Notebook includes notes in sub-notebook and outline view

plugin-idea
(Yuning Shen) #1

I am exploring around Inkdrop and very much like it for now. There are two features I feel like missing (or maybe it is hidden somewhere).

  1. Selecting parent notebook also includes notes in sub-notebooks. The logic is that I will select the parent notebook if I want to see notes across several sub-notebooks. But currently, if I click on parent notebook, I can not see notes in its sub-notebooks.

  2. Outline view/navigation in notes. Some markdown editors, such as Typora, support this that it generates an outline panel so that you can quickly navigate in the note – which I find very helpful if I have a long note.

Thank you for this app and I would love to know if Inkdrop will have/has these features.

Yuning

(Takuya Matsuyama) #2

Hi Yuning,

Thank you for the suggestion.

  1. Yeah, it would be useful if you have nested notebooks. But I’m afraid that it requires a fundamental change to the database. So it would be hard to support.
  2. It would be nice to have if you have a long note. However, I guess it is a feature that depends on personal preference. So it’d be nice to be a plugin. If you are interested in making it, I’m happy to help you. BTW, there is code-folding plugin by Samantha which, I think, would be helpful for editing long notes.

Thanks!

(Yuning Shen) #3

Hi Craftz,

Thank you for the response. I am wondering if you can solve the nested notebook using the searching function without the change of database. However, I also noticed that your searching function appears not to support searching logic for same domain, e.g. book:notebook_A [OR] book:notebook_B. I tried to look some docs on these but failed to find anything in details.

Is there a way to search like this? Thanks!

#4

I suppose you cold add remark-toc as a plugin to Inkdrop with little effort if this is what you are looking for!

#5

I think this also more broadly touches the question how to structure your notebooks, sub-notebooks and notes in general. For some projects it might make sense to gather project related notes in a sub-notebook and keep a single note that tracks the progress of that project in the parent notebook. I haven’t employed that system myself, but implementing your strategy regarding the list view would make this approach not feasible anymore. So for some it might be a feature and for others it might break their workflow.

Somewhat related, have you thought about adding the option to pin notes to the top of the list view for a given notebook @craftzdog?

(Takuya Matsuyama) #6

@Yuning_Shen,

I’m afraid that OR condition in search is not supported.
Basically I recommend you to use tags to categorize notes across notebooks. Tags are exactly for that use-case.
As Hoopy pointed out, this feature request touches broadly about how you organize notes.
Please describe why you need it and how you would like to organize notes so that we can find the best way to treat your problem.

@anon29127703, thank you for the suggestion. I have ever considered before about the feature to allow pinning a particular note to the top of the list view in a given notebook.
I’ve got similar requests from some people and it looks like they try to use the app as a personal Wiki. So they prefer to connect notes each other strictly with automatically generated links to children which Wiki usually supports.
But please note that Inkdrop is a note-taking app but not a Wiki system. It is for storing your memos, not for writing structured documentations.
If you have a cover note for a notebook, you have to maintain links manually and it will be not practical. Then, probably a feature to generate links will be requested. The app will end up losing its simplicity.
I understand their needs but I’m afraid that it is kind of out of scope.

Thanks again for your thoughts!

(Yuning Shen) #7

Hello @craftzdog,

Let’s say I am working on a project X with sub-projects A, B, C and I created subfolders for each of them under the folder “Project X”. One day I want to find all the info about target N across the project so I will click on the folder “Project X” or search within the folder with the keyword “Target N”, hoping to find all the notes related to target N. I would rather not to look at each folder one by one because it breaks the integrity of thinking (or simply because I don’t remember which folder they are as there are hundreds of notes in this project). I would rather not to use “Target N” as a tag either as there are target O, P, Q… as well. Tagging each of them will make my tags really messy.

This is actually the everyday situation for my workflow so I will appreciate any support to this part.

Best,
Yuning

(Takuya Matsuyama) #8

Hi Yuning,

Thank you for sharing your use-case!
That makes sense if you have many sub-projects under a project.
I guess however it is a personal preference problem.
Let me describe why it doesn’t support listing notes across sub-notebooks.

Evernote supports the feature you need by default, which is called ‘Stack’. It is not an actual notebook but like a folder to gather some notebooks.
I didn’t like this feature because I wanted to create notes about general topic of a project itself. I always had to create a child notebook named ‘General’ or something.
That’s why Inkdrop adopts nesting notebooks instead of the Evernote’s Stack.
If I needed to find all notes related to a particular topic across notebooks, I always use tags.

So this problem would depend on how you prefer to organize notes.
And it is hard to cover all preferences in the app while keeping it simple and clean.
As I told in the first comment, it also requires a fundamental change to database.
I understand your need but I’m afraid to say no at the moment.
But I will remember your thoughts for the future development.
Thank you so much!