This is also true of any other backing store but I would sincerely hope the first version of backlinks does not rely on anything but the Markdown files anyway. Since the backlinks themselves are inherently derivative data, any storage of that derivative data becomes a cache. (When I say "other software" I'm currently thinking of tools like Press and GitJournal for modifying my Zettlr notes on other platforms, so this isn't a hypothetical scenario.) Should other software choose to auto-generate backlinks, it will now display each note with both the forced backlinks which were written in the file by Zettlr and its own dynamic backlinks. Adding a special syntax ( ]], or otherwise) unfortunately exacerbates this "invisible protocol" problem. Yes, writing the backlinks into the files themselves means that they exist within the plaintext files and can be ported elsewhere, but this in effect creates a protocol on top of the Markdown files they are no longer simple Markdown and for files to coexist between Zettlr and other apps, all other apps will need to implement this feature in the same way. This is both as a software developer with decades of experience supporting legacy systems, and as a humble Zettlr user. +1's on a GitHub issue never feel terribly efficient, but I'll stick to that for now and move my votes elsewhere if this is the wrong place for voting.īetween the options of (A) forcibly writing backlinks directly into files and (B) dynamically auto-generating them, I probably can't vote hard enough for option (B). So, TLDR: There will be improvements, but currently due to the rising user base I'm more putting out small forest fires in the codebase than implementing new features, so it'll take some time I'm not sure where best to push my votes for things. Me neither, and one of the reasons why I have "neglected" the Zettelkasten functionality for quite some time now is that I believe I have a better solution to that instead of automatic backlinking (but the idea is never to automatically change files, but instead build a Graph - yet I have to read more papers on these computer linguistic things in order to make the idea a reality) I'm not a big fan of heirarchical data structures You can actually do this in the preferences! It would be nice to have the ability to configure the linking syntax Plus, I want to make it right, not fast … (I can't hammer in new features like I used to because the user base has grown considerably, so the app needs to be much more stable and is less a field of experimentation :/) It may look great, but Zettlr has a big difference to Roam: It does not work with a database but with real files, and changing these takes a lot more time than a simple database. That being said: It's something that's been on the bucket list for some time now, but it will take a considerable amount of time to implement. There are a lot of things to think about - where to put the backlinks? How? How not? Edge cases, etc. I think this feature along with the one currently going through as a pull request (#178) to create new files in the event they don't exist, would make the workflow of adding new notes and navigating through those that are related, the ideal experience. I could manually put the backlinks in but then I'm really slowing down my productivity when making notes. I'd like to fully adopt Zettlr but the inability to traverse related files is a bit of a bummer. I'm not a big fan of heirarchical data structures and I use Markdown as a form of knowledgebase alongside TheBrain. Given the craze around Roam Research and the ability to do backlinking, I think it would be a good enhancement. It would be nice to have the ability to configure the linking syntax alongside that which you can currently do. I'd like to be able to use the current default syntax ( ]) to do one-way links and the varient of ]] to have the backlink generated. If you don't use the new syntax a backlink won't be added to the destination file. I think this would be best suited as a varient of the current linking syntax. It's really cool to see truely opensource tools being developed actively :) DescriptionĪbility to have Zettlr automatically prepend backlinks to beginning of destionation files in the event they are linked to from another file. Very briefly, I've just discovered Zettlr and I have to say, it's absolutely awesome.
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