[Managing] Cross-link several notes in one go
Posted: Sun May 21, 2017 11:54 pm
Proposed feature
1. Select a few notes in the main window.
2. Right-click, Cross-Link Notes.
3. All selected notes get note links to the other notes inserted at the bottom of their text.
Motives
I'm discovering the note link feature, and it's an incredibly powerful tool.
However, it's especially useful when you only need to create links from one note to another, or a few of them. In that case, it's super-fast.
If, however, you need to cross-link several notes (that is : each of them is linked to all the others), then it becomes a pain as soon as there are more than two, or maybe three notes. In that case, you need to open all your notes side-to-side, and Copy Note Link / Paste Note Link in a harrowing sequence, where you need to keep track of what has been copied and pasted where, since you don't want to link one note to itself (and anyway, CN will wisely prevent you from doing that). There's no single link set that could be pasted, pasted, pasted into all the notes.
There are many situations where you would need to do this, and there would be no workaround using tags (never mind tabs or notebooks). Imagine you are tracking specific events, and making notes out of a few significant articles about those events. Maybe you'll gather five or six articles about one event, and never create a new note about that event later.
Then, it would not make much sense to create a tag just for that event, because you want to keep your tags as universal and reusable as possible (and not create too many of them, because, then, scrolling becomes a pain). Also, there's no quick way to go from one note to another through tags. Tags are not clickable. The answer is the note link. It addresses the concept : "See also", or "Related articles" at the bottom of your note.
A Cross-Link feature would address that need (and hopefully use already developed resources).
Another way to address that would be to make tags clickable. If I wanted to link together five or six notes related to, say, the Sochi Olympics, then I would create a Sochi Olympics tag (even though I would likely never attach it to a new note again), apply it to my Sochi notes, and just click on it from within a note, in order to display the related notes. However, even if clickability of tags was an easily implemented feature (of which I have no idea), the user interface is not ideally suited to that. The main window as it is would lend itself to it, however the editor window with its tags field does not seem really appropriate.
1. Select a few notes in the main window.
2. Right-click, Cross-Link Notes.
3. All selected notes get note links to the other notes inserted at the bottom of their text.
Motives
I'm discovering the note link feature, and it's an incredibly powerful tool.
However, it's especially useful when you only need to create links from one note to another, or a few of them. In that case, it's super-fast.
If, however, you need to cross-link several notes (that is : each of them is linked to all the others), then it becomes a pain as soon as there are more than two, or maybe three notes. In that case, you need to open all your notes side-to-side, and Copy Note Link / Paste Note Link in a harrowing sequence, where you need to keep track of what has been copied and pasted where, since you don't want to link one note to itself (and anyway, CN will wisely prevent you from doing that). There's no single link set that could be pasted, pasted, pasted into all the notes.
There are many situations where you would need to do this, and there would be no workaround using tags (never mind tabs or notebooks). Imagine you are tracking specific events, and making notes out of a few significant articles about those events. Maybe you'll gather five or six articles about one event, and never create a new note about that event later.
Then, it would not make much sense to create a tag just for that event, because you want to keep your tags as universal and reusable as possible (and not create too many of them, because, then, scrolling becomes a pain). Also, there's no quick way to go from one note to another through tags. Tags are not clickable. The answer is the note link. It addresses the concept : "See also", or "Related articles" at the bottom of your note.
A Cross-Link feature would address that need (and hopefully use already developed resources).
Another way to address that would be to make tags clickable. If I wanted to link together five or six notes related to, say, the Sochi Olympics, then I would create a Sochi Olympics tag (even though I would likely never attach it to a new note again), apply it to my Sochi notes, and just click on it from within a note, in order to display the related notes. However, even if clickability of tags was an easily implemented feature (of which I have no idea), the user interface is not ideally suited to that. The main window as it is would lend itself to it, however the editor window with its tags field does not seem really appropriate.