text-box besides the main text; In Notion 99% of my pages had 2 or 3 columns, precisely so i could write on the sides…

Sadly dragging notes to the sidepane or using a backlink would mean a separate note- that would mean 2 notes for every file a user want comments (in my case 90% of them i guess), inflating notes numbers nedlessly, creating noise on search (for every file a ‘sametitle notes’ one)…
For me a proper one would be tied to the document, the same document.

But for the time being i found a quick workaround using the Hover Editor Plugin:
hover-editor (github.com)

Hover Editor is an awesome plugin that turns obsidian hover preview editable AND window popups that once dragged stay on top of the screen, can be pined, resized, minimized… just turn previews on hover on, install the plugin and its good to go

Now heres the thing- it works just as well for block(^) and headings(#) links.
So my plan is making it as template for every note a Heading or bullet at the bottom called ‘sidenotes’, and wrapping it as comments (%%)

Then on every note adding a link to itself, to said sidenotes at the top
Example

TitleNote
[[TitleNote#Sidenote]]
(blank) - anything on a note written above the last header

%%
# Sidenote
%%

All that is left is hovering over that link at the top, wich will open the hover editor plugin, and pining/dragging it aside- it will focus directly on the sidenote header and stay there. Then the user just writes as usual while the hover editor stay on the side- and at any moment you can just type under that header in the hover editor window.

In essence we will be typing on the same note, just at different positions
The same could be done opening the same note on a right pane or the sidebar and scrolling to the bottom in one of the views- a way without plugins- but opening every note twice, arranging panels etc etc is cumbersome
A template and this plugin makes that a breeze- and putting said header under comments hides everything on reading view/export.

Ive already tested and it works really well.

Btw ive just ‘developed’ that workaround in my plans (im planing how i will setup my Obsidian in Obsidian) but i havent figured out one last detail- i wish to make the template for every note ‘work by itself’ and so far my schema would require me to type the sidenotes link on every note, the [[NoteTitle#Sidenotes]]

But im a newbie, im guessing there must be a way to put a wildcard in the template to make that for me, like [*(current note title wildcard)*#Sidenote], also making the sidenote header better like # *(current note title wildcard)* Sidenotes,but i dont know if thats possible or how to type that into a template yet.

If anyone knows and could share would save me a good time!

1 Like
4

I also sometimes use Hover Editor for typing in different parts of the same note. Super convenient and, yes, less cumbersome than arranging tab groups when only working on a note for a short time.

Here’s a quick template that should do it →

  • This uses the Templater community plugin
  • For “tp.file.cursor” (where the cursor is placed after you apply the template) to work, “Automatic jump to cursor” needs to be enabled in the Templater settings.
  • You can’t jump to # headers in %%comments%%, so I removed those for now.
# <% tp.file.title %>
[[<% tp.file.title %>#Sidenote]]

<% tp.file.cursor(1) %>







# Sidenote
3 Likes
5

Thanks!! That will work just fine- the comment wrapping at the end was just an extra. Truth be told at least so far since ive came back to obsidian i havent used the reading mode at all thanks to the current live editor. Only exception being the canvas that auto renders it (but then in the canvas cards can be shorter then the note content, hiding any extra fat at the bottom anyway)

Thansk a lot!

6

Experimenting a little in a dummy vault, make.md might have a good bit to offer. I just tried it for the flow editor view, but I found more.

  • scrivenings: Make.md flow view (accessed by a little button when viewing a folder) seems good
    -inspector/side notes: hover editor + templater
    hmm… you can make a link property called sidenote but it doesn’t appear in outgoing links… I wonder if there’s another place to see it when in flow view. Given my preference for scrivenings I would like to find an option I didn’t directly have to insert in the text, but still the hover editor solution plus templater seems a good start.
  • comments: … ?
    Scrivener external folder sync just puts comments in brackets [comment] inside the text—would be nifty if there could be a plugin to pull those into a sidebar pane, particularly for users who might want to take advantage of strengths of both apps.
  • corkboard? make.md has a card view, and other views I haven’t looked into

P.S. it’s not quite there yet… some quirks, and workarounds needed, but it’s interesting.

7

Maybe you can try Reading Comments .

8

The Commentator plugin that uses the “Critic Markup” syntax was exactly what I’m looking for, but it’s not being maintained well and has some issues with current Obsidian version.

New Plugin: Commentator - Share & showcase - Obsidian Forum

9

Have you seen Workbench?