Paragraph Level Linking in The Archive

Will

The Archive has paragraph-level linking and has since the beginning. Well, not specifically 'paragraph-level' but even better. In The Archive, you can link any place in one note to any place in another note. Hold on, and there is even more. That same link can be linked to even more places in more notes.

How is this done?

Type [[ then the shortcut ⌘U key combination, then type ]] and then highlight the string and copy it ⌘C. Then it's ready for pasting ⌘V anywhere it's appropriate.

I don't use this too much. 45 notes out of 1614 notes contain this type of link. Almost exclusively with structure notes.

I made a small Keyboard Maestro macro to handle the fiddliness of this.
Insert UID Link to Clipboard

Pictured below is a one-to-many linking example. I use the special denotation of ›[[UID]‹ to signify these types of links as they behave a bit differently than [[UID] links in The Archive. It gives me a heads up as to what to expect.

This particular note is part of a structure note built around a book. It is long, and only the referenced part is relevant to the link. The relevant link is highlighted in green in the lower right of the editor window.

GeoEng51

@Will said:
The Archive has paragraph-level linking and has since the beginning. Well, not specifically 'paragraph-level' but even better. In The Archive, you can link any place in one note to any place in another note. Hold on, and there is even more. That same link can be linked to even more places in more notes.

How is this done?

Type [[ then the shortcut ⌘U key combination, then type ]] and then highlight the string and copy it ⌘C. Then it's ready for pasting ⌘V anywhere it's appropriate.

@Will - I must be dense tonight - I tried this and couldn't get it to work as you described. I'll have a look at your KM macro and see if I can make sense of it. But if I add a UID at the beginning of a paragraph in a zettel, say, and then copy/paste that UID in the body of another zettel, when I click on the UID in the second zettel, I get a "Nothing Selected" error message - it doesn't show any text.

I probably don't understand what you are telling us

Sascha

If you think about it from a phenomenological point of view paragraph level linking is nothing different from any kind of linking if you have the principle of a unique address in mind: An ID is a unique identifier. If you place it in the header it identifies the whole note. If you place it in a paragraph it identifies this paragraph (or subsection, or, or,..).

I prefer to place the ID in the beginning of the paragraph (or prefered since I abondened paragraph linking).

Will

@GeoEng51 said:
@Will - I must be dense tonight - I tried this and couldn't get it to work as you described. I'll have a look at your KM macro and see if I can make sense of it. But if I add a UID at the beginning of a paragraph in a zettel, say, and then copy/paste that UID in the body of another zettel, when I click on the UID in the second zettel, I get a "Nothing Selected" error message - it doesn't show any text.

I probably don't understand what you are telling us

Yes, this may be confusing. That is why I use the identifiers ›[[UID]‹ to signify the different behavior in The Archive. These links do NOT jump to the linked note and place it in the editor window. The link only populates the 'note list' with the relevant notes.

Will

@Sascha said:
If you think about it from a phenomenological point of view paragraph level linking is nothing different from any kind of linking if you have the principle of a unique address in mind: An ID is a unique identifier. If you place it in the header it identifies the whole note. If you place it in a paragraph it identifies this paragraph (or subsection, or, or,..).

I prefer to place the ID in the beginning of the paragraph (or prefered since I abondened paragraph linking).

Please tell us more about why you abandoned paragraph linking. I've wondered about the utility but think the more granular linking, that this type of linking provides, might be useful for the style of structure notes I produce. They are annotated table of contents. The annotations being summary phrases, questions, arguments.

GeoEng51

@Will said:

Yes, this may be confusing. That is why I use the identifiers ›[[UID]‹ to signify the different behavior in The Archive. These links do NOT jump to the linked note and place it in the editor window. The link only populates the 'note list' with the relevant notes.

OK; that's the result that I got. So I have to go looking in the notes themselves to find the paragraph link.

Will

No, you don't have to go searching the note for the link. The editor window will contain the target link when you select the note from the list and it will be highlighted with your theme's highlight setting. The same behavior that all searches have rather they are UID's or links or text searches.

Sascha

@Will Short answer: Whatever you asign an ID is its own entity. This is functionally what we call Zettel: That to which we can refer. If there is a principle of atomicity then you should not let many atoms share one Zettel. However, you shouldn't separate atoms into quarks neither.

But this is a theoretical reason. It is a post hoc explanation. However, it is easier to teach at the same time.

MartinBB

@Will said:
it will be highlighted with your theme's highlight setting.

Only if you have selected that option in the Editing pane of preferences, I believe.

GeoEng51

@Will said:
No, you don't have to go searching the note for the link. The editor window will contain the target link when you select the note from the list and it will be highlighted with your theme's highlight setting. The same behavior that all searches have rather they are UID's or links or text searches.

Yes, see that now. Thanks again for the explanation