#1

What sets Obsidian apart from other Roam-like tools Is its commitment to standards compliant plaintext files which allows it to fit into a workflow that includes other editors. I, like other Obsidian users, use a code editor for my code, I use Emacs for org-mode, I use vim to open todo.txt, and I use Obsidian for markdown. I have all these files stored in a notes folder which is my Obsidian vault, and I would love to link between them and see them all visible in the graph view.

Currently, Obsidian completely ignores files without a “.md” extension. My proposal is that the Devs open a settings pane in Obsidian to allow the user to specify additional file types they want to be loaded as plaintext with no parsing at all except for the parsing of wiki/markdown style links.

This way, users can link between Obsidian notes and other note files that aren’t in markdown. Programmers could also link to and from source code files in their Obsidian vault. (Links could go in the comments of the source code.)

The Obsidian Devs don’t have to patch in support for other markup languages, and users that write notes outside of markdown can use the already existing “Open in Default App” function for heavy editing. They can use the Obsidian interface to create and follow links, even in non-markdown files. The non-markdown files will still show up in the knowledge graph and the links/backlinks pane. This way, Obsidian can can be the glue that links together a variety of plaintext files each of which can be opened in the user’s program of choice.

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Customizable interpretation of markdown syntax nuances, like CSS
#2

iirc Obsidian ignores links in comments, so you’d only have those expressed in the .md
If you’re looking at links with a variety of file types in the graph, there’s no obvious reason for that to be limited to plaintext, or indeed files of any type at all.

#3

Obsidian does ignore links in HTML/markdown comments as well as code blocks, but it wouldn’t ignore comments in another markup/programming language with a different commenting syntax.

for example:

/*c style comments*/

or

# bash style comments
#4

If this feature is added to display other files as pure plaintext parsing only for links, it would not matter if the link was inside an HTML comment. The use case is not to link to other files inside a markdown comment. The use case is to link to a markdown note in the comments of your source code/non-markdown file.

#5

Nice workflow! And indeed a good reason to use Obsidian — not being locked-in in Obsidian, have other specialized tools for other, well, specialized tasks if needed.

I’m sure you know this, but which app opens what can be customized on the OS level, at least in Windows. I presume you wanted that setting on app level? Or do you want to view those files inside Obsidian like you do with .md files?

Or Does that Zettlr option look like what you want to achieve?

#6

Here is an example of what I want:

2020-09-19-101035_1920x1080_scrot
2020-09-19-101035_1920x1080_scrot1920×1080 180 KB

I have the same file (test_file.org) open in Emacs and Obsidian. I use obsidian to generate and track links and Emacs for org-mode features. Obsidian doesn’t understand the org-mode markup language, but that doesn’t matter because I only need obsidian to understand and track links/backlinks. However, I had to rename test_file.org to test_file.org.md in order for Obsidian to display the file at all. This is what I would like changed.

I want a settings pane in Obsidian where I can specify that Obsidian should display certain file extensions in the vault directory as plaintext with no markup parsing at all except for links. That way I can link between different file types all within Obsidian.

4 Likes
#7

This would be perfect. I make heavy use of org mode. I had to do the same as you, rename my .org files as .md

if obsidian could read the plain-text of .org without necesarrily supporting org-mode (althought that’d be amazing) then we make the most of working in obsidian together with org mode.

2 Likes