+9
Under review

Cross-link several notes in one go

Alex Jenter 7 years ago updated by anonymous 7 years ago 6

Clairvaux suggested on the forum:


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.

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.

organizing links
+1

Connect notes without tag is a really something important thing.

But enter just links at the bottom looks like a bad UI.


Maybe better to create a hidden connections, 

display some label (like chain icon) if connected notes are present

and change the behavior of main window.

if user click on the chain icon near the Header of the note

in the main window it will be filtered like you are using the tag (ephemeric, hidden)

eventually - you turn on "filter connected notes only"

And great part will be if you still will have ability to use tag navigation

inside this filtering group


If you click on that icon get you back to normal view


-----------------


And second part is creating a connected notes,

not only connecting already existed.


Fior example we already has an ability to link notes to

each other. But it's implemented the same as external links.

It will be better to have an ability to create connected notes.


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If you are agree with that vision of interaction interface,

i can help a little bit with designing the behavior 

bcz, im very interested in that (more flexible, and real-life better organized) way of implementation

P.S. Forgive my english, it's not my mothertongue )