2021-08-14: Highlights Syncing & a Minimal Editor GUI

Plugin News

New

• Readwise shipped their official integration plugin this week and it’s generating a ton of buzz. Here's the forum thread but basically, Readwise lets you import highlights and annotations from pdfs, rss readers, twitter, ebooks and more. It also has the best OCR highlighter for dead tree books I’ve ever come across, and while checking it out again for the Roundup I discovered that they have half-price education pricing. Their team is also super nice and has been helping people out in the Obsidian Discord. You (& I) can get a month free using this link if you sync highlights to your account. Here's one overview of what to expect from the plugin, & here's another.
• The Obsidian Pocket plugin allows users to sync Pocket reading lists into Obsidian.
• It's now possible to use YAML to force the view-mode of a note, i.e. to set a note with a dataview block to always open in preview mode by default. The plugin is very descriptively called Obsidian Force View Mode of Note.
• Obsidian Macros lets you combine commands from the command palette, with optional delays between commands.
• Obsidian now has an integration with Toggl timers.
• The Obsidian Customizable Sidebar Plugin allows you to add any command, including those of plugins, to the sidebar and assign custom icons to them. Here's information for how developers can add icons to their commands.
• We now have support for Emoji Shortcodes in Obsidian, which for example makes :heart: turn into ❤️.
• You can now automatically number headings.
• Alx's Folder Note plugin is a bit of an update on the OG version by xpgo that lets you have a folder function as a note.
• This customizable linter plugin will let you "fix" markdown styling to be more consistent within a note.
• The new WordNet plugin is a dictionary plugin that works from the command palette instead of sidebar or right-click menu.

Updates

• The absolutely gorgeous minimal text editor modal plugin cMenu from the developer of Yin&Yang now has a setting for custom commands on the little ui bar.
• The original Todoist plugin released 1.8 with mobile support & a few other nice features.
• Breadcrumbs had a breaking change update that allows for multiple separate hierarchies.
• Obsidian Git v1.10.0 now has submodules support.
• v1.0.3 of Longform has some bugfixes.
• v1.6.0 of the Obsidian Spaced Repetition Plugin has single and multi line reversed cards function, the ability to ignore flashcards using HTML comments, and some caching improvements.

For Developers

• Obsidian Tools is an unofficial package designed to help devs build plugins that has some nifty CLI stuff.
• Here's a tutorial about how to do stuff with custom events.
• @TfTHacker put together this object model diagram to help visualize the Obsidian API.

Workflow Stuff

• Here's how you can view your latest readwise highlights in your daily note using the Templater plugin
• Danny Hatcher put together a beginner's guide for building a second brain from scratch using Obsidian.
• Here's a guide for how to Generate Custom PDFs with Pandoc, Panrun, and The Eisvogel LaTex Template.
• Here is a quick guide from @pseudometa explaining how to deal with the problem that Pandoc does not understand Obsidian's Wiki-Style image links(![[ ]]).
• Here's a tutorial on using Templater, Buttons & Dataview together.
• Here's how you can use Macros or QuickAdd to create a button that fires multiple commands.
• @ryanjamurphy put together this nifty Obsidian environment for qualitative data analysis
• Here's a nifty guide to how semantic line breaks can work with the Markdown spec to help make long text easier to parse.
• Here's a MacOS guide for how to make Obsidian your default markdown editor for files in your vaults + simultaneously make other app of your choice (for example, VSCode) default markdown editor for files outside of your Obsidian vaults.
• Here's how you can symlink your Markdownload files into your vault — without needing fancy plugins.
• @SlRvb shared how they use Obsidian for journaling.

Feature Requests

• @arminta7 requested a plugin that can allow for better automations like what Hazel and Dropbox can do to automate stuff in vaults via Zapier, etc. Here's an example of how some folks are currently using Zapier with Obsidian.
• The request for Smart Folders is still getting traction!

Appearance

• the Yin and Yang theme now has better mobile optimization, more customizable  feature settings in Style Settings, & some other nice stuff.
• The delightful Win98 edition theme makes Obsidian look like a Win98 program.
• Here's some CSS for vertical layout of Kanban boards at small window widths.

Knowledge Management

• @joshduffney has a nice video about how to categorize and manage fleeting notes.
• @ryanjamurphy shared a new framework for understanding Integrated Thinking Environments like Obsidian.

Ancillary Tools

• Manubot lets you take a manuscript written in markdown track it with git, automatically convert it to .html, .pdf, or .docx, and deploy it to your destination of choice. Hopefully this helps all the folks trying to figure out how to collaborate using Obsidian.