Space Control for Obsidian

This Obsidian plugin formats Markdown lists to be "tight" (no empty lines between list items) and optionally applies comprehensive CommonMark formatting to your notes using mdformat, which should be installed with the mdformat-space-control plugin.

Features

• Manual Formatting: Format the entire file or just selected text via commands
• Auto-Formatting: Automatically format files on save with a configurable delay
• Folder Rules: Configure different formatting settings for specific folders
• mdformat Integration: Optionally pipe content through mdformat for additional CommonMark formatting

Commands

The plugin adds the following commands to the Command Palette:

• Format current file: Formats the entire active file
• Format selected text: Formats only the selected text
• Toggle auto-format: Quickly enable/disable auto-formatting

Note: Whether mdformat is used for formatting is controlled by the global setting in the plugin configuration.

Settings

Global Settings

• Enable auto-format: Toggle automatic formatting when editing files
• Auto-format delay: Set the delay (1-30 seconds) after last edit before formatting
• Use mdformat: When mdformat is installed, this toggle controls whether to use it for all formatting operations

Folder Rules

If you want select auto-formatting, you can add rules for specific folders to enable auto-formatting for all notes in that folder.

Installation

1. Copy the plugin folder to your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory
2. Ensure the md-space-control.sh script has executable permissions
3. Enable the plugin in Obsidian's Community Plugins settings

Requirements

• Obsidian desktop app (this plugin uses shell scripts and is desktop-only)
• Bash shell available on your system
• Optional: install mdformat — and the mdformat-space-control — for comprehensive Markdown formatting based on the CommonMark spec.

Installing mdformat (Optional)

By default, the plugin will use an internal shell script for formatting, but you can install mdformat and enable enhanced mdformat-based formatting for comprehensive CommonMark formatting. Install mdformat using pipx:

# Install pipx if you don't have it
pip install pipx

# Install mdformat with minimal recommended plugins
pipx install mdformat
pipx inject mdformat mdformat-frontmatter mdformat-space-control

Why pipx? pipx installs Python packages in isolated environments, preventing dependency conflicts while making the commands globally available.

Minimal recommended setup:

• mdformat-frontmatter: Preserves YAML frontmatter (essential for Obsidian)
• mdformat-space-control: Automatic tight list formatting (aggressively removes empty lines between list items)

Optional mdformat plugins (see full list):

• mdformat-gfm: Support GitHub-Flavored Markdown (GFM) extensions (note: may conflict with tight-list processing)
• mdformat-simple-breaks: Correct mdformat's flavor of thematic breaks

Note: The mdformat-space-control plugin is opinionated and converts loose lists to tight lists. This yields a semantic change: more lists will contain only bare list items that are not encapsulated in <p> tags. This is intentional — as a result the Obsidian Space Control plugin calls mdformat (when enabled) with its --no-validate option to prevent validation errors.

Usage

Manual Formatting

1. Open a Markdown file
2. Use the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl+P) and search for "Format"
3. Select the desired formatting command

Auto-Formatting

1. Enable auto-format in plugin settings
2. Edit your Markdown files normally
3. The active file will be formatted automatically after the configured delay or following certain editor events

Selection Formatting

1. Select text in the editor
2. Run the "Format selected text" command
3. Only the selected text will be formatted

Atomic File Updates

The plugin reads and writes entire files atomically to prevent merge conflicts with Obsidian's editor. This ensures that formatting operations don't interfere with your active editing session.