Is anyone here regularly using the Ziplink feature – revised (and replace Quicklinks) in v8.6+? Regularly meaning “most of the time when I use Tinderbox” or “in most of my documents”?
0 voters
If frequently, what’re your use cases?
If occasionally or never, why not?
Are you using Ziplinks “as is” or augmenting your use of them with Keyboard Maestro, TextExpander / Typinator, or other capability?
I voted Frequently.
One use case is as a stubbing mechanism. i can quickly create a link to a note that I immediately realize I need, but do not want to pause to write. I make the link and the note title and move on.
The second case is when I want to “drop” a sort of footnote or breadcrumb to what I am working on with details. In these cases—the most common for me—I make use of the extended syntax to create the body of the text on the fly. (I’d be glad for an extended syntax that lets me set link type too.) The main benefit is that I keep my focus on the current note as well as my hands on the keyboard.
I use them all the time. I am a keyboard centric user and enjoy the flow and the ease at which I can trigger Textexpander and KM snippets into my Tinderbox work. I use them in every document, every day all the time. They are already into my Tinderbox muscle memory.
@entropydave and @TomD
Are you using Ziplinks “as is” or augmenting your use of them with Keyboard Maestro, TextExpander / Typinator, or other capability?
I am using them mostly as is while writing using the link and similarTo boxes (found at the bottom of the text window using Ctrl-7 I believe) as well as using the find window (detached as a separate window) to explore other notes while I write. Then I use ziplinks to easily create the sentence and ziplink with some contextual information as a wrapper. Super useful for me to explore my connections to other notes.
When rereading, I follow the ideas I borrowed from Beck here: https://youtu.be/0j-68Zxmkos with KM which makes it so easy to highlight and apply. For a novice of hypertext, it has really helped me stay in the writing moment. That has been my own personal experience.
Hope that helps.
I am using them “as is” because that seems easy right now. I own and use TextExpander a good deal (I use KM infrequently) but have not found it profitable to create a TextExpander snippet for this. One reason for that is very often I am “putting” the ziplink around some text I already typed, i.e. typing some text, thinking that a link is warranted, backing up to the start of the source link text, adding square brackets, moving to the end of the source link text, then appending the extra syntax for the rest of the ziplink.
I use them with Typinator. I am currently using zip links in two different ways. The first is to link to an existing note. The second case is to create a new note based on word(s) I decide to encapsulate. Using the Container attribute, I can place the new note anywhere in my TBX document.
I’m an occasional user of Ziplinks. I think they are a terrific feature and when I want to stay in the flow of my typing, and particularly when I want to create a link to a new note at the same level, they are great. Offering a list of suggestions is also very helpful, especially so when I can’t remember if I used CamelCase or all lower case for the name of an existing note. But there’s something about drawing a link between notes that appeals to me. And doing that lets me play around with where the link exits one note and enters the other. I can also think more about whether I want a note link or a text link in each case.
I have various topics in my work. Ranging from Leadership to type 1 diabetes and leading change. At the roots of these topics many of the same theories are being used, e.g. theories about resilience, autonomic nervous system/polyvagal theory etc. So a note in one topic, often links to another topic. The ability to link is therefore important for me and I do it frequently, maybe every other two notes I make. I looked at Roam Research, but I don’t want my notes hosted. Obsidian is better and is local and all notes are in markdown. So zip links are important to me and bidirectional linking would be great.
bidirectional linking would be great
[[<Bidirectional>]] links are already available. (To be precise: this makes a link to Bidirectional and appends a return link at the end of that note.
I use them all time. Thanks!
I am not sure I understand. I don’t see it in the note. There is nothing in the note that suggests that there is an inbound link. I do see it in the inbound links column.
Am I incorrect?
If you view the note using the roadmap option, you should see both inbound and outbound links of a bidirectional link. The other way to tell is to click on the link and see if the note you are coming from is listed as a link in the targeted note. Other than these two ways, there is no visual difference between a single-direction link and a bidirectional link, although that would be kind of cool if there was some visual distinction (perhaps the ability to set or default bidirectional links to a different color).
Thank you James. I can also see it through the Menu Window Links CMD-7 option. But I see nothing at the end of the note.
That’d be nice, but as a stopgap you could set up an inherited rule or edict along the lines of:
if($InboundLinkCount>0 & $OutboundLinkCount>0){$Badge="star"} else {$Badge=""}
… and that would give you a visual indicator in maps, outlines and charts that a note has a bidirectional link [NOT ALWAYS, SORRY*]. Or search for them with an agent .
*EDIT: whoops, the logic for the above breaks if a note has an inbound/outbound link from one note and an inbound/outbound link from another that isn’t bidirectional, but as a quick and dirty way of identifying notes that at least have both inbound and outbound links it’s a start. On the map views and the outline and chart views you can also see the links going in and out of a note, so it might be doubling up, but the badges are pretty distinctive.
Closed at request of OP as topic drifting from opening Q. By all means discuss Ziplinks in new topics.