Hi everyone!
I’d like to apply a quick stamp to 20 notes whose $Name is a citekey, @Arendt1981, for instance, in order to fill a $CiteKey attribute.
If the name of my note is @Arendt1981, the $CiteKey will be @Arendt1981. I tried to do it with Quickstamp, but I get “Name” instead. Do I have to create an agent to do that or is there a Quickstamp function I don’t know? Thanks for your advices.
Quickstamp, as you have discovered, doesn’t evaluate expressions: it just copies what you type into the attribute.
Lots of people would, for this task, simply make a temporary stamp. If you expect to do this occasionally you might keep that stamp for later use; otherwise, use it and delete it.
I myself would make an agent if the notes in question can easily be selected by a query (for example, if I wanted to apply this action to all the notes in a container). Agents are quick and easy to make! But sometimes you want to select the notes by hand, and in that case a stamp is better.
Another simple way to think of quickstamp is for setting literal values † ‡ separately to each of the currently selected note(s). so to quickly set 20 notes’ $Color to blue, quickstamp is a useful tool. If the vale applied needs to be calculated use an agent (as above) stamp or other action method.
Thus the main convenience of Quickstamp is setting a single value to a single attribute across a selection of notes. It goes back to the dawn of Tinderbox when actions were generally a case of a setting a literal value. Today’s Tinderbox’s more complex action code can usually be better served by other action code methods.
†. If the target is List or Set type, the literal value can be multiple items, i.e. using a value ant;bee would add to items to the target attribute ant and bee.
‡. Now I write, I’m not sure how quickstamp works for Dictionary type attribute. So, I assume providing a ‘key:value’ pair might work, so pollinator:bee would add the key pollinator to the target dictionary with a key vale of bee. Or, if the key already exists, the existing value woiuld be overwiritten with bee.
Thank you for your suggestions! I’m starting a new work from the scratch and I’m attentive to build my foundations with care.