Keep .md extension in links to ensure compatibility

Use case or problem

Next to Obsidian, I also use Neovim, VSCode and other markdown toolkits to create and manage my notes. Many of these recognize the wiki link format [[ ]]. The problem is that since Obsidian removes the .md file ending which these other tools expect, many of them run into problems and a lot of commands etc don’t work.

I understand the design choice of removing the extension for aesthetic reasons, but it creates problems with compatibility, something which markdown based systems are otherwise very good at.

Proposed solution

I would like to have an option to note remove the .md extension from links. Even better would be to have an option keep the extension in the markdown file, but to conceal the extension if I’m not on that line, like markdown links work.

Optional workaround

It is possible to switch the whole vault to markdown links, but the point here is to use the [[filename.md]] format that is well recognized by other tools and doesn’t require two fields like markdown links [ filename-or-title ] ( filename.md )

Obsidian’s format uses actual wiki syntax (see for example Wikipedia). Those other apps have chosen badly — the point of a wikilink is to not have to worry about things like folder paths and file extensions. I can see why they would find it useful to include the extension, but they should at least optionally support links without them. Another app that doesn’t use extensions in wiki links is iA Writer (Wikilinks – iA).

But I agree it would be nice if Obsidian or a plugin allowed the option for compatibility.

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