Features supporting maximum character count in a line

I usually hard-wrap my Markdown files to a maximum number of characters, since it makes easier the lives of various textual diff tools like git diff.

This brings up several features for the editor and preview that target my use case:

  1. Monospaced font choice in the editor
    I know it’s possible to change this with Custom CSS, but that seems like a slight overkill if I didn’t want to customise anything else.
  2. Line width guides
    A visual line in the editor at a preset column position (only makes sense with a monospaced font).
  3. Alternative line break treatment for the preview render
    An option to treat in-paragraph line breaks in the source file like in other apps/Markdown flavours: Two spaces at the end of a line mean a line break. Without these two spaces, no line break is rendered, and the rendered text continues on the same line.
  4. Text reflow in source file (not as important)
    Vim has this feature (gqq all day). This might be for later down the road.

I think the first one has been mentioned around the forum already, but I couldn’t find any mention of the others.

18 Likes

Yes, #3 in particular really surprised me — I don’t recall ever using anything where newlines in markdown weren’t gobbled on rendering to HTML; lots (but not all!) of my notes are hard-wrapped and they look very weird in Obsidian’s preview.

5 Likes

I’ll add my support to this one as well. Number 3 really surprised me as well as the only other place where I’ve seen this happen is GitHub issues, and it’s a divergence from the markdown spec. I, like you, hand-wrap my markdown as I break my lines at 80 characters.

1 Like

I also truly want the support of hard-breaks like the Markdown spec intended.
This could be an option like Typora has ?

1 Like

I also hard wrap all of my notes and automatically reflow/format them using Prettier in my current setup. I created a feature request that would be a superset of your fourth point: Autoformat notes.

2 Likes

Is #1 the same as the gq} command in vim? If so, I’m looking for something like that. I have some imported md files having long lines, and it makes it easier to edit these if I could quickly break them into smaller lengths.

A maximum line length via a visual guide is an important feature for me as well. Obsidian appeals to me because it uses plain ol’ Markdown, which I can edit and open in other tools as well. But that also means that I want these notes to have a similar look and feel to how I usually compose Markdown:

  • Hard-wrap after 80 characters (except for links and tables)
  • Two spaces at the end to indicate a line break
3 Likes

I’ll throw my hat in the ring that I’d love some sort of reflow feature as well. Just some way to get rid of the darn newline characters that plague text copied in from pdf

Yep! This is the main function I’m really missing right now.

1 Like

The missing line break when two spaces are at the end of a line annoys me, too. Please at least fix this.

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+1. It is very important if edit notes in Obsidian itself.

Would still like to have this.
Especially the line length.

One year later, this feature is still very much desired!

1 Like