When searching for a note, display the first result by default

dgraziotin

Hello, first post here and of course it is a feature request by the way, I have recently found The Archive and Zettelkasten in general. Growing on me!

It would be cool if, after hitting CMD-L and searching for something, the first match was already displayed on the main panel (the content panel). Hitting DOWN would show the second match, etc.

Like how nvALT does.

To be fair, the current system works perfectly. It is just a minor nuisance to avoid one extra click

Basil

If I am not mistaken, The Archive currently behaves exactly like nvALT does in this regard:

• If what you typed in the search field exactly matches the beginning of one of your notes, then the content of that note is displayed right away. If there are multiple matches, the one closest to the top of the list is shown.
• If what you typed does not match exactly the beginning of the title of any of your notes, then none of the notes is pre-selected and the content panel stays empty.

The reason why all nv-style applications (including The Archive and nvALT) don't show you a note in the second scenario is that this behavior allows for a clear distinction between rapidly switching notes that you know the (first couple letters of the) name of and performing actual searches.

dgraziotin

You are right. My bad, I am not used to the Zettel ID yet.
I was searching by title and omitting the ID.
Thanks!

Basil

Yes, that is one of the downsides of having note titles start with Zettel IDs and one of the reasons why I don't use them myself (the other reason is that navigating your notes on an iPhone becomes much more challenging if most of the visible note title is comprised of the Zettel ID). I just absolutely love switching between notes by just typing three or four letters.

A lot of people here swear by note titles that start with Zettel IDs, and they are definitely great for super robust linking, so I would not want to talk you out of using them. But The Archive also works really well without them, so don't feel like you absolutely have to use them. There are actually a few interesting discussions on this topic somewhere on this forum.

ctietze

@Basil and @dgraziotin, now that The Archive does this for a while, can you give me your opinion on how the behavior "feels"?

One thing that is different from note matches: with title matches, the title is auto-completed for you and put into the Omnibar. The Omnibar reflects the selection. With this selection of the sole survivor, the Omnibar contains the search terms but selects the only note left.

Replacing the Omnibar contents with the selected note's title would be even worse: the whole search string would be taken from you just e.g. when you misspell a word in a phrase that produces 1 result.

Basil

Is it possible that you meant to post to this thread, @ctietze? Because that is the feature request for the "show sole survivor note" feature. Maybe it would make sense to move that thread from the private beta subforum to the regular The Archive forum and also post/move your above comment there.

ctietze

Good catch! Used this one because it's publicly visible and didn't notice the difference at first. I'm not a fan of rewriting history, so here we are Please ignore what I said, folks. @Basil you may answer in the correct thread, of course, if you prefer

Basil

I'm not quite sure I understand why moving feature request threads (that might still be relevant) from a private beta subforum to the public subforum of the release version would constitute rewriting history, but I also don't think it's big enough of an issue to start debating about.

Anyway, just wanted to say again that I am really loving this new "show sole survivor note" feature. It's one of these many little things that make working with The Archive even more pleasant.