Feature: Description of timers and projects parsed as Markdown

[mihaibirsan]

Feature

Interpret the description of time entries as Markdown. This enables using the description to link to project notes.

Before:

After:

Remaining work

Completed partially

• Add toggle in settings; default behavior should be not to interpret as Markdown (compatibility for existing users)
• Consider parsing project names as well
• Consider limiting markdown parsing to links only
• Update tests

[mihaibirsan]

This is technically ready to ship.

Considered out of scope:

• Consider limiting markdown parsing to links only
  • Using Obsidian's own parser, which doesn't allow for much customization; when this becomes a real user issue, we may add more granular control over the markdown parser (and even consider discarding the innerHTML trick)
• Update tests
  • Codebase doesn't have UI tests at this time (perhaps open an issue?)

[mihaibirsan]

Published a pre-release version with all 2 features and 1 fix currently in PR!

See 0.10.0+87c4156 for instructions on how to test!

[mcndt]

Cool feature!

IMO I think this is a very niche option, as most users probably don't want raw Markdown syntax in their time entries (since it's not rendered anywhere outside of Obsidian)

But I don't see any harm in releasing this since it's opt-in. I'll release it after doing some further testing.

[mcndt]

There's still some minor concerns here, let me know if you want to iterate.

[mcndt]

I get the following console error when loading the plugin:

Probably related to the null argument here.

[mihaibirsan]

Good catch! I'll have to find a way to pass the reference through the context, I think.

[mcndt]

This correctly renders the Markdown as a link, but clicking the link doesn't actually open the related page.

[mihaibirsan]

That's odd. I'll investigate.

[mcndt]

I'm not sure if project titles should also be parsed as Markdown, only time entries make sense I think.

[mihaibirsan]

I agree, I'll revert this bit and experiment with the suggestion below.

[mcndt]

I have thought before to link projects to pages in the opposite direction, namely using the frontmatter of a note we can store to which Toggl project it is related. I think that makes the UX a little better for non-power users like yourself, what are your thoughts?

[mihaibirsan]

Thanks for the review @mcndt! I had checked out for the past six months, focused on work. 😅

Linking projects to pages in the opposite direction makes sense! I can prototype something with it separately. I hadn't thought about that before.

I also didn't like how it made the Toggl interface less usable. (And tinkering with user scripts to parse Markdown everywhere turned out to be a pointless task.)