Display your text side-by-side with a simple syntax.
This plugin provides a way to structure your notes into columns that can be displayed horizontally in both directions with custom width ratios in the Reading View.
- Download the zip or tar archive from Releases and extract it to
path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/. - Restart Obsidian.
- Enable it under Settings > Community Plugins > Simple Columns.
...
[begin]
In publishing and graphic design, _**Lorem ipsum**_ (/ˌlɔː.rəm ˈɪp.səm/) is a placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the visual form of a document or a typeface without relying on meaningful content. _Lorem ipsum_ may be used as a placeholder before the final copy is available. It is also used to temporarily replace text in a process called greeking, which allows designers to consider the form of a webpage or publication, without the meaning of the text influencing the design.
[col]
_Lorem ipsum_ is typically a corrupted version of _De finibus bonorum et malorum_, a 1st-century BC text by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, with words altered, added, and removed to make it nonsensical and improper Latin. The first two words themselves are a truncation of _dolorem ipsum_ ("pain itself").
[end]
...
- Between
[begin]and[end]should be the text you want to be displayed in columns.- Everything before
[begin]and after[end]is processed normally.
- Everything before
- A
[col]between your paragraphs marks the end of a column and the start of a new one. - You can write as many
[col]tags as you like, as long as they are between[begin]and[end]. - You can write as many
[begin]and[end]blocks in your note, as long as you follow these syntax rules, otherwise the note won't be processed correctly.
[begin]
## First block
[col]
## Second block
[col]
## Third block
[end] rtl
By appending rtl to the [end] tag of your block, the columns will be put side-by-side in reversed order.
This is useful if your language is written right-to-left, like Arabic or Hebrew.
You can configure to have blocks processed like that by default by enabling the RTL by default setting. To process the blocks left-to-right, simply write ltr after the [end] tag.
Note: The setting will come into effect after switching into Reading View again.
[begin]
## 1st long text ...
[col]
## 2nd long text ...
[col]
## 3rd long text ...
[col]
## 4th long text ...
[col]
...
[end] wrap
By appending wrap to the [end] tag of your block, the columns won't be strictly displayed on one level and can wrap over to the next one if you have too many blocks. Their individual widths won't sink below 40%.
That way you don't have to write countless [begin]-[end]-pairs if you want to write your text in a kind of grid.
You can make this the default behavior by enabling the Wrap blocks by default setting.
Note: The setting will come into effect after switching into Reading View again.
[begin]
column with normal width
[col] 2
column twice as wide
[col] 3
column thrice as wide, like really wide
[end]
By appending a number to a [begin] or [col] tag, you set the width ratio of your blocks. The three blocks in the example above will be processed with the width ratio of 1:2:3.
You can prevent block rendering on mobile devices by disabling the Render blocks on mobile setting. That way, the [begin], [col] and [end] tags will disappear from Reading View, but the text won't be shown side-by-side.
This is useful if you access a synced vault from the desktop on narrow screens.
- Apply columns in exported PDFs (right now they look like the normal document)
- Delete unnecessary elements from the DOM (technical issue, no change in user experience)