🌠 Links in Admonitions, Generated Indexes, & Pandoc improvements

Obsidian Updates

• Obsidian Release v0.12.6 (Insider build) added the new Note Composer core plugin.
• Obsidian Release v0.12.7 (Insider build) was mostly focused on bugfixes and Sync; third party sync tools should have a harder time corrupting the sync database now.

Plugin News

New

• Obsidian File Explorer Count lets you see how many files you have in a folder without having to hover.
• You can now get a pomodoro timer in your status bar.
• the Breadcrumbs plugin allows you to assign parent, child, and sibling links to other notes using YAML and then get a visual navigation sidebar thing.
• There’s a new task management plugin. Each task is represented as a Markdown note with a single task line and some metadata in the frontmatter.

Updates

• The Obsidian Pandoc export plugin now supports frequently requested features like Pandoc citations and templates. It's still a bit fiddly for now, but it's got a new wiki and some bug fixes too.
• The new updates to Admonition allow for non-codeblock admonitions so that links can work! Here’s an example.
• Table Extended also moved away from codeblocks in order to better support backlinks and forward links.
• Note Refactor 1.7.0 is now available. It supports [markdown](links) and adds a new command for extracting selections.
• Tracker 1.7.0 adds a new output type 'month', rendering a month view for a given dataset, as in this example.
• QuickAdd 0.2.2 has a bunch of behind the scenes improvements, and updated documentation. 0.2.12 adds an example for fetching tasks from Todoist into your vault, in a format that the Tasks plugin will collect. A lot happened here this week. If you like Templater, you will probably also like QuickAdd. For example, this incredible QuickAdd script Christian put together lets you split named (instead of just numbered) headings off into atomic notes in a particular folder, embedding the section in the new note instead of moving the text out of the literature note. This solves a bunch of the problems outlined in the discussion of my [increasingly atomic folders] workflow writeup about why I do it “my way” instead of using the “proper” atomic note method. Now you can have the best of both worlds!
• Obsidian Tasks 1.1.2 had some bugfixes and a documentation update. It should be easier to use now.
• v0.1.0 of the LanguageTool plugin has been released. It adds automatic checking, a new suggestions popup, and a handy status bar menu.
• Smart Typography 1.0.3 adds better dash rules so that YAML and arrows don’t get screwed up anymore.

Under the Radar

• Text Expand can generate indexes across notes if you specify a \folder, #tag or [[Link]] to generate an output of links that are readable by obsidian.

For Developers

• When putting together QuickAdd, @Christian figured out how to enable the Obsidian autocomplete for page names in the modal window. Check out the repo (or ping him, he’s very nice) if this would be useful for something you’re working on.
• There is now a editor-menu event on Workspace, which can be used to add more options to the context menu inside the editor.

Workflow Stuff

• @tallguyjenks shared best some practices for YAML
• @cotemaxime shared that you can type app.garbleText() into the console to blur text before sharing a screenshot.
• Another neat template for Zotero was shared. This time with buttons!
• @thecookiemomma shared a plugin list they think would be useful for writers.
• @death_au shared a tip: Playing videos in Obsidian supports Picture-in-Picture!
• @Patrick shared a showcase video showing how he uses Obsidian for creating tabletop adventures.
• Federico at the AppStories podcast shared his research and note-taking setup.

Appearance

• This css snippet lets you have multiple blockquote styles depending on what you tag the quote.
• This small css snippet allows for information to be displayed in multiple columns without the interactivity of kanban, if you prefer to avoid plugins but are fine with custom css.
• @gammons created a base16 theme that enables basically 131 new "themes" for Obsidian.
• This css snippet will let you hide certain folders, i.e. attachments.
• This css trick is useful for when you’re trying to set rules for printing a note to pdf.

Knowledge Management

• There was a discussion about what good habits, methods, etc exist for learning, processing, and applying information. A really nice list came from the discussion; I recommend checking it out.
• There was a discussion about how to take notes as a high school student.
• We discussed how Twitter threads are similar to zettelkasten card series and how to adapt that to Obsidian.
• There was a discussion about how to combine different pkm/life-os systems.
• There was an insightful discussion over on reddit about zettelkasten vs evergreen systems.
• @sivwuk shared a showcase video showing how they use Obsidian to study.

Ancillary Tools

• I put together a bit of a stream-of-consciousness review / list of recommended guides for setting up Ghost](https://eleanorkonik.com/ghost-my-experiences-running-a-self-hosted-newsletter/). It’s what I use to run this Roundup. A couple of people asked how I liked it because they were thinking about maybe checking it out, so I thought I’d share.
• This guide for using Dropbox with Obsidian was shared. It seems very comprehensive.
• Rentry is a minimalistic tool that is basically “pastebin for markdown” if you want to just share an Obsidian note with someone really quick without losing the formatting.
• Nebo is a paid app for handwriting on tablets, apparently the OCR is really good and it can handle mixing handwriting and typed statements within a single document. A bunch of people really like it.
• @hstagner shared a Twitter thread discussing the differences between a digital garden and a blog. It’s another nudge for me personally; I’ve been considering opening up my notes as a digital garden to supplement my blog in a way similar to what’s described in the thread.