The Archive, but for *gasp* subfolders (really omnibar for subfolders)

pat

The Archive and its omnibar are by far the best tool I've come across for navigating a collection of text documents. It works great for my notes archive, but I have lots of other folders (project folders specifically) that contain markdown files of their own.

So for those of you who like The Archive's zippiness for navigating markdown notes, and also use markdown in other places besides your notes archive: what do you do to get a similar kind of navigation for those other files?

ctietze

I use Quicksilver (Alfred etc. will probably do the same) as an app launcher and indexer of important folders (proejct folders, year-month-filing folders, invoices, apps, ...) and Spotlight, and that's it. I use date-time IDs with precision to the second for e.g. invoice file names and thus get global file linking "for free". (Just paste e.g. 20201228113322 into Spotlight and go to the file.)

Spotlight really is good at this job.

(Inside my projects to navigate between headings, notes, tasks, ..., I use Emacs to edit the files and have customized bookmarks etc. to go to places.)

zk_1000

@ctietze can you share a link, please? I use quicksilver on Google and learned so far lots of interesting stuff about clothing, credit cards, surfing and Disney characters.

never mind, i found it: https://qsapp.com/. Only for Mac users

MartinBB

@ctietze said:
I use date-time IDs with precision to the second for e.g. invoice file names

I'm curious as to why you use precision to the second in this case. Perhaps you get a lot of invoices!

ctietze

@MartinBB Most importantly, this avoids conflicts with my notes without having to check for duplicates. It's a different namespace but the same principle.

For what it's worth, this also happens to make it more likely I generate such IDs as "throwaway" identifiers, e.g. for purchase orders that I don't file and for receipts that I do file.

German tax law seems to be particular about this, but for each and every transaction, I have to have a written receipt. E.g. when Apple transfers me my monthly earnings, I have to generate this myself. So there would be overlaps in the generation process if I just take the current time and batch-generate a couple receipts. (Also, when I batch-generate 12 months worth of receipts, I want their file names to sort properly, so they should start with the calendar month of the payment, e.g. 202001xxxx 202002xxxx, and so I assign each income stream a day-of-month and time-of-date, e.g. April 2020 + Apple = 20200431123456. Again, precision to the second avoids having to check for conflicts in case that by some freak accident I created a note at that time.)

MartinBB

Thank you! Curiosity satisfied