New Feature Sneak Peak: Callouts šŸ’¬

When we talk about compatibility, we are more concerned about the Bear output being readable by other apps, than the other way around. We will start with the five types that are recognized by both Obsidian and Github.

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I love this featureeeee!!!

Looks fantastic and I’ve always found these super useful! Question, will these be collapsable?

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Very excited about this feature!

Any consideration for them being collapsible?

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The problem here is that obsidian will read the 5 types of bear as three types: tip and important also as caution and warning are just two aliases of one type.

I can understand the limitation to just five types: it is simple to use and you donā€˜t have to create more than five colours/icons. But I think tip and important also as caution and warning are too similar so that they would better fit under one icon. As you can use alternative titles it is easy to create a caution-call-out in bear and to take as title ā€žwarningā€œ, ā€žmissingā€œ, ā€ždangerā€œ or whatever.

So if you want a limit of five types/icons/colours I think following types are a better choice. In the brackets I have written some alternative titles that would match the icon/colour:

  • Note (Abstract, Summary, Example, Tldr)
  • Tip (Important, Hint)
  • Caution (Warning, Danger, Error, Failure, Missing, Bug)
  • Question (Help, FAQ)
  • Todo (Info, Success, Check)

I really believe that these types cover a larger range, where each sub-area can still be meaningfully differentiated by alternative title

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You are making some good points. However, our current choices of callouts will at least show as callouts in both GitHub and Obsidian. You are right that the icons and colors might not match, and that some types map to the same color/icon in Obsidian. Using your suggestion, the caution and question will not show as callouts in GitHub.

On the other hand, we do allow custom titles and that is not supported by GitHub.

Would you rather have us support Obsidian and ignore GitHub?

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For the moment, no. The syntax and semantics of the Obsidian collapsable callouts differs from the folding that we do support for titles and lists.

What use cases do you have in mind?

When I suggested Question and ToDo as part of a five-type-system my main point was the broader range of meanings rather than compatibility. Nevertheless that system (Note, Tip, Caution, Question, ToDo) would also increase the compatibility for obvious reasons:

  1. What obsidian considers as one type wouldnā€˜t be splitted into two types in bear. Using alternative titles inside bear (f.e. ā€žWarningā€œ inside a caution-callout) wouldnā€˜t lead to a misleading icon/colour.
  2. some meaningful callouts from obsidian line Question or ToDo would be readen properly by bear

Definetely obsidian. Not necessarily because of bear but in regard of panda which files I also would throw at obsidian. There are some nice features inside obsidian (like the whiteboard) that are too good to not be used. Insofar I would really love a high compatibility of obsidian and bears/pandas editor. Actually I also could ask obsidian for becoming more compatible with bear. But obsidian is the unofficial defacto standard due to its popularity as a mighty and free app

Great!!!

…and stick to the original plan.

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I agree with @Celf11. I think these are an excellent starting point for the feature and you can accumulate feedback from others over some months of use, rather than start adding additional capabilities (before it’s even released, haha).

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I feel a little bit addressed :wink:

To avoid a misunderstanding: I know that full compatibility can only be achieved by replicating the feature set of another program. This, in turn, cannot be done without changing the character of your own program. That’s why I advocated that Bear App should stick to offering only 5 different types of callouts, as planned. My point was a different one. If you are already limited to 5 types, why waste this limited number by splitting very similar meanings into two different types. ā€œWarningā€ and ā€œCautionā€ are so similar that you should limit yourself to a single type here. With the alternative titles, you can then express yourself in a very differentiated way. In my opinion, ā€œQuestionā€ and ā€œToDoā€ together with their important and not insignificant areas for callouts. The limitation to 5 types would be better utilized this way. I think my questions and suggestions regarding compatibility with Obsidian have distracted from this main point.

I really think that following areas are the better implementation of five types (to repeat myself):

  • Note (Abstract, Summary, Example, Tldr)
  • Tip (Important, Hint)
  • Caution (Warning, Danger, Error, Failure, Missing, Bug)
  • Question (Help, FAQ)
  • Todo (Info, Success, Check)
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The question was not addressed to me, but I’ll answer it anyway. Call-outs are used to emphasize certain passages of a text. Often enough, however, they are also just additions to the actual text and folded callouts would not distract, but only show their content when it is needed.

A completely different usage is that foldable call-outs are a wonderful method for learning: You can create a collection of questions and keep the answers hidden. That’s a wonderful feature, isn’t it?

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I love the overall concept and am excited for the rollout. I’d suggest switching the color coding for ā€œwarningā€ and ā€œcautionā€. Following your definition, caution is not as urgent as warning, and therefore should be yellow, and warning red. The way it is in your preview is confusing as the less urgent ā€œcautionā€ is red while the more urgent ā€œwarningā€ is yellow.

We’re sticking with the standard set by GitHub since they were the first to introduce callouts. That includes both the types and the colors, changing them could lead to confusion when switching between tools.

Obsidian has taken a slightly different approach, unfortunately, but that’s not something we can really control.

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I can’t really speak for the developers, but the reason I’m with Bear is its simplicity. I come from a background in the computer industry, with 42 years of experience. Over the years, I’ve entered data into all sorts of applications and have lost a lot of it due to application-specific formatting, which makes it extremely difficult to retrieve your data later.

Currently, Bear is strict in its adherence to the Markdown format and provides a plethora of ways to export your data in a format that any other Markdown application can read.

So no, I’m not an advocate for stepping outside the Markdown structure—not even bending the rules to make something work—because all that does is make it incompatible with standard Markdown.

Again, I can’t speak for them, but if you need those kinds of fancy formatting features I know there are several other applications that do that.

I am so happy that they are willing to listen to everyone’s ideas, but also glad they are true to their vision for Bear.

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YES! Have loved them in Obsidian and Github, and that you’re bringing them to Bear is wonderful. Thanks a ton and very much looking forward to trying them out.

Finally! Love this :heart_eyes: When will this be available, which version?

I think it’s an amazing idea. I currently use blocode to write ideas or reflexions about my notes but it’s not very practical. This new features looks much more convenient to this use

This is great. I can definitely see a use for it in my notes.

:100: This is pretty much what I was going to say.