Trigger context-aware formatting only INSIDE a word

Feature requests
1

Use case or problem

As of Obsidian version 1.4 context-aware formatting was introduced. I appreciate the new feature, however it slows down the following workflow:

Given you have a line Nina Simone
and want to extend it to **Singer:** Nina Simone.

Up to version 1.3 it was possible to just go to the beginning of the line, and then either…
(1) type "Singer: " and then shift+home and press Ctrl+B, or
(2) use Ctrl+B followed by “Singer:”, move the cursor two characters to the right to exit the bold passage and finally add the space or

Now, since version 1.4, using Ctrl+B at the start of the line will turn “Nina” bold, too, which I doubt would be the desired behavior for any use-case.

To work around, you either…

(1) … first enter "Singer: ", then you navigate one character to the left and then press shift+home and Ctrl+B, or
(2) … first enter the space, then navigate one character to the left and then press Ctrl+B and enter “Singer:”.

I believe that both workarounds are very counter intuitive to most people.

Note, that in workaround (1) moving the cursor one character to the left is needed in order not to end up with “**Singer: **Nina Simone”, which would turn “Nina” bold, too. This additional step was not needed before context-aware formatting was introduced in v.1.4.

Proposed solution

The new context-awareness functionality, which toggles a word bold without the need to highlight it, should only trigger inside a word but not if the cursor is at the beginning or end of the word.

This would fully solve the problem.

1 Like
2

The closest existing thing currently is the plugin Smarter Markdown Hotkeys

4

Thanks, @a13ph, the plugin does solve workflow (1), indeed. However, workflow (2) is still impossible.

In any case, I think this still needs a changed in core Obsidian behavior. No plugin should be needed for this.

5

I would like to bring this up again.

The current behavior in Obsidian (as described above) is completely different to all other software I am used to work with (including the text fields in the forum here!) and it continues to slow me down a lot.

6

Update:
Since the last update workflow (1) indeed works again (thank you!!):

(1) type "Singer: " and then shift+home and press Ctrl+B

Regarding consistency with other editors, I would still love to have workflow (2) back:

(2) use Ctrl+B followed by “Singer:”, move the cursor two characters to the right and add the space

To wrap it up: The solution I propose is to just insert **** if Ctrl+B is pressed before a word, and only wrap the word (**word**) if the cursor is inside the word. This is what most editors do, including the editor of the forum here.