Drawing connection lines on top of Plaintext

[jojag]

I would love to see a plugin that would allow to connect words, sentences or paragraphs with visible lines (of different colours) inside the editor as a second layer on the text.

I know this would not be easy to realise, but maybe the idea is worth thinking about.

[I-d-as]

I definitely agree. I often feel that although the linking, tagging, document structuring, etc. mechanisms are great when you know where you are going, there is definitely some room for for looser and lawless/sketchy/free associative mind mapping abilities that could help you plan your linking strategy and empty your thought in more than just words in hierarchy. If the Mind Map plugin could produce lines between separate items (not based on hierarchy, this could potentially solve the issue.

I have found myself sometimes mind mapping using exported PDFs of quickly drafted unfolded lists within image editing software to draw these lines and brainstorm the system before proceeding to proceed in Obsidian.

Although it is subtle, my flow can become tentative for fear of the even more disruptive and potentially destructive process of having to undo. I guess some of this could be alleviated if there were actual undo capabilities, although I understand there are downsides to that as well.

For this feature functionality, I do understand why you chose plugin, but I would definitely also vote for this as a core feature perhaps with an automated tool to ease the process of making the words into notes or headings and the lines into links.

Thanks.

[peeragetalkers]

I was just reading a note in Obsidian and caught myself thinking, “If only I could underline this passage and draw an arrow pointing to another, just like on paper…”

Sure, I could export the note as a PDF and annotate it there, but that comes with its own drawbacks: losing the ability to edit the note in Obsidian, reduced searchability, and the sheer hassle for something as simple as an underline, an arrow, or a quick doodle.

Obsidian excels in so many areas, but when it comes to visual note-taking, even good old-fashioned paper has it beat.

I really hope this becomes possible someday. While I don’t expect a core feature, a well-designed plugin for visual annotations would be a godsend!

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Some relevant posts:

Canvas — Drawing and Pencil or Pen support

Shipping Canvas to Obsidian for iPad and having support for Apple Pencil, including things like Scribble support inside notes, would be incredible. This already sort of works — I can use my pencil as an input to Canvas if I’m using my iPad as a second screen via Sidecar. But support for additional gestures with the pencil would be truly incredible, like being able to switch between drawing, selecting, opening a context menu or writing in text inputs by tapping the pencil. Very excited for this…

Freedrawing on notes AND/OR Canvas w/ styluses

Since drawing is not planned on Canvas, I wish we could have a plugin that allow drawing using obsidian’s markdown features. I know there is excalidraw, which is great, but I was wishing for direct drawing on notes and/or canvas. Notekit (as an example) is a markdown based app with such features: GitHub - blackhole89/notekit: A GTK3 hierarchical markdown notetaking application with tablet support.

[peeragetalkers]

Stumbled upon Arrows:

Looks amazing but unfortunately it only works in Live Preview, and the plugin was last updated in December of 2023

[growingkittens]

Arrows is the only plugin of its kind, unfortunately.

Generalizing the goal as “annotate notes visually”, Card Note might be helpful.

[untitled]

I realized a few months ago that plain-text is too limited and lacks a lot of functionality. The structure of file layout could be different, not linear “top-down”, or graphical elements should be added, or something else.

Ordinary plain-text is so limited that no Future Request will be enough to cover all kinds of needs and achieve the same freedom as a pencil/pen and a sheet of paper.

A bit surprised to see demand for such functionality - really didn’t think anyone else needed such “exotics”.
But the plugin, as a solution, seems too unreliable to base much of the information of your notes on it.

I really hope that Roadmap will soon have Hand-written Notes to fulfill all such needs…

[peeragetalkers]

Some other related feature requests:

Sketch Core Plugin

Use case or problem I prefer to think on paper and link thoughts together with my obsidian vault. The obsidian excalidraw plugin is almost perfect for this, but the plugin is not designed for sketching and hand drawing notes. Therefore, I find myself with a very laggy hand drawing experience on Obsidian. I imagine a future where I can place handwritten sketches onto an obsidian canvas, just like placing pieces of physical paper on a table, then connect them together via keywords in the obsidia…

Drawing in notes

I’m very new to Obsidian and when I used to make notes in Word and there’s something that’s hard to type out or needs an image to explain and there’s no existing image or the image itself is too complicated I like to be able to draw it, or use the drawing option for other stuff to help take notes but I don’t see that as an option in Obsidian My proposed solution for this is being able to draw on typed out notes like you can do in Word, having multiple pencil size options, color options (and opt…

[peeragetalkers]

Excalidraw allows to draw on top of any markdown or PDF embed.