#12

.txt and .md are pretty much the same for copy/paste operations so I’m not personally sure why those can’t be .md files? My code text snippets are in .md format.

#13

They are the same - for parity/sharing with other apps though, it would be nice to set a custom file extension or list of extensions to recognize as Markdown files (md, Markdown, txt, etc.).

5 Likes
#14

Ideally it would support any plain text file format (perhaps a per-vault configurable list of formats), and maybe show a little tag indicating the format if not Markdown, like it does on PDFs and PNGs.

My particular use case: I’m a BI developer/data engineer, so I work with a lot of .sql files. I use other tools besides Obsidian (SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for writing and running those queries, of course, but sometimes I just want to treat the .sql files as project documentation and/or archive them along with the project docs, and being able to see them in Obsidian would be really helpful.

I imagine a lot of developers, analysts, system admins, etc. would have similar use cases.

5 Likes
#15

+1 for this request!

4 Likes
#16

My notes are wrote in MarkDown but in txt files. The impossibility of defining which extensions notes have it’s the no 1 missing feature stopping me from using this software.

4 Likes
#17

This would definitely be useful. I guess it would somewhat connect with this feature request I mentioned, in that you could quickly apply rich text formatting to your writing while in Obsidian (Option for Rich text Editor - Click of the Mouse) - this works: Option for Rich text Editor - Click of the Mouse)

), among the many other suitable requests:

  1. Edit with rich text / preview

  2. Convert copy-and-pasted rich text (italic, bold, etc) to markdown instead of or in addition to HTML

1 Like
#18

Yeah, I’m also considering moving my notes to Obsidian. Besides the .txt notes I also have for instance .taskpaper notes in my folder that are not visible in Obsidian. TaskPaper files are also basically plain text, with a defined format. I have other apps that work with the TaskPaper format better and I’m not asking for TaskPaper support, but it’d be nice to see them in Obsidian, maybe make quite edits and open in the default application for other uses.

For me at least it’d be great if there was a way to specify a list of file types that are plain text. Obsidian would show them in the search bar and give some very basic ways to edit them without the Markdown formatting.

3 Likes
#19

Please do add this feature!
I’m not a developer or programmer, but am beginning to learn some skills that will help augment workflows between Obsidian and other systems. For example, I suspect it would be relatively simple to write a code (in multiple languages) that creates a duplicate folder and file set - copying all .md files from an Obsidian vault into a mirror “vault” of .txt files. It would be much easier, though, if Obsidian could work with .txt.
I have been using TiddlyWiki (TW) recently due to its fantastic versatility in creating content that is polished for external consumption. I envision taking our Obsidian vaults in .txt format with internal Markdown syntax, and using a TW plugin to import .txt and parse the Markdown. Then we can use Obsidian for personal thought connection and TW (or any system that can pull from the txt files) to create content from subsets of our vaults.

4 Likes
#20

+1 for this feature. It’s not an issue for me of doing a one-time conversion of the filenames, it’s about being able to use text editors on various platforms to edit the documents, and right now not all of the apps in my workflow are .md friendly.

8 Likes
#21

I have 16.624 .txt files with markdown links, I’m currently actively using them with a simple markdown text editor from the 00’s. I am really curious what the graph view of Obsidian will look like on my personal wiki, and what else I could do with Obsidian, but … I opened the Vault only to learn that Obsidian wants .md files and not .txt files, can’t we just tolerate both?

Furthermore I would like the user to have the ability to decide that any new notes should be created with either the .txt or .md extension (that way I can keep my system backwards compatible.)

6 Likes
A few beginner's questions
#22

I understand the reason for this request. I’m not answering against it, just making a general observation.

Honestly, I believe that the markdown syntax should only belong to *.md or *.markdown files. Any .txt file should work like it’s intended to work: as text/plain media type by default. If an app save .txt files treating them as markdown or including markdown syntax in them by default: that is wrong. Just my 2 cents.

2 Likes
#23

It was a bit of a hack, but I was able to make something work using hazel.

basically when hazel sees a new file, it creates a copy into a format the Dokuwiki accepts. still rough…but some hope.

#24

Post moved to

#25

It might be better to create a symbolic link. Here is a test hazel run you could use.

Use the an embedded script ln -s $1{,.txt} This just creates a symbolic link back to the same file with a txt extension. That way your content is only referenced so you don’t have out-of-sync content.

Screen Shot 2020-11-25 at 7.24.46 PM
Screen Shot 2020-11-25 at 7.24.46 PM1746×1316 144 KB

1 Like
#26

Why not just let user choose?

1 Like
#27

+1 for this.

It could be implemented with an option of:

Treat the following extensions as .md files:
.txt, .taskpaper

8 Likes
#28

for me it would we enough to let Obisdian manage .md as core files, but allow to see and edit other simple text files (.txt , .yaml for example) that we have to keep in the vaults for interoperability.

5 Likes
#29

I have had some success on Windows just by changing the .txt file extension to .md. Windows throws a popup complaining about potentially breaking the file but I have not experienced any breaks yet.

This wouldn’t address the issue of ongoing cross-platform compatibility between .md or .txt files but might help with transitioning from .txt to .md.

I have not tested any text files yet beyond fairly simple text so I don’t know how any coding or scripting might behave when changing the extension. I’ve made copies of all my files before making any changes, just in case.

Like many of you I have been moving away from proprietary environments and file formats for years now and working towards all text files.

I really like the tool Bulk Rename Utility (free) really useful for these types of tasks. It’s very powerful and provides a preview of changes before they’re performed - use with caution. Or a script to parse files changing the extension would make light work of it.

Here’s a screenshot from the Bulk Rename Utility interface settings I’ve used:

bulk rename extension

Jacqui
p.s. please be gentle, it’s my first post

2 Likes
#30

+1 for the .tex files.

1 Like
#31

Welcome to the forum!

Renaming txt to md should work in any case I can imagine. It’s a great workaround! It just doesn’t work if you have some apps that need txt and others that need md.

6 Likes