Quill developers struggle to preserve semantic nested lists
Developers using Quill report that nested-list indentation can be stored as classes rather than semantic nested HTML, making exported content harder to reuse across platforms. They describe writing custom parsers, adding numbering, or applying CSS workarounds; pasting nested lists back into the editor can flatten them, so round-tripping may need a reverse conversion too. Other signals concern related but distinct list problems in Obsidian, Google Docs, and VS Code, so the clearest product opportunity is Quill-focused rather than a universal list fix.
For developers embedding Quill in web apps. Mentioned from Sep 2016 to Mar 2026 on product forums, GitHub and Stack Exchange.
9 different people described this problem in 4 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 3.0/10
- Pain
- 5.6/10
- Frequency
- 8.3/10
- Willingness to pay
- 0.0/10
- Momentum
- 5.0/10
- Who pays
- Professionals
- Competition
- Medium
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
The current indent button simply adds a class to the ``, which looks great but outputs bad HTML. The generated content would not be exportable to other platforms
I'm considering writing up a parser that translates the ql-indent li tags into nested uls/ols, etc. Unfortunately, it looks like I'd also have to write the reverse, as pasting nested lists into the editor gives me a flat list every time
See what to build and who will buy it
- 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
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- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks