Good Morning,
I always found useful to link new notes to previous related notes.
Agenda can nicely link note to an already existing note.
However, when opening the linked note, nothing tells me that this note has been linked. Is there a way to automatically generate a backlink?
Thanks,
Best,
Julien
You’ll be happy to hear that this functionality will be part of the upcoming Agenda 14 update.
One thing I’m noticing is that creating backlinks via markdown shortcuts (e.g., typing in [[) works when done at the end of the line; however, if you try to add [[ within existing text, the auto completion doesn’t work.
To reproduce:
It appears the autocompletion wants to act on the remaining text of the line independent of spacing. I would expect having a space after and before the [[ would trigger the autocompletion; however, the only note suggestion is to create one for the remaining text of the line.
By closing the [[ sequence (e.g., [[]]), autocompletion works as expected; however, this requires some additional keystrokes and cursor movements. Not a huge problem by any means, but wanted to bring it up as I’m sure others may expect typing [[my note within an existing line to trigger autocompletion showing “My Note” as an option.
The problem is the following:
Say I have a sentence like Here is a sentence or two.
If I insert the cursor just before the word “or”, and type [[, it now reads:
Here is a sentence [[or two
How can we now discriminate between you wanting to search for projects on just what you type after the brackets, notes with the word “or” in the title, or words with the words “or two” in the title?
Similarly, if you say, I insert the cursor just after the word sentence, type a space and type the [[
Here is a sentence [[ or two
The moment you type the word “one” (or even a single character for that matter) you get in the same situation:
Here is a sentence [[one or two
How do we discriminate between you looking for notes with the word “one” in the title, or those with the words “one or two” in the title?
Thanks for elaborating on the problem/issue.
I started to reply with [what I thought was] an elaborate scheme that leverages the existing autocompletion feature and the fact that users typing [[ in the middle of a sentence (or anywhere for that matter) are looking for autocompletion to popup versus linking to a note with text from the remainder of a line entry / sentence. Bottom line being typing [[ independent of line position, spacing, existing characters, surrounding words, etc. should always trigger autocompletion as if done at the beginning (or end) of a line (e.g., search for projects/notes on just what is typed after the brackets not what is/was already there).
Right now there is no easy way to link to an existing project/note within a line. Pretty much have to place cursor at desired position, hit return to break line, move cursor back up, type [[, link, and then move cursor back down to beginning of new line to delete and rejoin.
Perhaps "an easy solution"™ could be to leverage actions? There’s already an action available to link via \ on desktop or plus icon on iOS. The desktop is kinda covered (see below), but iOS would need to include a search field within the view triggered by clicking the Plus—>Link icon on the keyboard. If a search box was present, one could easily activate the Link action, begin typing the project/note to match and autocomplete would do its magic versus having to navigate through categories, projects, and notes to select the desired link.
On the desktop, using the action via the UI popups between words seems to have similar issues to [[ with discriminating between action keywords and existing text.
There are a couple of workarounds actually.
You can limit the scope of what is considered the search query by typing the two closing brackets. This means that you could either:
type immediately [[]] and then move the cursor in between the brackets to type what ever you want, or,
type the opening [[ then the query like “Alex”, followed by the closing two brackets, you will then search for just the word “Alex” in the note titles.
The first is probably easier if you’re not sure what to look for, the second easier if you are sure the word you plan to type will show the note or project you’re looking for.
Other workarounds are to use actions, as you say, for example:
\link(project-title: Alex) will show all projects with the word Alex in the title
and
\link(note-title: Alex) will show all note with the word Alex in the title
Finally, as you say, on macOS you find a different way to insert a link under Insert > Link To in the main menu. And on iOS you find this same way under the Plus button > Link in the keyboard bar. I’ll see if I can make this menu show the search field as you suggest.
Indeed, several workarounds are available so many thanks for taking the time to present them and entertaining my feedback.
I think I’ll go with [[]] for now, but looking forward to a search field on the iOS action link view as the delta between manipulating a physical vs iOS keyboard is significant.