it seems that I need your help to decide how exactly tag grouping in going to work
in the upcoming version of CN. Huge thanks in advance for your advice!
Basically, the choice is between two models of how parent tags are applied. Both of them
have advantages and drawbacks, so it is difficult to see a clear winner. But CintaNotes
should aim at practicality while remaining easy to understand, so I hope that your responses
will help me choose.
Ok, so here's the story. Imagine that you have the following tag hierarchy:
Code: Select all
vehicles
cars
ferrari
honda
According to how tag hierarchy operates, when you assign tag "ferrari" to a note,
it automatically gets tags "cars" and "vehicles" assigned (or they are implied, which is
not very different). So far, so good!
After awhile you realize that you don't want to see notes tagged "ferrari" in the list of
cars, but would rather create a new tag hierarchy related specifically to Formula-1.
So you create a top-level tag "formula1" and move the tag "ferrari" into it.
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formula1
ferrari
vehicles
cars
honda
Now comes the question: what should happen to the notes tagged "ferrari" (and, by implication, "vehicles" and "cars")?
Should they automatically get tags "cars" and "vehicles" removed and tag "formula1" added?
At first it seems that yes, they should - according to the hierarchy the notes are now about
Formula 1 than about vehicles, but read on!
Here is a second example:
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tasks
urgent
project-a
After some time you decide to move the tag "project-a" to the top level, like this:
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project-a
tasks
urgent
If changes in tag hierarchy are automatically tracked, then urgent tasks on project-a
will cease to be tagged "urgent", and also, cease to be tagged "tasks"! This is clearly
not what you have intended! In order to do what you want, you'll need to do something
like this:
- rename tag "project-a" to "project-a-urgent-tasks"
- select all notes with this tag and add a new tag "project-a" to them, which will be top-level
- remove tag "project-a-urgent-tasks"
- select all notes with tag "project-a" and explicitly assign them "tasks/urgent".
Quite a bit of work!
So here are the options that we have, summarized:
1) Tag hierarchy is dynamic: it is always in sync with what you see in the tag sidebar
(solves the problem with Formula1, but you can lose some needed tags);
2) Tag hierarchy is static: parent tags are assigned automatically together with child tags,
but are treated independently after that (solves the problem with urgent tasks, but you can end up
with some stale tags)
3) CintaNotes should prompt user ("UI-designer is a coward" approach ).
4) Some other option?
Which one would you prefer and why?
Thanks in advance!