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General Software Discussion / Re: I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten
« on: May 28, 2020, 06:00 AM »
General reflection (if I may, Dormouse let me know if you think I'm taking things too off-topic).
I'd love to see a comparison review of these markdown/plaintext "information management apps or systems" (not sure what the best term is) e.g. HackMD, CodiMD, Obsidian and others. First in regard to editing single files (syntax highlighting, shortcuts, autocompletion, ...) but second and more importantly comparison of features for global search, tagging, replacing and organizing the information.
One particular feature I've been thinking about is inclusion/transclusion.
Some apps offer that feature in (extended) Markdown or Asciidoc or with extra tools like Pandoc. My experience or impression is that transcluded content only shows up in these kinds of apps in preview mode and/or generated output, like .html or .pdf.
But I'm curious if some app also offers a third, mid-level mode or view.
1 raw view: the editor shows all syntax unresolved. So transclusion syntax is shown as for example "{{B.md}}". The user has to in a separate step open B.md to see its content, for example "hello world".
2 preview: the editor resolves all syntax, including seamlessly showing transcluded content.
3 transclude view: (this is the feature I'm looking for) the editor resolves only transclusions but no other markdown syntax. For example the editor shows "**weather**" (unresolved) but shows "hello world" (resolved transcluded contents of B.md) instead of "{{B.md}}".
In transclude view edits to the transcluded content would directly edit the source (B.md).
In transclude view the editor/app syntax highlighter would mark transcluded lines with a vertical colored bar. This is necessary so the users knows that edits there will edit the transcluded source. The highlight bar could show parent/child structure: bar on right side = content transcluded into this document; bar on left side = content transcluded from this document into other document). We could also imagine ways to interact with the transcluded content via such highlighting (click bar to open/jump to source; shortcuts to fold/unfold transcluded content; ...)
That could be useful for non-programming, personal use.
To expand, when coding it is often good to not all the time see the content of includes, as it would clutter the code we want to work on. We mostly just use the functions/methods and look up the source of the include only when needed. The imported modules are relatively fixed with a specific purpose. In contrast, for non-coding personal usage we might want to see the transcluded content most of the time while editing. For example when editing shed_build_plan.md we might want to see the resolved contents of hardware_tools_inventory.md most of the time. As a reminder to ourselves and also as context to surrounding text.
A halfway measure along these lines would be something like what the Peek feature in VS Code does for functions/methods/variables, but for non-resolved transclude syntax in Markdown.
Or a more complex version: some extra syntax for the transclude syntax gives case by case control over if and how to resolve it in transclude view (full resolve; resolve as embedded X lines high editbox with scroolbar; resolve only as mouseover tooltip peek; no resolve).
I'd love to see a comparison review of these markdown/plaintext "information management apps or systems" (not sure what the best term is) e.g. HackMD, CodiMD, Obsidian and others. First in regard to editing single files (syntax highlighting, shortcuts, autocompletion, ...) but second and more importantly comparison of features for global search, tagging, replacing and organizing the information.
One particular feature I've been thinking about is inclusion/transclusion.
Some apps offer that feature in (extended) Markdown or Asciidoc or with extra tools like Pandoc. My experience or impression is that transcluded content only shows up in these kinds of apps in preview mode and/or generated output, like .html or .pdf.
But I'm curious if some app also offers a third, mid-level mode or view.
1 raw view: the editor shows all syntax unresolved. So transclusion syntax is shown as for example "{{B.md}}". The user has to in a separate step open B.md to see its content, for example "hello world".
2 preview: the editor resolves all syntax, including seamlessly showing transcluded content.
3 transclude view: (this is the feature I'm looking for) the editor resolves only transclusions but no other markdown syntax. For example the editor shows "**weather**" (unresolved) but shows "hello world" (resolved transcluded contents of B.md) instead of "{{B.md}}".
In transclude view edits to the transcluded content would directly edit the source (B.md).
In transclude view the editor/app syntax highlighter would mark transcluded lines with a vertical colored bar. This is necessary so the users knows that edits there will edit the transcluded source. The highlight bar could show parent/child structure: bar on right side = content transcluded into this document; bar on left side = content transcluded from this document into other document). We could also imagine ways to interact with the transcluded content via such highlighting (click bar to open/jump to source; shortcuts to fold/unfold transcluded content; ...)
That could be useful for non-programming, personal use.
To expand, when coding it is often good to not all the time see the content of includes, as it would clutter the code we want to work on. We mostly just use the functions/methods and look up the source of the include only when needed. The imported modules are relatively fixed with a specific purpose. In contrast, for non-coding personal usage we might want to see the transcluded content most of the time while editing. For example when editing shed_build_plan.md we might want to see the resolved contents of hardware_tools_inventory.md most of the time. As a reminder to ourselves and also as context to surrounding text.
A halfway measure along these lines would be something like what the Peek feature in VS Code does for functions/methods/variables, but for non-resolved transclude syntax in Markdown.
Or a more complex version: some extra syntax for the transclude syntax gives case by case control over if and how to resolve it in transclude view (full resolve; resolve as embedded X lines high editbox with scroolbar; resolve only as mouseover tooltip peek; no resolve).