Add an Option for Enter=New Paragraph

Feature requests
35

I come from a 25 year programmer perspective. I have used Markdown syntax previously in informal documentations. Looking at my small collection of Obsidian notes I observe that:

  • most are in paragraph forms

  • but some are not

It would be odd for an Enter to advance two lines when I am editing these single line constructs.

for example:

Hi Jane
How are you?

I am ok.
Thank you.

Significant faith stopping events:

  • Meg no longer certain about creeds and certain doctrines
  • Sharon’s panic attacks

Hoping to see you soon.

Regards,
My Name

Category Delta Omicron
case volume 16929 52133
hospital admission 1.12% 0.17%
ICU admission 0.14% 0.001%
on ventilator 0.06% 0.00%
death 0.08% < 0.01%
36

That’s exactly it.
Coders like - and are used to - the current key allocation.
Writers are used to the requested feature.

If you think of Obsidian as a traditional markdown editor, you expect. current behaviour; if you look at Live Preview, the request is consistent with the other WYSIWYG markdown editors.
If you think of it as a PKM program, the request is consistent with the other PKM programs.

It’s a question of how you see Obsidian and what you are used to. That’s why the suggestion is for a toggle. Everyone can have their preferred behaviour and keystrokes.

You would be surprised at the number of people trying to use CSS to make lines work like paragraphs. Which may be fine for web publishing where similar CSS can be used but not otherwise.

3 Likes
37

There’s no way to downvote things, but having this as the default is such a bad idea, “just because some people are less savvy than other so it should be the default”. No.

I wholeheardly agree with argentum that an option should exist that allows one to do “Enter → New Paragraph; Shift-Enter → New Line”. But that should be a parallel option to what already is default now. After all, path dependency exists, and to set a different set of commands as default after all this time is honestly, malicious and a collective middle finger to almost everyone who already uses Obsidian.

To set it as default “just because” all the other PKM apps are is just weird, as well. I have to double-enter to create a new paragraph here in this very forum; I have to double-enter if I use Reddit, or Discord, or WhatsApp. To claim that it should be default because “people are not used to it” is intellectually disingenuous.

I also don’t understand the weird dichotomy being a “writer” or “coder” that the OP seems to keep mentioning. It is an intellectually dishonest argument just meant to separate the “us” vs “them”, and adds nothing to comprehension. To be 100% clear, I don’t write code, except for CSS that I tried to learn about a week ago, and written two theses, so technically I’m a writer. And I don’t give a flying flute about what Markdown standards are or not. But what I do know is that changing the default settings now is just going to cause mayhem for everyone, and for that reason alone, I cannot support “Enter = New Paragraph as default” in good faith.

2 Likes
38

But, at the moment, there isn’t one.

Live Preview is recent, and that’s the factor most likely to attract WP users.

Well, I’ve been here for over 18 months. I change settings all the time. I’d have no problem at all if default behaviour on anything changed. So long as I knew, and so long as I could revert to what I was used to.

[quote=“tingmelvin, post:37, topic:29361”]
“writer” or “coder” that the OP seems to keep mentioning … is an intellectually dishonest argument just meant to separate the “us” vs “them”,[/quote]

There’s no dishonesty in the argument. It’s a recognition that a very large group of current users, will prefer current behaviour and it is others, probably including many new users attracted by Live Preview, who would want a change.

The reason for having a toggle is that there are two distinct groups, as well as those in the middle who have no difficulty switching between modes. No need for an us or a them. I think it is disingenuous to ignore the fact that two groups of users have different expectations and muscle memory for these keystrokes.

Programmers spend most of their time using lines, text editors and, maybe, traditional markdown editors. I would be very surprised if anyone in that group would prefer Enter to = new paragraph. And I would expect them to understand the difference between a line and a paragraph.

Those who primarily use word processors will be most used to Enter=new paragraph. They are a different group, and this is the group that has been having issues. And quite a few currently believe they are writing paragraphs, when really they are writing lines.

I’ve never suggested that. It’s mentioned purely to demonstrate that it’s standard behaviour in most ‘competitor’ apps, as well as word processors and wysiwyg markdown editors. One of the arguments against it was that markdown editors all have enter=new line, so Obsidian should too, which makes it worth pointing out that it’s standard in many equivalent programs. All depends on how you see Obsidian.

I doubt there’d be mayhem, and Licat has already switched default editor a time or two. But I do take the point. I also accept @austin’s argument why it ought to apply only in Live Preview. I do think it ought to be a toggle, and it could be put on the entry screen in the same way as the editor choice is, in which case the default concept would be meaningless.

But at the moment it doesn’t exist as an option at all, and it ought to.

39

Thought I’d check, and that’s true for MarkText too.
I assume it’s an attempt to offer both groups of users the keystrokes they are used to. I thought it would be confusing, but I suppose it isn’t. Few WP users would often switch to source mode. Not sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any complaints.

40

Discourse only providing heart reactions is :frowning:

FWIW, I would downvote this feature request.

41

I don’t use Obsidian as an editor any more; coders seem determined that it remain a code editor only.

But I have two workarounds, for those who are interested:

  1. Copy an Obsidian page (or any document or list with lines, where you really want paragraphs), paste into a word processor (Word does this perfectly, but it has worked 99% of the time in other word processors), then copy that page and paste back into the program you started with. Voilà! Lines are now paragraphs.
  2. Use a keyboard utility. I used Clavier+ to do this in another program. I set up Enter to produce Enter Enter when the Num Lock was set to off (usually I have it on, but it doesn’t matter anyway). Since I nearly always want a succession of one behaviour or the other, I don’t use the Num Lock very often, and I always have paragraphs when I want them.
    Simple and effective.

Though neither is as good as programs that allow configuration.

1 Like
42
  1. “Strict line breaks” is already disabled by default which gives you a paragraph on line break in reading view and parity on live preview and reading (breaking markdown spec by the way; strict line breaks is one of the first things I toggle on).
  2. comparisons to outliners like roam and athens and markdown editors like Obsidian is apples and oranges. I’ve yet to use an editor that behaves as you are prescribing by default. This would be surprising behavior.

An aside, given the overwhelming enthusiasm for live preview, I’m not quite sure how a line break behavior default like this means coders are determined that [Obsidian] remain a code editor only. :laughing:

43

They’re not paragraphs. Still just lines. Markdown is strict in its definition of paragraphs.

As I pointed out above, there’s Typora and MarkText.

Roam etc are PKM apps as well as being outliners.
You can see the way that users switch between them - including Obsidian - that many are interesting in the PKM abilities rather than the outliner design.

1 Like
44

PLLLELEEEEAZE

I am both a coder and a writer. I want BOTH and I want both NOW.

I use many conventions in different contexts and for different uses. This is part of life. Get over it. Obsidian is already being used way beyond just plain markdown (Latex, for example), and all the different flavors of markdown have their own raison d’être, and many of them are ubiquitous enough that it behooves any text editor to support them.

Another example of arbitrary limitations is not using editing toolbars because it is distracting. Sure, for some, but for others they are a boon, or they wouldn’t be so ubiquitous. If you don’t like them, don’t use them. But banning them altogether is cutting off your nose to spite your face. (I have found a plugin for that though…in chinese!)

I would say the same for this.

3 Likes
45

If you are a coder and a writer, try making a plug in that will do what you want. Remember Obsidian is still basically a beta program. There are a grand total of 3 programmers working on fixing bugs and adding new features. This is on a program that works across Microsoft Software, Apple Software (Mac OS, iOS), Android Software, and Most of the Flavors of Linux Software. Each of these all do the same thing in different ways. They are essentially magicians getting this to work. They have a defined roadmap they are following . The mods here are volunteers and bend over backwards to help our community, and they do an awesome job. This community is amazing.

Making demands make you sound like a toddler. Why don’t you hold your breath until they programmers do what you want and get down on the floor and kick and scream.

2 Likes
46

Thanks. Points well taken. My tongue was very much in my cheek, but I appreciate the background, and I concur that they (those you mentioned) have done a great job, and it is daunting. The issue of whether it is easy or not is different from whether it is a good idea, and that is really what I was speaking to. I wanted to subvert the coder vs. non coder mentality. Admittedly I was playing the gladfly, but no disrespect was intended, and apologies if umbrage were to be taken. It wasn’t a demand, just a perspective, and really offered in the spirit of good will.

47

I think the way to resolve the “defaults” issue is to have a dialog on first open that asks whether the user wants Obsidian to behave more like a word processor or a code editor. This would change several settings, which could of course be changed independently. There would also be a “master switch” in settings which would change them all at once.

48

Ah, I posted this in Help today

and now I am finding this feature request, which is very close to what I had in mind.

One thing that was not mentioned here is that showing a complete blank line to separate paragraphs wastes a lot of screen space. Just look at any Obsidian note. This convention comes from the time of the 80x25 screen where you could only create vertical space between lines by creating an empty line. But just like the default Obsidian font is not a monospaced font to emulate the 80x25 screen, I don’t see any reason to show us a full blank line between paragraphs now.

49

No, this convention is from HTML and the markdown spec.

50

I would love to see a plugin adding this feature.
Coming from both heavy programming and writing (game dev docs) background, I am hoping to use Obsidian rather than a few programs put together for the docs we need.
Thank you for the software though, as it is, it’s really good.

51

Correct you are!

Furthermore, the convention allows us to apply Robert Lin’s Semantic line breaks, a minimal version of Mattt’s Semantic Line Breaks (sembr.org).

2 Likes
52

Maybe the Hard Breaks plugin might be of help: obsidian://show-plugin?id=hard-breaks.

53

Thank you, I’ll take a look.

54

+1
This would be pretty nice, not having to press enter twice for a new paragraph. I think this is also how it works on mobile.