Fully visual editor mode (WYSIWYG / WYSWYG)

Feature requests
61

I agree, but it would be much easier to use if that peek-a-boo formatting did not make it nearly impossible for me to edit the [[some link|alt text]] (on Android) after the link is activated and made clickable. Trying to select the text just toggles the peek-a-boo between “code version” and “formatted version” and moves the cursor around.

So I can’t edit links at all (on Android). It’s like trying to play whack-a-mole with my document. I have to delete the text and type it over.

It sounds like this “wysiwyg” editing request would fix that issue for me. If it’s feasible to implement (and it seems to me that it might even be simpler than the peek-a-boo markdown formatting), I would like to see it implemented.

Thank you.

62

I appreciate the suggestion, but Craft does not have an Android version. Also, what makes you happy appears to be slightly different from what makes me happy. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us both to be happy. I would like you to be happy. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
64

I just meant that you might be happier with a rich-text notes/PKM app (Craft just happened to come to mind as an example), since rich text already does everything you’ve said you want. Neither rich text nor plaintext is “better” in some absolute sense; they just have different sets of advantages and disadvantages.

FWIW, John Gruber, the inventor of markdown, doesn’t think it’s suitable for taking notes. I strongly disagree with him, but he’s not wrong. We just have different preferences and value different things in a notes/PKM app.

1 Like
65

Yeah, I´m thinking the same. I´m sticking to Notion until there will be some seamless editing option with WYSIWYG.

1 Like
66

I was interested in reading about this, so I looked up the source quote:

https://twitter.com/gruber/status/1380945570089611267

“I use Markdown for writing, not for notes”.

I’m guessing in this context he’s making a distinction between Obsidian-style notes (writing) and post-it note style notes.

Maybe?

67

He was a web writer, so I suspect he was talking about his articles.
And inventing markdown saved him having to write HTML.

68

Sure, but what is an Obsidian note if not a small article? Even an atomic note is a very small article.

He might be talking about “taking notes” in the context of outliners, like you might take notes in a lecture.

edit: Wow - this is super interesting, and makes Gruber come across like a bit of a dick:

69

He and another dev built a paid notes app called Vesper that failed in the marketplace. You can still download it from the App Store for free, though it hasn’t been updated in years. It didn’t use markdown.

Iirc, he uses Apple Notes now. For writing, last I heard he was using BBEdit on macOS and iA Writer on an iPad.

70

This account is a very selective description of the plaintext landscape of the time. Ignores asciidoc and org-mode, both of which are in their different ways more suitable for some of the current things markdown is expected to do.

Understanding Gruber’s precise work (tech blogger, journalist) explains some of the peculiarities of markdown. And why markdown isn’t great for those of us who write for print formats.

It’s a pity that markdown has ossified into different variants and immutable ‘standards’. Also a pity that the format is text only - it would be easy enough to extend to save images rather than only link them; links nearly always break in the long-term.

2 Likes
71

I had never even heard of Asciidoc before. I just looked into it and it is way better for my use case than markdown.

I will look into this some more, especially seeing as I can no longer use Obsidian.

1 Like
72

Registered here just to +1 about the WYSIWYG functionality. I’m new to Obsidian but already super inspired about possibilities as PKM, but the whole “markdown philosophy" making it’s way too unfriendly.

My brother is a teacher at medical university, not a tech guy at all, researches a lot, has over 1000 notes, and was super excited finding obsidian, yet the markdown scared him immediately…

It’s been 2 years since the thread started and there is still no mention of WYSIWYG in the roadmap, nor anything decent in community plugins. So what is the status?

4 Likes
73

If the word WYSIWYG is a problem, how about a « markless» editor.
A lot of users where very happy when the new Properties interface was introduced.
Its still Markdown behind, but so much more convenient, clean and unobtrusive.
I can foresee a lot of people would feel the same with a nice table interface, and then a link interface, and a footnote interface… and then… oh my… eventually you end up with a modern coherent editing interface that does not require you to fiddle with inline codes like in the good old days of WordStar.

5 Likes
74

Use case or problem

I’ve been a dedicated user of Obsidian for some time now, transitioning from Typora, and observed that the styling between the editing mode(Live Preview mode) and reading mode remains distinct.
In Typora, the style in which you edit is exactly how the final content appears, but obsidian not, even in the new live preview mode.

Obsidian is a wonderful markdown files manager, and the editor is also great, I hope this feature can be implemented to enhance its functionality.
And if there are some reason to maintain the reading mode, are there other ways to implement this?

Related feature requests (optional)

A Typora-like editing mode (edit and preview at the same time) - Feature archive - Obsidian Forum

2 Likes
75

Currently I have seen that you can choose the editor type in the settings and the mode (editor or preview) in the notes themselves.
I would like the editor type to be selectable directly in the note, while in the settings I would leave the choiche of default editor.
That way I could keep the editor types and even the preview open in different views so that I could see changes in real time and usually use the WYSIWYG editor and the markdown editor when WYSIWYG is not working as I would like.

Currently the advanced editor is a hybrid of markdown and preview. That’s fine, but I add to the request for a full WYSIWYG editor where you can add formatting effects either with hotkeys or with buttons in a toolbar, as happens in Word. In addition to the pre-existing ones.

Reading the (many) previous comments perhaps this may be an optional plugin, at least in part.
I think it is not a good idea to use an external editor, because Obsidian does not use pure markdown but adds new functions, very useful ones, which I fear would conflict with external editors. And it would mean using an additional program.

Given the structure of Obsidian, when I talk about WYSIWYG I exclude printed page size, since it is possible to export as web, although I would like to be able to specify for a block the alignment or font size.

This would make it easier to insert bulleted lists and links.
I would like for selecting a word to have a command to choose one from existing pages to link to, starting with those that recognize the word as an indirect alias. In this regard, disconnected mentions are activated, and show the number, only after I click on them.

I have encountered an unpleasant problem: If I paste a windows path into a note, the \ are hidden in the display, because they are interpreted as a special character. And even if I write the character manually. A visual editor would paste the text preserving all the characters. By storing them with the corresponding escape sequences.
I would also like there to be the possibility of storing a block of text as-is, similar to the PRE of HTML.

Even here, as I write this post, I had to enter the character twice. I find it “strange” in a semi-visual editor to write the source.
In fact, I expect escape characters surrounded by spaces to be identified as characters and not escapes. And that common objects, such as paths, should also be identified as such.

1 Like
76

About the editor, I also noticed these problems:

  • DataView does not support fields with spaces, also intellisense would be nice.
  • “`” is a character not present on keyboards of all languages and pressing Alt+96 3 times comes long. Is there a command to speed up entering the 3 accents on non-English keyboards?

A graphical editor for yaml and queries would be greatly appreciated

77

Any news on the fully wysiwyg mode?

80

I agree. I love live preview, but AFAIK to get true WYSIWYG—where what you see on the screen is an exact duplicate of the page you’ll get when it comes out of the printer or is exported as a pdf—requires rich text. And then you lose the benefits of plaintext.

Rich text is great in word processors and page layout programs, and there are notes apps that use it for those who prefer it, but I wouldn’t want to see it in Obsidian.

1 Like
81

like the live preview but without the drill down to the md syntax, wrappers etc.
I want to see the formatted text like in reading view, but I want to edit just the text (clicking on links won’t do anything but you can edit the text of the link).
If you want to add formatting, bold, links, heading and other md syntax; switch back to the source edit mode.
it doesn’t have to replace the current live preview mode, but it’d be nice to have in addition.

82

Joplin has what is to me the perfect way to deal with markdown: a WYSIWYG mode that completely hides the syntax, and a dual view mode with pure markdown on one side and a preview on the other. This makes editing pure MD viable, without things jumping around every time you try to edit something, or, better yet, just edit directly the document.

I think that the current implementation of live preview is horrible, and the WYSIWYG table editor in live preview suffers with a mismatch of concepts that do not work. It makes no sense to have WYSIWYG tables and MD for everything else.

83

I believe the best experience for editing I’ve seen has been from blocknote, which is directly inspired by the Notion interface, and could be stored with markdown formatting.

The focus of Obsidian is knowledge managemente (it used to be announced as a Zettlekasten app), there shouldn’t be this turf war with regards to the interface (which can have many editing modes). And currently no other app on the market today has such a full set of features as obsidian, with decent offline mode.