Excalidraw is a drawing tool for sketches, diagrams and processes. As an Obsidian plugin it stores
the drawing in an .excalidraw.md — a Markdown file with embedded JSON.
The drawing in this vault: Structure of the editorial frame
How the format is built: How it works.
What the Quartz plugin makes of it
Not an image but interactive SVG: it can be zoomed and panned. Shapes, text, arrows and freehand strokes are redrawn, colours adapt to the colour scheme — for that the plugin keeps a table of 63 pairs, each a light Excalidraw colour and its dark counterpart.
Embedded notes ([[note]] inside the drawing) are resolved and shown with their content.
Two things worth knowing
Editing needs the plugin in the vault. In this vault it is installed. Without the plugin Obsidian shows only the warning at the top of the file.
The plugin is not a core part of Quartz. It has to be installed through the plugin management — unlike Bases and Canvas, which are already there.
A drawing page stands on its own
Unlike with canvas, here the plugin brings its own page grid and this template does not override it. A drawing page therefore has neither an explorer nor a page apparatus — and, measured on the built markup, no language switcher either: the two drawings are the one page pair on this site that is not linked at all. See How the two languages find each other.
The pages
- How an Excalidraw file is built — Markdown outside, drawing data inside — and the second, simpler way.
- Structure of the editorial frame.excalidraw