Fully visual editor mode (WYSIWYG / WYSWYG)

[Synchronicity]

Exactly.

[giub86]

I don’t think anyone ever wanted to change the way live preview mode works. It is an asset like it is. The point made, at least by me, is to

Without this i’m not moving a page. All it takes is a fourth mode which allows editing in read mode. It takes nothing from you, but would enable a gadzillion Word and OneNote users to give Obsidian a serious try.

[ironhak]

Couldn’t say better.

[dalexis]

Well put. The box with sparking wires is appealing to software developers. But as a software developer myself, I feel that it just feels wrong. When I use a tool for notes, writing, and knowledge management, I want a user experience that gets out of the way so I can concentrate on writing. It is very distracting to see Markdown turds everywhere.

Obsidian is a great tool, but it limits its audience by insisting on catering to developers and people who need the validation of working with “code”. I’ve been an Evernote user for over a decade, and although I’d love to switch to Obsidian, I give up and go back to Evernote every time I try it because the editing experience is ugly. Don’t get me wrong - I love Markdown. But when I’m writing and taking notes, I’m not in the mindset of writing code.

[Naranya]

How did you exactly come to this conclusion? It is quite obvious many of us are not newcomers and know perfectly well how markdown works. And if there’s a snippet or a way to not have the markdown syntax pop up when I want to edit callouts and such, please do share. I hate it beyond words and don’t use callouts because of it if I expect I’ll ever edit text within it or even need to copy parts of it.

It is very much a feature request.

[Ham_n_pineapple]

@giub86

All it takes is a fourth mode which allows editing in read mode. It takes nothing from you, but would enable a gadzillion Word and OneNote users to give Obsidian a serious try.

@evolkov

Just make a setting to disable this blinking text. Shouldn’t be that difficult.

I don’t think the proposed setting is trivial to implement. Some considerations that come to mind as potentially complicated and/or controversial:

1. How should characters/symbols (e.g. asterisks, hash symbols) be displayed? Personally, I would like to be able to use characters such as asterisks in my notes, without these characters adding any formatting. So, when I enter an asterisk, Obsidian would need to wrap it in something that would negate its formatting. Alternatively, if I wanted to use an asterisk in this way, I would need to wrap it in “/” symbols, and these would disappear immediately after typing. This seems quite Live-Preview-esque to me, but I suppose I could live with it.
2. If characters/symbols are not used for formatting, then how do users do their formatting? With italics and bold, there are keyboard shortcuts that many will be familiar with. But, what about headings? Perhaps something would need to be built into the GUI to enable and disable headings. Or, headings could also be added and removed solely using keyboard shortcuts.
3. If characters/symbols do not affect formatting, what about lists? Personally, I am inclined to make an exception here: I think a hyphen followed by a space should automatically create a list. But, I also want to be able to use hyphens in that way without a list being created. So, there would need to be a way to negate the auto-list creation.

I’m not arguing that any of these complications are difficult to solve, or that they mean this feature request is not viable. But, I do suspect that my preferences, as I’ve expressed them in the three points above, may be controversial. Many users may prefer different implementations. That’s what makes it complicated. The implementation has to make a judgment call about such questions.

There may be other judgment calls that need to be made for this feature to be implemented. Perhaps it would be useful to explore what they are. I would be interested to see if other proponents of this feature share my preferences about them.

[peeragetalkers]

I really agree with this. Having only two view modes, without the extra toggle for live preview, would make things simpler and cleaner. Splitting between source and preview is enough for most workflows, and the extra toggle can get confusing when switching back and forth often. A more streamlined setup would really improve the experience.

[quietmyths]

I am definitely one of the users who appreciates having all three current modes: reading mode, source mode, and live preview mode. There’s a lot of interest in having a fully WYSIWYG mode, which I’m not opposed to, but I vehemently disagree with proposals to remove any of the existing three viewing modes. These modes benefit some number of users (I don’t want to venture into guessing user populations), myself included, and removing functionality would actively harm that population of users.

I do think that switching between modes could be clearer or more streamlined, although I don’t have any concrete suggestions here. Just some way to have a single UI element to toggle between source/reading/live preview maybe? It’s a tricky thing.

[reaty]

I very much love all existing modes (I mostly write in live preview, sometimes switch to the source mode for complex structures and always use preview mode for all my dataview tables to not accidentally turn them into code by wrong clicking). So I would not like the removal of any of them.
But I agree that switching between them is not perfect, especially on mobile, where we don’t have the status bar and hotkeys. I think the better solution would be a little panel with tree buttons, one for each mode, and the selected mode button would be highlited, or something like this. This way you would never be confused in which mode you are, and you can switch to any of them with one click.

[Ham_n_pineapple]

@Reijo

What I think would be much better is if you could edit your note in the reading view (which I guess would not be called that anymore). Your note would look exactly as it looks right now in the reading view, but if you wanted to add text or change something you just click and edit. So for example, instead of typing markdown-specific character like a ‘#’ for a header you could press a hotkey that would turn your paragraph into a header or have a ‘tool pop up window’ to make your text bold, italic, turn it in to plain paragraph, header, list item, etc.

If I have understood you correctly, I think your feature request is a duplicate of this one: Fully visual editor mode (WYSIWYG / WYSWYG)

You have requested that there be “only two views”. One of the views you describe does not currently exist in Obsidian, and is the subject matter of the WYSWYG feature request.

The WYSWYG mode seems to be the main substance of your request; if Obsidian had the modes that you want it to have, then you could simply assign keyboard shortcuts to enter those modes, and then never think about it again, right? So, the complaint about the complexity of the available modes seems quite marginal. Unless there is a substantial feature request you have in mind regarding the interface, or the way modes are selected, that is independent of the WYSWYG feature request. But, I don’t think there is.

So, this feature request seems like a duplicate of the WYSWYG request, pure and simple.

[rigmarole]

(Notice: I just merged in a large thread with a duplicate request. So some of the conversation will be interwoven.)

[lenovo]

hello,
this might be out of topic question, but just to confirm currently there is no WYSIWYG mode… and its feature request… but is there any deadline?

Comparing to Joplin basically Obsidian is currently only markdown note… ?

Thanks!

[wysiwyg]

I simply need WYSIWYG. Currently also comparing Joplin and Obsidian. Both of them are very confusing. Trying to move from CherryTree since it has no sync and no decent android app. But also all my cherrynotes get mashed up after import. What a terrible search for a new app so far. Spending days…
If Obsidian had a normal text editor view, i would have switched already, and signed up for the sync. No doubt.

[wysiwyg]

Very well put. That is exactly what i am looking for.

[Alan]

WordPerfect had a neat way of operating, generally WYSIWYG but with a Reveal Codes command that let you precisely control formatting. This was something the world lost when Word took over the market. It, or something like that, could be studied to learn how to mimic the behavior when the markdown codes are not visible.

[Djo]

I’ve read almost all the posts in this topic. For me it is one of the most important topic about the future direction of Obsidian.

Obsidian relies on Markdown, which is a quite simple formatting language As Obsidian grows in importance and in functionalities, and the users want more (databases, tables…) the Markdown language alone becomes a bottleneck.

I’ve tried Siyuan today. Its WYSIWYG rendering blows away Obsidian IMO. It’s both simpler and more powerful to format text under Siyuan, and the render is better, more pleasant and balanced (spacing between the paragraphs / list items / blocks). Siyuan’s outliner is great too, Obsidian’s is limited and quite unpredictable, clunky and buggy in Live Preview. Here, I’m comparing Siyuan to Obsidian both out of the box, without plugins and CSS tricks.

Personally I don’t really care about the Markdown format. I begin too see it more like a limitation for the Obsidian growth than something good. Many people here want the Markdown format because it is supposedly the most durable in time. But I think the .docx format of Word can be read for decades to come too… And a format like .JSON (the choice of Siyuan) is not a problem for me, as long a there is a free program to read it and to export it in another format, I consider it as a long-term solution too.

So I don’t care about Markdown, and I don’t need to see what’s under the hood (the underlying language) when I write some notes. I just want to be sure I will not be stuck with unreadable files in the near future. I have this confidence too with Siyuan (if you can export to .md or another format) or Microsoft Word. So I want a good rendering on screen (WYSIWYG), ease of use, neat and clean formatting, efficiency (with keyboard too), reliability. Something good out of the box that doesn’t need a lot of plugins or CSS tricks to be good looking and efficient to use.

I would have given up Obsidian for Siyuan if if the latter had had a good management of properties at the note level, and a feature similar to Dataview. This is not the case. I’m not convinced about the block-oriented approach of Siyuan. I don’t want to manage blocks of text, but notes. So I stick to Obsidian for now, but the WYSIWYG and outliner of Siyuan, damn… they are good.

[Djo]

In addition, in Obsidian I’m almost never in read mode, because by definition in this mode you can’t edit anything. So this is a kind of punitive thing, you can’t never really enjoy your notes in the way they are best formatted (even if there’s still room for improvement in the way Obsidian formats things in read mode). The read mode is a frozen, lifeless, thus almost useless, mode.

So I use my notes 95% of the time with Live Preview, with downgraded formatting.

WYSIWYG is needed…

[KuiyueRO]

@Djo

I would have given up Obsidian for Siyuan if if the latter had had a good management of properties at the note level, and a feature similar to Dataview. This is not the case. I’m not convinced about the block-oriented approach of Siyuan. I don’t want to manage blocks of text, but notes. So I stick to Obsidian for now, but the WYSIWYG and outliner of Siyuan, damn… they are good.

I think there are some misunderstandings here. You need to add the notes to one or more databases before you can have properties. As for dataview, emmm, SiYuan use with SQL, and there seems to be a basic version close to dataview in the community market.

In addition, SiYuan is not a completely block-oriented approach. SiYuan believes that notes are also a kind of block. In other words, all its blocks have same features as notes (aliases, names, bookmarks, databases and attributes, custom attributes for CSS and SQL, virtual references).

SiYuan also provides a lot of support for notes, just like its doc tree supports multiple sorting modes, new note paths, and multi-dailynotes.

I think it’s worth a deeper experience.

[Synchronicity]

People seem to be requesting two separate features here that are superficially similar but really quite different:

1. Add a fourth mode that hides markdown characters completely, even when your cursor is adjacent to them. To access the markdown codes directly, the user would need to switch to Live Preview or Source Mode.

2. Add a rich text option that eschews markdown completely and saves files in. odt or .rtf, or uses a homegrown combination of html and css codes that would be hidden from the user but perhaps accessible through a feature similar to WordPerfect’s Reveal Codes.

IMO:

Number 1 is doable, but probably not a good idea. It would make it too easy for new users to skip learning markdown. They’d miss out on many of the benefits of storing their data in plaintext .md files, and would probably flood the Forum and Discord with issues they would have easily been able to fix themselves if they knew markdown.

Number 2 would be a big mistake. It would:

• Make the apps far more complicated
• Vastly increase the dev team’s workload and the amount of time needed to develop and debug new versions
• Force new users to make a potentially confusing choice between markdown and rich text up front—a choice that couldn’t easily be changed later
• Be contrary to Obsidian’s core vision
• Result in major, breaking issues for plugins and themes
• Make branding and positioning more difficult, because many of the central benefits of Obsidian would be lost for rich-text users

For most of us, markdown is a core reason why we love Obsidian. Sometimes you just have to use it a while to appreciate its advantages. But if you find you simply can’t get used to it, there’s nothing wrong with looking for a different app.

[Djo]

I don’t understand why some people are ardent defenders of the ability to edit in markdown, are in the same time users and defenders of the Preview mode BUT don’t want a full WYSIWYG mode.

So they want to continue to edit directly in markdown syntax → that’s fine, there is the source mode.
And they want something more friendly, the Preview mode, because sometimes writing notes in markdown gives them a headache? Fine, so why not a full WYSIWYG then? Why do they prefer a pseudo and intermediate WYSIWYG mode that is the Preview mode? It makes no sense. If you switch to Preview mode instead of source mode it is because you want some WYSIWYG. Why not go all the way, then, and replace the Preview mode by a full WYSIWYG mode?

To me the 3 remaining modes should be :

• source mode
• full WYSIWYG mode
• full WYSIWYG mode - read only

So the (hardcore) users will continue to have the source mode.

Otherwise most people will be much more productive to work directly in a full WYSIWYG mode than battling with the unpredictable Preview mode that is not WYSIWYG and so leads to the need to switch constantly between the Preview mode and the Read mode to see the final result of the notes. And even the hardcore users, those who are attached to the source mode, will be certainly more productive…

Because of all the little problems that remain unfixed in the Preview mode, I have the feeling that it is something very difficult to maintain for the developers, that it takes up a lot of their time, and that it’s only going to get worse (with the tables, the databases, etc.).

It is time to give up the Preview mode and refocuse the efforts on a full WYSIWYG mode, which is something A LOT of people want.