[REQUEST] outline automatic number with indentation

apoc527

I'd like to be able to take notes in The Archive and I often like to do it in very rough outline form. Is it feasible to have The Archive add automatic numbering based on outline level? Or is that asking too much of a text file?

ctietze

What should the numbers be added to? Can you maybe post an example MD snippet?

apoc527

Well, ideally, I'd like basic automatic outlining, but I discovered I might be missing the point of plain text. I started using just plain tabs instead and that works pretty well, though it does have issues when being rendered in Markdown.

Here's an idea of what I mean:

I. Top Level
A. Second Level
1. Third Level
a. Fourth level
i. Fifth Level

Etc. But you know, I could just OmniOutliner if I wanted to do that too. On the other hand, OneNote has that functionality, and it is useful.

ctietze

Is there supposed to be no indentation and that's the trick? So instead of pushing stuff farther and farther to the right, you'd like to keep the text flush-left and use a different convention to keep things organized?

If that's the case, and if you don't have a ton of levels, you can use headings instead to form an outline.

# Top Level
## Second Level
### Third Level
#### Fourth Level
##### Fifth Level

Compared to what Markdown lists would require:

- Top Level
    - Second Level
        - Third Level
            - Fourth Level
                - Fifth Level

apoc527

So I was imagining the latter example using Markdown lists. Something like this:

I. Top Level
    A. Second Level
        1. Third Level
            a. Fourth level
                i. Fifth Level
                ii. Fifth Level
            b. Fourth level
        2. Third Level
    B. Second Level
II. Top Level

ctietze

Okay. So you only want to change the list item type automatically when you get a level deeper?

apoc527

Correct. And I want it to auto-number, including when I go back a level. Bear does it but not many other Markdown editors I know can do so. I presume it's tricky.