Multi-level lists and alphabetic lists

It would be great to have more support for multilevel lists. For example:

1. Fruit
   a. Apples
   b. Bananas
   c. Clementines

2. Vegetables
   a. Asparagus
   b. Broccoli
   c. Cauliflower

etc.

Currently, as far as I know, this isn’t possible. The second-level list items show up as 1, 2, 3, just like the first-level list items.

20 Likes

It depends on the type of nested list you are looking for. AFAIK, Markdown/Obsidian doesn’t natively support lettered lists

Using the Markdown syntax, you can get a nested list with numbers and bullets, you just have to manually change the list marker after you tab. For example:

1. Fruit
   - Apples
   - Bananas
   - Clementines
2. Vegetables
   - Asparagus
   - Broccoli
   - Cauliflower

Works in Obsidian v0.8.1. To get lettered lists, you can embed HTML inside your document as discussed in the stack overflow page linked above:

<ol type="1">
    <li>Fruit</li>
    <ol type="a">
      <li>Apples</li>
      <li>Bananas</li>
      <li>Clementines</li>
    </ol>
    <li>Vegetables</li>
    <ol type="a">
      <li>Asparagus</li>
      <li>Broccoli</li>
      <li>Cauliflower</li>
    </ol>
</ol>

Results in the list shown in your example. This has some obvious downsides as far as readability in the editor, however.

Perhaps a syntax for lettered lists could be added in a non-intrusive manner.

EDIT: Manually changing the list marker in the first example works in the preview, but the Editor offers no help in continuing to build the list (i.e. the list markers are not formatted, and a carriage return does not generate a new list marker as it would when editing a first-level list). Obsidian does support this, as long as you’ve completed your HTML list first (added last </ol> above)

2 Likes

Use case or problem (Obsidian v. 0.13.14)

When making ordered lists Obsidian will successfully recognise that a set of instructions should be successively labelled as ‘1) [Some text] \r\n 2) [More text]’ etc. and will be displayed as ‘1. [Some Text]\r\n 2. [More text]’. This does not apply when creating a sub-set of an instruction using alphabetic characters. I.e., Typing ‘a) [Some text] \r\n’ does not result in the new line having ‘b)’ ready for the next sub-instruction or the preview editor recognising that this is a sub-list.

Proposed solution

Add in the use of alphabetic lists to the numbered list functionality.

Current workaround (optional)

No current workaround found

Related feature requests (optional)

Unable to find a topic related/ similar to this

3 Likes

Any news on this one?

I wonder if maybe a theme could jump in to allow this? At least I haven’t seen any…

1 Like

What a weird limitation of Markdown. But I’m glad we have this clarified here so that we don’t waste our time trying to figure this out. :slight_smile:

I think the closest any one got to implementing this via CSS is this:

1 Like

I tried your nice HTML solution in Obsidian 1.1.16, and it didn’t work: All list items had a number in front of them. Anybody an idea why newer Obsidian ignores the type attribute and how to fix it?