So, I was having a great time checking out the Outliner plugin as recommended in Bryan Jenks’s video - 3 Amazing Obsidian Plugins [[DataView]], [[Outliner]], & [[Templater]] - YouTube - until I happened upon a bug that defeats the whole purpose of the plugin. When you delete the last item in a list while zoomed in, the next item under it is unhidden!
I went to create a bug report, and quickly realized when trying to reproduce the bug, that I didn’t even know how to correctly report it because it was being caused by an interaction between the Outliner plugin and the Zoom plugin. I’ve decided to report it on the Outliner github page.
Here’s the bug:
- Make a list with some sub-lists
- Zoom in on the first list
- Place cursor at the last empty item (with “Stick the cursor to the content” enabled in Outliner) …
- Press backspace to delete the sub-item.
The next item, which isn’t part of the list you’re currently working on, pops into view, causing you to have to go back to the first item and hit the zoom hotkey again.
I’m posting this here because I thought it might be useful for plugin makers for discussion to happen about whether splitting a plugin in two is a good idea. I know this happened with the Calendar plugin as well, splitting off its Weekly Notes functionality into a separate plugin, citing the One Thing Well philosophy. I haven’t come across any bugs with those plugins though.
It looks to me like a case of taking the Single-Responsibility Principle a bit too far. The plugin options panel is perfectly fine if users want to disable certain functionalities, and clicking a toggle switch on or off is about as user-friendly as it gets.
What’s the reasoning behind splitting the plugin? Are there benefits that I’m not seeing, or is it complicating things and making compatibility between plugins harder?