How I Use Obsidian - Publishing to WeChat Official Account#
When using Obsidian, one platform for publishing the organized content is the WeChat Official Account.
However, there are some small issues when outputting content to WeChat Official Account:
WeChat Official Account does not support Markdown.
Issues with image uploads.
The final solution is discussed in the section [[#Final Solution]], but let's first talk about the process.
First thought was to use mdnice or similar formatting tools#
After trying various beautification tools, none of them were suitable.
The main problem is that although the style issues were resolved, separate image uploads were required, and rendering of flowcharts was not supported.
Exporting to docx#
During the process, it was discovered that WeChat Official Account supports importing docx files. So the idea came up to export the content as docx to solve the image upload and icon support issues.
This led to the idea of using pandoc + pandoc-plantuml-file + obsidian pandoc plugin
[[Obsidian Plugin - pandoc]]
[[pandoc]]
[[Introduction to PlantUML]]
Directly exporting from Obsidian always failed, so let's export using the command line first
pandoc obsidian-file.md -o file.docx --filter pandoc-plantuml
This can export to docx, which can then be imported into WeChat.
However, pandoc is not perfect and does not support Obsidian's ![[]] syntax.
Exporting to PDF and converting PDF to docx#
Considering that pandoc export may not support other Obsidian formats or plugins, it is clear that pandoc is not a perfect solution.
To support all Obsidian features and plugin display effects, the idea of exporting from Obsidian itself to PDF came up.
Then, convert the PDF to docx to import it into WeChat Official Account.
Several PDF to Word conversion attempts were not ideal.
![[Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 10.54.53.png]]
Finally, Adobe's official online tool was discovered, which provides decent conversion results.
https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/pdf-to-word.html
Final Solution#
- Export as PDF in Obsidian
![[Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 11.19.04.png]] - Use Adobe's online tool to convert PDF to Word docx
https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/pdf-to-word.html
![[Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 11.19.26.png]] - In WeChat Official Account, select to import from Word docx
![[Screen Shot 2022-01-14 at 11.20.20.png]]
Although there are some minor style issues, the advantage is that all images and icons can be displayed correctly without the need for separate uploads.
#
Exporting should be WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), exporting from rendering rather than re-exporting through plugins.