In the new WYSIWYG-like editor, paragraphs are separated by a blank line, which means that there is more space between paragraphs than is typical for a typeset document. It would be nice if this editor worked more like e.g. Typora, where there is a (smaller) more natural vertical spacing between paragraphs.
Proposed solution
I suggest that when you press “enter” in the new editor, it should create a new paragraph instead of just a line break, and paragraphs should be separated by a space that is less than the height of a line.
I suggest you add a like to this feature request.:
And make a separate request about spacing. There have been other requests for indentation like Typora, which ought to imply reduced spacing. (iirc the two paragraph models are indentation OR space between the paragraphs; I don’t know if anyone wants indentation AND a large space between paragraphs).
i agree. a problem i run into is using the “move line up” and “move line down” buttons. they’re very handy. but with the extra line break required to clearly indicate a paragraph, i end up having to first move the paragraph and then move the blank line afterwards, since it doesn’t move up or down with the paragraph. it would be nice to have customizable paragraph spacing, but i’d be happy with what you’ve suggested. i think it should be optional though in case people prefer the blank lines.
another reason i like it is it would turn a paragraph into more of a first class citizen rather than just “a thing you can do with line breaks”.
another reason is entering multiple paragraphs in callouts. two line breaks will spit you out of the callout, when all you want to do is indicate a new paragraph. i get that you can type ‘> ‘ to keep the callout going, but honestly some of us aren’t here for the markdown. we just want to record our thoughts in a quick and well-organized manner.
Two years have passed, and still no fix? I started using the Minimal theme now, as it offers a lot of customisation right out of the box. Of all of the granular control, I’m curious to how a simple paragraph spacing is still missing.
I have tried with some CSS, but it seems like minimal overrides a lot of my (previously working) code, so I’m both better and worse off at the same time, haha.
In Markdown, the official way to make a new paragraph is by two breaks (i.e., creating a blank line): see Basic Syntax | Markdown Guide
Since Obsidian uses Markdown, and indeed its whole philosophy is that your notes are future-proof and not tied to any one app, the structure (content with markup) should adhere to Markdown and any display preferences (typography) should be handled by Obsidian and its themes. If you open an Obsidian note in a text editor, it will be very hard to read without blank lines between paragraphs.
So I don’t want get rid of the blank lines and then boost the spacing (a la Microsoft Word). Instead, I suggest that Obsidian should have a way to reduce the displayed spacing of blank lines. That way you’d get nice typography while preserving MD formatting.
I suspect there’s an easy way to do this with CSS snippets but I haven’t tried yet. It would need to ensure that lists and code snippets still work with proper spacing.