SYSTEM INFO:
Obsidian version: v1.1.9
Installer version: v0.15.8
Operating system: Windows 10 Home China 10.0.22000
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Insider build toggle: off
Live preview: on
Legacy editor: off
Base theme: dark
Community theme: none
Snippets enabled: 0
Restricted mode: off
Are there any plans to change this in future updates, or does this post’s relocation to FR imply it was intentional and here to stay?
In my opinion, the outline has lost some of its value as a quick reference.
In theory, left-justifying the text of #H1 with the dropdown arrow of #H2 seems reasonable as you’re aligning the first character of each row, but that discounts the effects of visual perception. The text chunks are perceptually grouped because they share similar qualities (shape, spacing, color, etc) and those groups are interpreted as vertical lines… lines which are no longer straight, which doesn’t accurately convey the hierarchy.
The devs use a narrow definition of “bug”. There’s no guarantee this will be addressed, or addressed soon, but if they rejected the idea it would be closed, archived, or moved to Help.
This has been hurting my brain recently. I made a mockup to show a potential solution:
I really hope this can be fixed BEFORE Obsidian Publish is updated to match the new v1.0 default theme - I foresee this being very confusing to my readers.
Ccc (h3) should be on same level as Eee, Ggg, and Iii, but instead, Ccc’s arrow icon is aligned with those headings, which IMO is very visually confusing:
Slicing it another way: Bbb, Eee, Fff, Ggg, Hhh, and Iii are all almost aligned, even though they are a mix of h2 and h3. Meanwhile, Ccc, another h3, is way out on its own (and it’s almost aligned with Ddd, an h4…):
I recently started to use Obsidian as a university note-taking tool. What I always did with other tools was to use the index of each document as a unique source of truth, and rely on its hierarchical structure to describe its content.
My mental representation of the documents is often related to this structure. Just by looking at the index, I can quickly understand the content and quickly find information. This also helps me indirectly with memorization.
I’m struggling to have the same experience with obsidian since I found the current index Layout very confusing.
Up to now, if a heading is composed of some sub-headings, a small arrow appears on its left to represent if these sub-headings are currently hidden or visible in the index.
This arrow forces the text to be shifted to the right, making the parent heading aligned with the sub-headings. Visually, this introduces a lot of friction when iItry to scan the index.
Here’s a visual example of obsidian compared to Microsoft Word
Word
Obsidian
Here we can see how “Appendix A” is shifted, making it seems like a sub-heading of “Conclusion”, at the same level as “Objectives, Approach…”.
Proposed solution
Take the same approach as Microsoft Word, and align the headings.
And I strongly agree, having an accurate visual representation of the document hierarchy is crucial for cognition. This bug adds tremendous cognitive load. I am trying not to become a pest about it, but personally this bug has been quite devastating. I look at the outline 100+ times per day, so it really adds up.
He’s referring to the outline. I’ve tried several different 3rd party themes in hopes that one would fix this, but none of them override the current design. Also, I politely but firmly dispute that this is a matter of preference. It goes against all design principles related to hierarchy, and against the psychology of visual perception.
