True Transclusion in Obsidian
The make.MD Flow Editor is the tweak I have been dreaming of.
Originally posted on 2023-07-02
I recently read somewhere (I think on Reddit) about a relatively new feature of the make.MD plugin. Note: I had heard of make.MD but never used it.
The new features is the Flow Editor, which fills a big hole in Obsidian.
In a nutshell, the Flow Editor allows for true transclusion.
Transclusion in Obsidian is when I create a reference in file X to another file Y, like this:
![[Y]]
the contents of file Y are rendered in file X. However, the rendering of Y is not editable. I can’t move my cursor over a word in the rendering of file Y and edit it in place.
However, with the make.MD plugin, with the Flow Editor option turned on, I can do exactly that.
I select the transclusion, run a command — make.MD: Open Flow Blocks in Selection — and then the transclusion’s rendering is editable.
Here’s an example where I started with a block transclusion:
Note the additional ! preceding the transclusion, an artifact of make.MD flow. (You can simply add the extra ! to turn on the flow transclusion, too.)
When I hover over the transcluded text, I can select text and edit it:
Note the two icons in the upper right of the transclusion. The right icon is the usual link, which when clicked shifts to the other file. The left icon allows for toggling the flow transclusion on or off.
This is the missing piece in how Obsidian should treat transclusion. This means, for example, I can collate segments for an article from a dozen documents, make edits on them in the article file, and avoid having to shift context a dozen times.
I also discovered that flow transclusion solves a problem with Kanban files. Kanbans are not embeddable: you can’t stick a kanban in the middle of a file: it has to be a standalone file with particular front-matter. To make things worse, transcluded kanban files are natively rendered in their markdown form:
So I can see this rendering, but not the kanban view.
However, the flow editor solves this problem, and makes the kanban editable, too:
Here you see a daily note from 2023–07–02. I now include my working set kanban near the top of my daily notes, basically providing a short list of tasks that occupy my today and the next few days. The kanban resides in my workings folder, and is shared across my daily notes. This obviates the need to use a plugin to roll over incomplete tasks from one day to the next.
Note that the kanban is fully editable, and functions like drag and drop work as you’d hope. The only things missing are the top-level kanban controls, like adding a new list and archiving completed tasks. But I can add tasks (cards), move them around, and check them off; and now, edit them.
I haven’t tried flow editor on canvases, but I read that it is supported. Maybe that will make canvases more usable, for me.