Newbie question about the GUI

pmdulaney

I see screenshots in which the column at the left lists notes not just by their ID numbers but also includes the titles. What do I need to do to see the titles?

Here's what my GUI looks like:

Here's an example of what I would like to see:

Will

@pmdulaney You've created zettels that are titled with only the UID. There is a variety of ways to create a zettel. ⌘N is one but it gets you the output you got. You could right-click on your notes UID's and rename the zettel but that would be tiresome. One way is to type in a blank Onmi Bar type ⌘U this will create the UID and then you can type the title before pressing enter and committing.

Short GIF showing typing ⌘U (which you can't see) in a blank Omni Bar then the title and committing by pressing return (which you can't see).

ctietze

Yes, what @Will said and so kindly showed in an animation! (Nice work!)

The names to the left are the file names, and they change independently from what you type in the editor to the right. For now.

Will

@ctietze, @pmdulaney points out a shortcoming in The Archive. ⌘N New... creates a note with the UID and doesn't prompt nor does it give the opportunity to add a name to the note before it is committed.

I realize that this is the "industry" standard but most apps prompt for a title when saving. This "prompting for a title when saving" doesn't translate into how we work in the Zettelkasten. I would suggest that the solution could be when pressing ⌘N the user would be prompted in some way to enter a title then a new note would be committed with the UID and the user inputted title. It might even help if the ⌘N didn't commit the note and left the opportunity to add a title.

pmdulaney

@Will, @ctietze - Thank you so much for your help! As always for me, mastery of the most basic things in a new software environment is the most difficult.

To other newbies like myself: Just yesterday I learned something very fundamental that @Will also alludes to; namely, when doing a search in the Omnibar, do NOT hit return! I personally was just assuming that the Omnibar worked like the Linux command line in, say, a bash shell, in which nothing happens until you hit return. In fact, just typing in the Omnibar starts the search process. When you enter text AND hit return you are "committing" as @Will says. From what I gather that means: If what you have entered matches the name of an existing note, that note will be opened. If the text doesn't match the name of an existing note, a new note will be created with that name.

pmdulaney

One more question to @ctietze. It sounds like for my existing notes I could rename my notes by just renaming the .txt files themselves. Is that correct?

Later that day...
Answered my own question using a test note; yes, that is correct.

The Archive must be monitoring the directory constantly because the new name showed up immediately.

ctietze

@pmdulaney Yes, that's right: The Archive strives to do nothing fancy with your notes, like shelving them away in a database, but make all of your actions translate to simple changes, e.g. renaming files, changing file contents, creating and deleting files, and such things. So everything you do in the file system should be reflected in the app.

@Will It's a good point that the Cmd+N creation of a note is a bit weird. We've taken note of a couple of ideas to change things up in the future, so your input is very helpful!