Obsidian RTL Plugin
This plugin adds configurable RTL support for Obsidian.
It relies on the RTL direction property of CodeMirror, which is the editor component that Obsidian uses.
Although CodeMirror supports just a global direction (no auto-detection by paragraph as we'd all love to have), within this limitation this is the real deal:
Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi can be typed and rendered in Right-to-Left manner just as you'd expect.
To my best knowledge, this is the most comprehensive RTL support any Markdown editor currently has to offer. Editors like Mark Text and Zettlr that support RTL, do it as a global setting rather than a per-document setting.
Usage
Install the plugin via Obsidian's "Third Party Plugins" pane.
When enabled, you will have a "Switch Text Direction" command (accessible via Ctrl/Cmd+P if you have the Command Palette plugin enabled).
You can map this command to a hotkey: go to Obsidian's settings, click Hotkeys, search for "RTL" and set your preferred key combination.
Settings
Default text direction
This is the direction to use for files on which you have not set an explicit text direction.
Remember text direction per file
When enabled (which is the default), when you change the text direction of a file it will be saved. Every time you open that file it will use the same text direction regardless of the default. This is useful, for example, if most of your notes are in English (so you want to keep the default LTR) but you have some notes in Arabic/Hebrew/Farsi and you'd like to always edit them in RTL.
If you disable this setting, all notes will load in the default text direction.
If you want to forget the text direction of a file and go back to using the default, remove it from the map in VAULT_DIR/.obsidian/rtl.json.
Known Issues
- Minor visual glitches in RTL mode, e.g. alignment of bullets is not exactly as you'd expect. I believe some CSS wizardry can fix this.
- This plugin only treats the Markdown editor, preview and export. There are some areas of the app, like the Outline view, that are not covered for now.
- Auto-pair brackets is disabled in RTL (CodeMirror bug with a pending fix).
- When an RTL line ends with an LTR word, the End key misbehaves. CodeMirror bug.
- The plugin outputs some debug info to the console, I'll remove these when I gain more confidence everything works as expected.
Changelog
0.0.5
Export/print support for RTL: esm7#8
0.0.4
- Auto-pair brackets patch (esm7#7): until CodeMirror release their fix and Obsidian adapts it, the plugin temporarily disables auto-pair brackets when in RTL mode.
- Patching around Obsidian misbehaving on Home/End keys in RTL mode (esm7#6).
0.0.3
- RTL support in preview mode.
0.0.2
- Fixed cursor movement on Windows: esm7#3