Markdown support for bulleted lists in notes

This is a request to add Markdown support for bulleted lists (at least in notes). Currently they are not rendered, which means they are not indented properly, nor do long lines wrap correctly.

Currently, a bulleted list in a note looks something like this:

Note Title

– List item 1
– List item 2, which is very long, and has a lot of text, and so eventually will wrap and cause the line to wrap around, interrupting the list and making it harder to read. Here is some more text, just to help make sure the line wraps.
– List item 3

I would like it to look like this instead:

Note Title

  • List item 1
  • List item 2, which is very long, and has a lot of text, and so eventually will wrap and cause the line to wrap around, but is rendered nicely and is easy to read. Here is some more text, just to help make sure the line wraps.
  • List item 3

Perhaps you’re thinking: “why on earth would you create a bulleted list instead of using child nodes?” That’s fair. :slight_smile: Oftentimes I have info I want to store in a note that not important enough to warrant its own node. For example, a timeline for a scene, or a list of items in a location, or the ingredients for a recipe.

Thanks for considering my suggestion!

2 Likes

Seconded. Almost every markdown commands(?) work in notes except this. There is also the fact that one has to manually create every bullet point. It hinders the flow. Full markdown support on notes could be extremely purposive.

Yeah, I was 100% thinking about that, you read my mind :wink:

Maybe it’s just personal preference, but I use a separate bullet for the smallest things, like even just for one word.

Sure. I do sometimes too. Lately though, I’ve been seeing a lot of value in treating nodes like little mini-documents that happen to have a hierarchical relationship. Like, each node is an index card that has link/tag/tree relationships with other index cards. It makes searching and finding a lot easier for me, and makes the document a lot more print-friendly because the card depth is kept low. (I print a lot of my Dynalist documents for use away from the computer.)

Anyway, I guess what I’m really asking for is more robust Markdown support for the note area.

You might consider looking at libraries like Remarkable, a JavaScript Markdown renderer that supports custom plugins. It would give you support for things like lists, tables, and other Markdown features without having to implement it yourself. You could even add support for Dynalist tags as a plugin.

I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, and we trust you to make the right calls when it comes to prioritization. But this would be a big UX improvement for me, and perhaps for many other users too. Thanks for considering it.

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Thanks for the detailed explanation, and Remarkable looks nice.

I’ll still have to discuss with @Shida to see if it’s easy to fit it in, since we have already written most of the code for it. We’ll need to see how flexible it is, how compatible are the results Remarkable generates… things like that. It might cause formatting edge cases to break all over the place too, so rigorous testing is required too. I hope that’s understandable.

2 Likes

My real case:

Item is like “Fix documentation in the project”.

And notes of this item contain links like proofs, references. I want to save them for future investigation and argumentation, and they would look good as list, but each of them are not like completable item to be sub-items.

image

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