# Trynalist

A Dynalist-style outliner for Obsidian. Every line of an outline is a real
Markdown note in your vault, so nothing is locked inside the plugin.

*Trynalist*, short for **Tryin' to make an Obsidian plugin based on Dynalist**.

> **Early days.** Trynalist is young. Expect rough edges, and keep backups of
> any vault you try it in.

## Installing

1. In Obsidian, open **Settings**, then **Community plugins**, and choose **Browse**.
2. Search for **Trynalist** and choose **Install**.
3. Enable **Trynalist** in Community plugins.

### Beta builds with BRAT

To try releases before they reach the community store:

1. Install the **BRAT** plugin from Obsidian's community plugins.
2. In BRAT's settings, choose **Add beta plugin**.
3. Paste `grub-basket/Trynalist`.
4. Enable **Trynalist** in Community plugins.

BRAT will pick up new releases as they are published.

## What it does

- **Documents** live under a root folder (`Trynalist/` by default), one
  subfolder per document, identified by a `<Doc>.trynalist` manifest.
- **Every outline line is one Markdown file.** Its frontmatter carries the
  structure: a unique `id`, a `parent` link, a fractional `order` among
  siblings, the authored `indent`, a normalised `depth`, timestamps, and item
  state (checkbox, collapsed, heading level, colour, due date).
- **The file body is the line and its note** — first line is the item, the rest
  is the note underneath it.
- **Four views**: outline, flat, article, and a read-only mind map.
- **Notes render as real Markdown** through Obsidian's own renderer, so fenced
  code gets syntax highlighting and a copy button, and tables, callouts, math
  and embeds all work.
- **Mirrors and portals**: show a subtree from elsewhere — including another
  document — as a read-only window.
- **Import** from Dynalist OPML, Dynalist JSON, or indented text. **Export** to
  a `.trynalist.zip` holding a readable Markdown outline plus lossless metadata.

Deleted items go to the vault trash. They are never hard-deleted.

## Keyboard

**Enter** new item · **Tab / Shift+Tab** indent and outdent · **Alt+↑/↓** move
an item · **Cmd/Ctrl+Enter** toggle complete · **Shift+Enter** edit the item's
note, and again to come back · **Alt+Enter** line break inside an item ·
**Backspace** on an empty item deletes it.

Click a **bullet** to collapse, the **magnifier** beside it to zoom in, and the
breadcrumbs to zoom back out.

**Dynalist's chords are the defaults**, including `Mod+A` (select one level up),
`Mod+F` (search this document), `Mod+↑/↓` (move an item) and `Mod+]` / `Mod+[`
(zoom in and out). They are safe to claim because every Trynalist command fires
only while the keyboard is genuinely inside a Trynalist document — with a
sidebar, a search box or another plugin's pane focused, the same chord does
whatever it normally would. Clear any of them in Obsidian's hotkey settings if
you would rather keep the chord for something else.

## Where this differs from Dynalist

Trynalist aims at parity, and most of it is parity. The deliberate departures:

- **Six heading levels instead of three.** Items are Markdown rendered by
  Obsidian, which already has H1–H6; capping at three would have removed levels
  that work. Documents imported from Dynalist are unaffected.
- **The bullet collapses and a magnifier zooms**, as in Dynalist, and the
  preference that swaps them is here too. When the bullet is set to zoom, it
  turns into a magnifier on hover so the two controls never look identical.
- **No sharing, publishing, or accounts.** Documents are files in your vault,
  so Obsidian Sync, Git, or any folder-sharing tool already covers it.
- **Attachments live beside their document**, so moving, exporting or converting
  one takes its files along.
- **Nothing is paywalled.** Several of these were Dynalist Pro features.
- **Dynalist's themes are not included.** Trynalist inherits your Obsidian
  theme. The per-item colour swatches are here; the whole-app themes are not.
- **An item's text and its note render differently.** A note gets Obsidian's full
  Markdown — blocks, tables, callouts, fenced code, embeds. An item's own text
  gets inline formatting only: bold, italic, highlight, strikethrough, code,
  maths, links, tags, dates, sub- and superscript. A blockquote or a table typed
  into an item stays exactly as you typed it.

  This is deliberate. An item is one line, while those constructs are multi-line
  by definition — rendering them in a row would make a row sometimes a line and
  sometimes a block container, and the bullet position, row height, drag targets
  and cursor behaviour all depend on a row being a line. `Shift+Enter` puts you
  in the note, which handles all of it.

## Didn't make it across

Honest list of Dynalist behaviour that is not here, beyond the deliberate
departures above.

- **Dynalist's themes.** Trynalist uses your Obsidian theme; see above.
- **Sharing, publishing, and accounts.** Out of scope by design.

## Status

Mirrors are read-only for now: editing through one means writing into another
document, and undo would have to span both. The read-only window works today.

## Licence

MIT.