@Nelvin@GreenFlux: like you guys, I would like to have this feature, most, if not all, other markdown apps have it. I had a bit of a discussion a few weeks ago with Lica, who said it is not “export” but “conversion”. I replied it is called “export” in e.g. Typora, the other app mentioned regularly.
Anyway, it has been mentioned in the Discord channels a few times that export is possible with Pandoc. That is a workaround but it is better than nothing. I have not tested it.
My apologies if I am telling you something you already know.
Yes, I have seen PandaDocs mentioned as well but I have not tried it either.
One other option that I have tried is https://marp.app/. There’s an extension for VS Code that can print/export PDFs from the HTML preview. It was easy to setup and seemed to work well. But I’m not using VS Code for anything else so it seemed like overkill.
Yeah, thanks to markdown there are some alternative tools too - as a game developer I basically live in code editors and using some techy solution is also not an issue. But I also would love to keep the actual theme I’ve chosen for any specific vault so I can tweak my docs (of course within limits) visually and I guess it’s a bit more of a task to use Obsidian themes in with Pandoc? But I may be wrong on that as my web/css/html skills are non existent
I also settled on Obsidian + Typora (and VSCode) for now and Obsidian, especially given how young it is, is a fantastic tool already. Imo, once WYSIWYG editing, export and the plugin api is available, it’s going to be a tough time for every other tool available.
No
But once you get on to transclusions, you start to introduce issues of syntax etc.
The key to printing from a markdown file is making sure the source is compatible with the printing program; the Obsidian preview is irrelevant.
Typora is quick and easy, and being wysiwyg, you can see immediately what it will print
This is just your opinion - there are other users who enjoy to use all the features of Obsidian and don’t see editing/managing and printing/sharing their notes as two very different things.
Like, when I edit a table in Excel I also sometimes print it using Excel, I don’t use some extra SheetPrintingApp.
???
Obsidian doesn’t do this now so an alternative approach needed.
I’m sure it will come sometime, but there’s a lot on the roadmap. If it’s not added before the API, I’m sure someone will produce a plugin for it.
Sorry - I guess I misunderstood you - it sounded (to me) like you wanted to say it’s a feature that does not belong to Obsidian and we should primarily look somewhere else for this purpose.
Again … sorry - my fault (not a native English speaker)
You can probably make Pandoc work, but it’s often not straightforward (depending again on content and syntax).
Personally I try to avoid it.
As I say transclusions can be a problem because many programs don’t support them, and those that do may not use the same syntax as Obsidian.
You always have to remember that what Obsidian shows in its preview is irrelevant: the converting program will be parsing and converting the md.
Yes.
Unless you do something funky, other programs have no access to Obsidian’s preview.
The preview is Obsidian’s interpretation of the markdown file.
Other apps will make their own interpretations. In an ideal, compatible world they will be identical.
But that may not always be the case.
If you look at your filesystem you will only the markdown files. Previews and wysiwyg views are merely imaginary figments of the interpreter.
Typora is doing the conversion to the PDF itself. So its wysiwyg view should be identical to the PDF it produces.
When Obsidian has its own converter, its Preview will be identical to the PDF it produces.
PS Terminology
Using convert rather than export makes it easier to maintain a clear understanding of what is going on.
There can be no export because there’s nothing inside the program to export. There’s only the ability to convert the markdown file into a different format.
Hey looks like I’m late for the party, but for those who have a Visual Studio Code it’s pretty simple to do this. First install a plugin called “Markdown PDF” and then press Ctrl + Shift + P and then type export, you shall then see plenty of export options.
Enjoy! I’m currently using this method and is already quite good enough.
