DEPRECATED

⚠️ This repo is just a workaround. Once a full solution comes out (we are working on it, see this issue and PR, this repo would be deprecated.

⚠️Thanks to the fast response and hard working of @zsviczian, the feature of setting local fonts for obsidian-excalidraw-plugin has come out from release 1.5.17. So I'm happy to announce that this repository is deprecated.

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Background

The obsidian-excalidraw-plugin integrates Excalidraw, a feature rich sketching tool, into Obsidian. However, in lack of related APIs from Excalidraw, it is difficult for users to customize the Text Tool's font family to a local font in sketching. As a result, some non-ASCII charactors (e.g., Chinese charactors) is displayed in system default font family style, not fitting the style of the integrated ASCII handwriting fonts.

Although there is not a perfect solution yet, the owner of obsidian-excalidraw-plugin @zsviczian is working on this problem and has put forward a semi-solution; And the purpose of this tool, Excalipatch, is to provide another workaround as a second choice. In breif, Excalipatch embeds a user-specific local font into main.js, the source code of obsidian-excalidraw-plugin, and adds a new Text button to use the font.

Here are the key features of Excalipatch:

• Add a new Text Tool button with a user-specific local font into Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin
• Change the language of sketching UI

Install

Excalipatch is a portable tiny tool on Windows OS (at least XP) and doesn't need to install. Just download the lastest version of excalipatch.exe from Releases page.

Though before using it, you must have the lateset Obsidian (version 0.12.16+) and Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin (version 1.5.15+) installed. A local font file is also needed (The font used in the demo is called "Muyao-Softbrush").

Usage

Attention

Before playing with Excalipatch, you must keep in mind that:

• This is NOT permanent. Every time Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin updates, the main.js will be restored and need to be patched again.
• This is NOT robust. Excalipatch hacks the code of main.js by identifying its patterns. Thus, if the code makes big changes, Excalipatch may fail on recognizing.
• Excalipatch only supports Windows OS currently, though the patched main.js file may be cross-platform.

Step by step

1. Close Obsidian.

2. Put excalipatch.exe and your local font file (ttf/otf/woff/woff2 format is supported) together with main.js (usually located in YourValut\.obsidian\plugins\obsidian-excalidraw-plugin\).

3. Double-click to run excalipatch.exe and pray for getting the patched file main.js.patched. If you don't get the patched file, turn to Troubleshooting.

   You can also run excalipatch.exe by command line, which supports more arguments. For example, excalipatch.exe lang="zh-CN" button="button name" font="xxx.ttf" icon="yyy.svg". Each argument is optional.

4. Backup the origin main.js, then replace it with the patched file.

5. Open Obsidian. If Obsidian fails to load Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin, or the plugin doesn't work properly, that means the patched file is broken. Please close Obsidian IMMEDIATELY and restore the backup main.js. After that, turn to Troubleshooting.

   If you don't have a backup, you can also update or reinstall Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin.

Troubleshooting

If Excalipatch reports an error message while running, or the patched file is broken, please check at first:

• Whether the version of Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin is newer than 1.5.15? Excalipatch doesn't support too old versions of Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin.
• Whether you are using the latest version of Excalipatch?

In other cases, please open an issue and describe the problem. Don't forget to provide following informations:

• error message
• the versions of your Windows OS, Obsidian, Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin and Excalipatch
• other information towards the problem, e.g., the manifest.json file in your Obsidian-excalidraw-plugin folder

Contributing

• Any suggestions? Please open an issue.
• Want to contribute to the code? Please fork and clone this repo, and work on the project folder which contains all the source code written in aardio. Feel free to submit PRs.