How to create multi-numbered outline

Help
1

How can I create a multi-numbered outline?

I’m trying to create an outline with an numbered list that has multiple numbers like so:

    • 1.1.
    • 1.2.
      • 1.2.1
      • 1.2.2
      • 1.2.3
    • 1.3.
      • 1.3.1
      • 1.3.2

(Without the bullets)

This list should automatically update its numbers when an item is added or removed.

Is this in any way supported? Are there any plug-ins, themes or snippets that solve this?
I couldn’t find anything after a while of searching.
Any help would be appreciated very much!

2

Some questions trigger me more than others, and especially if they ask for something which I don’t know how to do, but I do believe is doable. Like this one, I was sure I’ve seen something like this, but I’m not that well versed in CSS, so I couldn’t tell how to do it immediately. However, with some googling and playing around I came up with the following CSS-code:

.markdown-preview-section ol>li::marker {
  content: counter(list-item) "\A0"
}

.markdown-preview-section ol>li ol>li::marker {
  content: counters(list-item, ".") "\A0"
}

.markdown-preview-section ol>li ol>li ol>li::marker {
  content: counters(list-item, ".") "\A0"
}

.markdown-preview-section ol>li ol>li ol>li > ol>li::marker {
  content: counters(list-item, ".") "\A0"
}

To get this to work you need to add the CSS code above into its own file, and store it in ..vault../.obsidian/snippets/someName.css, and then go to Obsidian settings > Appearance (and at the end there) > someName and enable that CSS-snippet.

Which produced the following output:

image
image800×729 16.7 KB

Source editing to the left, and reading view to the right. More care could surely be taken to produce nicer output. (Most of this answer by the way is based upon the following Webmasters Stack Exchange answer: css - Numbered list with subclauses - Webmasters Stack Exchange)

Hope this helps! :smiley:

5 Likes
3

Oh wow that’s amazing!

That is really helpful, thanks a lot for the work you put in.

Just what I was looking for and that snippet is also very concise, if I want to adjust something I got a good idea on what to change now.

Still feels a bit weird to me that Obsidian has no official support for outlines that use multiple numbers per row, might it be worth to do a feature request for it? Couldn’t find an existing request for it in a quick search.

4

This is great! Does anyone know if it’s possible to get this effect to show up in Live Preview mode? Currently it’s only showing up for me in Reading mode.

1 Like