[[note name|alternate name]] displays [[alternate name]]
J
Julian D
Just wrote to support about the fiddlyness of creating aliases currently in Noteplan as and they pointed me here; just wanted to add my 2c as I still think this would be a great feature to have.
As in the original post, it would be great to have a more markdown friendly way of typing a link with an Alias. With the current workflow:
- It's a somewhat clunky to have to paste the link. It also means I have to create the linked page first so I can paste the link. It would be preferable to the able to type the page and alias and then click on the link to create the linked page if it doesn't exist.
- Currently internal wiki links appear that same as web / external links, with the arrow indicating it is external, which can be a bit confusing.
Using the '|' symbol in order to define the link and alias fits well with what other apps use (in my case Bear Notes), so to my mind would be a good syntax.
C
Christopher Wagner
Praying this one still under serious consideration. The link aliases (and links in general) within Noteplan are visually cluttered. I want to see hyperlinked text rendered when not editing.
Eduard Metzger
Merged in a post:
Allow placeholder text for internal linking
t
tf
[[Wiki linking]]
is great for linking to other NotePlan notes, but sometimes I don't want to display the full title of the NotePlan note I'm linking to. An way to show distinct display text instead would be great. Eg: [[note title in full]]display text|
... Alternatives include (1) auto completing non-wiki links -- ie, [display text](link/to/note)
, since that can already have placeholder text; and (2) frontmatter in a note that provides one or more alternative display text values that could be shown when [[wiki linking]]
Eduard Metzger
open
Chris
This Feature request should not be marked as completed. The link aliases introduced into NP are not what is requested here.
Eduard Metzger
Chris: Have re-opened it. It's not exactly what was requested, but the existing solution solves a problem (that's what we are looking for).
Chris
Eduard Metzger: Thanks for reopening. Allow me to explain why I don’t think the current implementation of alias links provides a satisfactory solution to the problem.
- A weak but still valid reason is that the format is error prone to write (as illustrated with your own typo in the post below when you announced the feature).
- It is also difficult (and ugly) to read.
- It is totally incompatible with Obsidian to the extent that it makes it practically impossible to use NP with Obsidian (unless you refrain from using alias links altogether. I can explain why this is a bad idea and why most internal link should actually be alias links).
Obsidian does support standard Markdown links (which are alias links by default) but not the kind of mix of Wiki-Links and Markdown links that noteplan now uses. I think Roam and Logseq use these too, but I don’t understand why they (or NP) introduced this non-standard format when the same can be achieved with standard markdown links. You just need some additional logic to determine whether what’s in round brackets is a valid external URL or an internal note. That’s what obsidian does (for those who don’t want to use Wiki-Links).
The big question is, however, why you’d not want to use wiki-links. Noteplan uses Wiki-links for a reason and I think it would make sense if it stuck to that in the case of link aliases (as suggested this feature request).
Any app is, of course, free to invent its own link formats, but in this case the only advantage I can see with the current format is compatibility with Roam and Logseq. Since I’m not aware of those apps being used much in parallel with NP, I’d say the disadvantages mentioned above weigh significantly more, i.e. the incompatibility w Obsidian.
Eduard Metzger
Chris: thanks for elaborating. Do you expect the wiki link to hide showing only the alias if you leave the cursor? This is the difficult part.
Chris
Eduard Metzger: Yes, at least that is the way it works in other note-taking apps as well as wikipedia (i.e. wikimedia). Why is it difficult? I think supporting those links even if the link (i.e. the title of the note) is still visible would already be a huge improvement. Perhaps that could be achieved with a simple RegEx that filters out anything between the [[ and | so that the alias link is can be treated just like normal wiki links?
BTW: In the ideal scenario, I would also expect the hidden part of the link to be accessible for editing as shown in the screencast (sorry, I misspelled your name). - This is something I am struggling a bit with in noteplan with markdown links (i.e. external links): they seem to be impossible to re-open once they "fold", except by "breaking" them by removing a bracket.
But I also understand that the jumping effect that easier accessibility has can also be annoying, so there is room for an innovative solution.
M
Maria Shinoto
There are various "non standard" Markdown syntaxes, and this is one of them -- with other software using different syntax in the link. Rather than changing the Markdown Syntax, it may be cleaner to add a field in a YAML header like "alias: [alternate name1, alternate name2,...] which can then be used in the link like: ... [[alternate name2]]...
Eduard Metzger
Maria Shinoto: that could be done additionally. I think this particular one mentioned in this request is for embedding a link into text so its easier to read. Like:
I should [write]([[Writing Prompts]]) more
M
Maria Shinoto
Eduard Metzger: Interesting! I did not realise this opportunity. -- If you think that a key-value pair in the YAML is possible, that would be great.
Eduard Metzger
complete
Have implemented it, but in a slightly different syntax, that should be supported, however:
[alias]([[Real Note Title]])
So basically a wiki link wrapped into a markdown link. Referencing is also supported.
Jon Plummer
Eduard Metzger: Is there a typo in that syntax example, or …?
[alias]([[Real Note Title)
vs
[alias]([[Real Note Title]])
Eduard Metzger
Jon Plummer: yes, fixed it!
Chris
Eduard Metzger: Why not [[Real Note Title|alias]] as requested?
Eduard Metzger
Merged in a post:
Aliases
G
Gadwood
Being able to have multiple synonym to link to a note, exemple for [[Round]] we get aliases: sphere, circle if we write [[sphere it links to [[Round]]. Used for unlinked reference in futur too.
D
Daniel Terhorst-North
In other wikis I have seen this syntax:
[[Note title][alt text]]
No need for
|
delimiter in the note text that way.Jonathan Clark
Or (3)
[[note title in full|short version]]
? I believe this is used in some other PKM systems ... and some thought should always be given to inter-operability whenever new syntax is introduced.Jan Damm
Jonathan Clark: yes [[note title|display title]] is used in other pkm or markdown rendered as well.
t
tf
Jonathan Clark: my problem with that is that it
only
works in those systems. It breaks other wiki-linking. But I recognize it's used by at least a few other systemsLoad More
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