I’m adding my upvote on this. Would really love to see this feature.
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Checking in on this topic again to see if there is any movement on this feature.
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I also would like to upvote this.
I have the Todo section of my daily notes transcluded in my weekly note.
This feature would allow me to easily move todos from the Todo section of one daily note to another using alt+up/down, all from within my weekly note.
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Upvoting as well!
In my opinion, this is an absolutely essential feature. Philosophically, transclusions exist for the cases when the data belongs equally well to more than one place. Yes, there are other cases perhaps where you simply want to showcase data, but in many many others, the goal is for the data to actually LIVE in more than one place. In order for it to really work, it should be virtually transparent that it is an embed rather than just a part of the note, and for that to happen, of course, it has to be editable.
Yes, you can get something approaching the same effect with the Hover Editor plug-in (which is awesome), but there are two issues with that solution.
First of all, it says right in the readme that Hover Editor is forced to use features outside of those officially supported by the API, which means that it’s going to be really hard to maintain, and probably won’t last forever for that reason. That’s because when a plugin has to rely on features outside of those in the API, they can be, and often are, broken or removed later by the Obsidian devs (because they aren’t officially supported), which breaks the plugin.
But second of all, and more importantly, while that plugin is great it hardly mimics the effect of real transclusions (editable embeds) that exist in many other note apps. The practical difference may not be massive, but the impact on UI and user focus is very significant. When I use an embed I intend for the information to LIVE in both places. I don’t want to see a difference. When I do, it pulls me out of the moment and, worse, makes me miss Roam ;).
Anyway, I hope that all makes sense. If others prefer embeds to not be editable I think it would be perfectly reasonable to make it an option, either globally or per-embed, for it to be view only, but for me I would LOVE for them all to be editable.
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When you open the Hover Editor now it opens at exactly the paragraph that you have transcluded in another note.
If the HE is opened in Reading mode, and you change it to editing mode, then it jumps back to the top of the note and you have to potentially scroll through those 5000+ words to get to the relevant, transcluded paragraph.
If, however, you set HE to open in editing mode, then you can start your amendments in that relevant paragraph because that is where you land.
I have set HE to always open in editing mode and can happily and efficiently make modifications without disrupting my workflow.
That’s a false argument because you don’t use the HE to amend features, you use it to amend your own note’s text, and that will not be affected by whatever future API changes.
Why would you see a difference? If you make an amendment in the source note, it will show up in all the trannsclusions.
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I think you misunderstood my point. The fact that the Hover Editor is forced to use non-API functionality means that it will be very difficult to maintain the plugin, Hover Editor. It will frequently break because it is using functionality that is not guaranteed to remain stable. Thus even though there is a plugin that (to a small degree) resolves this, it is still important that this feature be either incorporated into the API or implemented as a native feature.
To your second point, I’m saying that using Hover Editor is quite distracting. It’s very different in my opinion from natively implemented transclusions as you can experience in Roam, Notion, and many other apps. It is a UI issue for the most part but simply having to interact through a separate window is quite distracting when I’m trying to edit an outline.
Not to mention that:
- It does not work on mobile, and I do at least a quarter of my note taking on mobile
- There are many features that don’t work with it, like “find”
- I basically exclusively use the keyboard when writing, using keyboard shortcuts and the cursor for navigation. I very rarely use the mouse. This is probably why the hover editor is very foreign to me. When I go to make a change to a transcluded block, with the cursor, it simply collapses back to the line of code that has the embedding. Then I have to go back up, then hover over with my mouse, etc etc.
Are any of these absolutely a disaster? No. But to me transclusions are really useful. And once you’ve used a really smooth implementation like Roam’s it’s hard to use this implementation and find it to be pleasant.
To be clear I love obsidian. It’s just one of the things I miss. And I strongly disagree that this is something that comes down to a philosophical issue between obsidian and roam. Transclusions do not require a database or a block-based system. The fact that they are able to very efficiently render the embedding, means that it can be edited. And the fact that embedding seems to be quite popular implies to me that it would be worthwhile to extend it. I think that most people would prefer embeddings to be editable and the vast majority of the rest dont mind either way. So if it’s not overwhelming technically I think it’s a no brainer in terms of being a non-controversial feature addition.
Not saying it’ll be trivial by any means. Just that I think it’s something that would be valuable to have and that few if any would be unhappy about
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+1 from me.
The inability to edit transclusions in-place significantly slows down my workflow. Many of my top-level documents are 99% transclusions. I therefore cannot edit them in any kind of smooth manner, but am forced to jump back and forth between documents.
Lack of search is also a serious issue.
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Gotcha. I don’t know Roam and Notion, nor any other note-taking app that does transclusions. But I get you point and if there is a way to make editing transclusions smoother, less distracting or slowing down one’s workflow, I am are all for it.
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+1 This is a great idea
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+1, I would love this. I will be using hover editor until the feature is hardcoded into obsidian. (Thank you very much to the author of hover edit)
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Workflowy has this feature, they call it “mirroring”: Workflowy: Mirrors - A radical new way to organize your data
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liking the suggestion hopefully it is implemented soon. This plus full context embed is something i really like about logseq
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Good point, although Workflowy is an outliner note app, like Roam and Dynalist, not like Obsidia, Bear, Evernote, or the plethora of other similar note-taking apps.
What do you mean by “context embed”?
Has headings, paragraphs, wikilinks and ability to add notes and comments.
+1 here!
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+1 from me!
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+++1
This would be a game-changer for me. Does anyone on this forum have a sense how likely it is that the ability to edit transclusions in place will be implemented in the not too distant future? I love Obsidian but will switch to Logseq (which does this beautifully) if there is no movement on this.
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Nobody on this forum knows if and when: I can state that with certainty because the devs never give any timelines.
Furthermore, we don’t know which feature request will be tackled next.
The only thing that gives an indication as to what they are working on is their roadmap.
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