> I'm struggling with using backlinks in dendron. > For example I open

dendron.topic.schema.md

. The backlinks panel lists some files with links to this note. I want to look through them and see what the docs say about schemas. But as soon as I click on anything in backlinks panel the active file changes, and the backlinks are now shown for the note I clicked on. Then I have to figure out how to navigate back and then read through backlinks list again to find my place. > Is there maybe some way to pin the backlinks in place? Or is this sort of workflow just totally un-dendronic? ) @User no way to pin backlinks at the moment. i have the following settings which opens everything in a new tab

json
{
    "workbench.editor.enablePreview": false,
    "workbench.editor.showTabs": true,
}

this way, there are 3 ways to go back to my previous note: 1.

ctrl-tab

2. going to previous tab 3. using the open editors pane (usually in the explorer, i like having it in the bottom pane)

> yes, either that or maybe a way to see more context right there in the backlinks panel > or the ability to open backlinks in editor like it's possible for search results > > I've resorted to doing a search for

dendron.topic.schema

and then opening results in editor for now. This shows a nice list of results with the ability to peek into different files from the same page. This might not scale well when there are more notes though). @User fyi, you can open search editor via keyboard shortcut. i use it to start a search with the current filename. works really well with dendron hierarchies

json
  {
    "key": "ctrl+s f",
    "command": "search.action.openNewEditor",
    "args": {
      "query": "",
      "triggerSearch": false,
      "focusResults": false,
      "includes": "${fileBasenameNoExtension}",
    }
  },

> @User that makes more sense. I keep a PhD notes schema unofficially that would benefit fromsome stricter structure. Thanks! @User will be slowly rolling out more functionality with schemas as well in the future. currently, the main feature is being able to automatically create templates from new notes that match a schema. you can use it to, for example automatically create an outline for all lecture notes. -

school.{topic}.lecture.{name}

# Speaker Background

# Summary

# Notes

# Review

https://www.dendron.so/notes/c5e5adde-5459-409b-b34d-a0d75cbb1052.html#schema-templates

@User thanks for the tips! Is the search fast enough with your 20K notes? )

i've never noticed a lag of longer than a second. that being said, most of my notes are reference notes so most notes have fewer than a few hundred characters

So the backlinks panel is actually not a core feature I guess? Since you seem to have ways to work around it)

whether its core functionality depends on who you talk to and what you mean. architecturally, its not core in the sense that actual functionality is provided by another extension (markdown-notes). i had to fork it to integrate some dendron specific functionality. workflow wise, some people do consider backlinks core to their note taking style and its their main way of connecting notes. for my own workflow, i organize primarily by hierarchies. this is also what dendron tries to promote. that being said, backlinks are extremely useful when needing to pull in disparate notes from multiple hierarchies. for example, i track most meetings i have with people. i have a

meet.*

hierarchy and a

people.*

hierarchy. i use journal notes to create new meetings - eg.

meet.journal.2020.08.29.dendron-gereleth

for every meeting, i have a

# People

section which lists the people involved. this creates a backlink to the corresponding entry in the

people.*

hierarchy. this way, backlinks give me an index of every meeting i've had with a particular person

Yes, this makes sense. Although multiple connection options can make it hard to decide how to organize notes. Like if I have note A and I'm writing a new note B then I have at least three ways to link them: - file B as a child of A - link from A to B - link from B to A Or even any combo of the above). Regardless of the exact app used I'm sometimes paralyzed over a decision what to do here) Wish I had some model of note relationship semantics but I don't have it figured out yet.

@User in that case, you might want to put those notes e.g. into notes.some-topic, and then move them when some structure emerges

(thats what I mostly do)

@User in yaml frontmatter, should the "updated"-attribute be updated when the note is updated?

Hey I've been trying to set up a template for notes that kinda follow this structure, project.subTopic.routine. I used the same kind of scheme logic that I got from getting a few templates that work with: project.subTopic.

It doesn't work for the project.subTopic.routine. Type

> @User in yaml frontmatter, should the "updated"-attribute be updated when the note is updated? @User it will be 😅 that's currently a roadmap item

ah, ok. good to know 🙂

> > Hey I've been trying to set up a template for notes that kinda follow this structure, > > project.subTopic.routine. > > I used the same kind of scheme logic that I got from getting a few templates that work with: > project.subTopic. @User here's a schema for what I think you're saying. i have two versions of subtopic, one as a namespace and one without

yml
- id: pro
  title: pro
  desc: ""
  parent: root
  children:
    - topicAsChild
    - topicAsNamespace
- id: topicAsChild
  children:
    - routine
- id: topicAsNamespace
  namespace: true
  children: 
    - routine
- id: routine
  namespace: true
  template:
    id: pro.template.routine
    type: note

this will apply template at

pro.topicAsChild.routine.blah.md

and

pro.topicAsNamespace.foo.routine.blah.md

@User just a remark, I think there might be some difference if one uses "children" vs "parent" attributes; for some reason the book-icon wasn't properly shown when using the parent, but when I changed that to children, they appeared (again reloaded both the index and the window)

you mean for the schema? that's probably the case. the

parent

case i only use when specifying the root. everything else goes by

children

. since

parent

isn't really used anywhere else (and generated automatically as dendron indexes the schema), i'm actually planning on deprecating the option and marking the root of a schema hierarchy with a special attribute (similar to

namespace

)

will update the docs meanwhile to reflect that!

> this will apply template at

pro.topicAsChild.routine.blah.md

and

pro.topicAsNamespace.foo.routine.blah.md

@User :OO I was thinking of using two different 'routine's for each subtopic but thats cool/interesting that works

good to know; I currently cannot come up with any good use case that would require parent (other than root), all my schemas now rely on children

Thanks @User !!

btw, is there anywhere some kind of schema gallery? I bet many people now wonder how to use schemas - and even potentially structure their notes - efficiently

having some kind of list of structures that various people have used could be helpful

> good to know; I currently cannot come up with any good use case that would require parent (other than root), all my schemas now rely on children @User yep, that's the case for me as well. initially, when i started, i had thought about doing multiple parents or having children that could "dependency inject" their parents but then realized quickly I was over-engineering it 😅

> btw, is there anywhere some kind of schema gallery? I bet many people now wonder how to use schemas - and even potentially structure their notes - efficiently @User not yet. planning on releasing something next week around that. currently have been sharing them as gists (eg. https://gist.github.com/kevinslin/5ca7a6f25a239add5ea374f329e6a19e)

trying to figure out the best way to make a community adoptable schema gallery. i like the typescript adoption of the

@types

repository that anyone can contribute definitions to

in the beginning I bet just a good selection of examples would be great; importing them directly might be somewhat problematic when people want to customize them somehow to fit their personal workflows

maybe a schema channel to just dump various examples somewhere? 🤔