Link Types

You can created Typed Links using the following list-based syntax:
- linkType [[note 1]], [[note 2|alias]]. If you have Breadcrumbs installed, its typed links such as linkType:: [[note 1]] are also added.

For example, if you have a [[Rembrant]] note and you want to link it to [[The Night Watch]], you would add - painted [[The Night Watch]] to your Rembrant note.

This vault contains many examples of such links at the bottom of the page. These will be visualized by Juggl as text on edges. For example, the typed links at the bottom of this page will be displayed as follows:

Pasted image 20210421133609.png

Additionally, you can apply different styling using CSS based on the type of the links to make these more distinct. This will in the future be possible using the Style Pane:

Pasted image 20210421133938.png

Note: The linkType can only be a single word! This means - has painted [[The Night Watch]] will not be parsed as a typed link has painted.

Furthermore, if you have the Breadcrumbs plugin installed, then with the Breadcrumbs integration, it will also add all typed edges from that plugin. This includes those created with the Dataview inline attributes syntax hasPainted:: [[The Night Watch]].

Development

This syntax has multiple issues. In this section we discuss ways to improve it that are not currently implemented:

  1. It is metadata, and not inline. Most of the links people write in Obsidian are 'inline': They are part of the text, instead of seperate lines.
  2. This syntax doesn't allow adding properties. For example, the relation publishedIn could have useful additional metadata, such as the year it was published. Similarly, when creating a list of ingredients, it'd be useful to also register the quantity needed for each ingredient.
  3. You can only link the current note as a source. However, if, for example, you are writing a daily note, you might write that "Today, Joe Biden becomes the president of the US". The corresponding link might be [Joe Biden] -President->[US]. Otherwise, one would have to write this in a new "Joe Biden" note, even if this doesn't necessarily make sense while writing.

To solve these issues we will work on a new, more general syntax. Currently, the idea is the following: This recipe requires 20 grams of [[Rice|rice|ingredient|quantity=20 grams]]. This is an inline syntax of the form [[Note name|alias|linkType|property1=value1|property2=value]]. However, this does not yet solve issue 3!

A similar idea which is used in Semantic Mediawiki and which is going to be used in Keypoints, is This recipe requires 20 grams of [[quantity=20 grams::ingredient::Rice|rice]]. This puts the link type in the beginning, which can be more natural to read. It also helps standardize this syntax.

Input for this syntax and ease of use is highly appreciated. We welcome you to join the discussion at Discord.

Interactive Graph
Table Of Contents
Link Types
Development