Thank you rigmarole for the reply. I think I did misunderstand the use of “turn off tabs” options.
My problem is:
I want tabs button to create tab character. However, in my Ipad, the tab button work like a shift-tab. It move all the line from the start. And it also changes the line into red color.
I had thought there is a hot key defined with the tab button but it doesn’t.
I have just update to newest version macOS and it happened to macOS too.
I use safe mode so no community plugins are installed
I think I see what you mean now! Can you let me know if I understand you correctly?
You want to insert spaces (or tab character) where your cursor is positioned. But no matter where your cursor is positioned, it indents the entire line.
My workaround for this in MacOS was to use BTT (Better Touch Tool) to replace the TAB key with four spaces when I press it inside Obsidian (BTT is a great tool that I use in my daily workflow and I already had the license for it).
Open the BTT Configuration
Add Obsidian App by clicking in the plus sign that is in the bottom left corner
Select ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ from the top dropdown
Click on the plus sign at the bottom of the ‘Groups and Top Level Triggers’ section and set the TAB key to this trigger by selecting ‘Keyboard Shortcuts’ in the trigger configuration (right side)
Click on the plus sign at the ‘Actions Assigned to Selected Trigger’ section and select ‘Insert/Type/Paste custom Text’ as the action
Write the four blank spaces in the ‘Insert/Type/Paste custom Text’ action configuration and save
Obsidian is a plain text editor that uses Markdown. Basic Markdown does not include
tabs. It is not a word processor. Obsidian is extensible, so maybe someone can write a plug in or CSS snippet to do tabs, like they have done for tables. Remember this is still essentially beta software.
For vim users, we already have ctrl+D and ctrl-T to change indentation. So yeah we don’t need Tab to change indentation. At the very least, we could have ctrl-V Tab insert a tab just like in vim. I wonder if CodeMirror could be tweaked to enable that.
In the meantime, BTT sounds like an OK workaround (although it may conflict with plugins that use TAB to navigate in or reformat markdown tables)
Very annoying that there is no option to switch between tab character and indent. Specifically for plugins and using tab for shortcuts, it isn’t possible to use tab for shortcuts or plugins whilst this is commonly used in other programs for expansions. Would very much appreciate the choice of the two functionalities.
I used Obsidian for my daily work log and have to scan barcodes.
Most barcode scanners are set to send either a tab, carriage return or line-feed character after a scan. In my case, all scanners are set to send tabs, which indents my notes.
For a compromise, I suggest not auto-indenting if the user has started code formatting with a backtick ` and submits a TAB keypress.
Woah, so weird: used obsidian for months, then decided to subscribe for sync…
and then this update comes out which makes me regret getting used to obsidian.
There is a on/off feature under Options > Editor that allows us to change tab characters to space characters instead. And yet tabbing in the middle of the line does not insert those space characters - it tabs the line forward instead.
I am politely curious as to the logic of this, as my google fu has not uncovered any logic behind why this is a thing in Markdown.
For example, I would tab things so I could move the attributing author beneath a quote. In Obsidian to do this I instead need to use right-align, which for ease of use requires two plugins (Templater and cMenu).
Or like others here, I would tab within a sentence if I wanted to have something like a comment visually pleasantly in line with others. Instead I can use the Advanced Tables plugin to create a table, or copy-paste the tab character or spaces within a line.
I realize Obsidian may not be a word processor, or Scrivener, but dangnabit that’s exactly how I’m using it - a wonderful way of linking all my ideas for world building together, being able to actually see where I’ve written about the same thing a dozen times over and consolidate my notes, while writing out drafts using the Longform plugin.
In the end I’ll survive the move to Obsidian without being easily able to right-align or tab within a sentence, but it’ll require I change my habits - and the procrastinator in me apparently demonstrates that it’s easier to spend an hour looking for an answer instead of putting the effort into changing habits XD
That answers your question about the logic of it. It’s a Markdown-based editor, and Markdown doesn’t support formatting indentation like that. It strips internal whitespace.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d probably use it too. I use actual tab-stops in Scrivener all the time to align things in pseudo-tables, and miss that.
But in Obsidian, this tab/space setting only applies to indenting lines. If you need to insert a tab character inline, you’ll need to insert it using some kind of snippet tool, and then be ready to handle any glitches in your formatting.
