Feature: Note Aliases

There is just one flaw that comes to my mind. I like in bear that you can distinguish links and crosslinks (i hope that will remain once panda is implemented in bear). If you present a crosslink as link just because it is an alias you would confuse them. So actually i would prefer: [[alias|wikilink]]

I agree with you but I really need aliases and whatever convinces the Bear team to add them is worth it in my book :wink:

I prefer pipe links too but something is better than nothing.

What did the team think BTW? :wink:

I would like to have them too. It is just the question how aliases for links are implemented. And I believe they should be recognizable as cross links

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If adding aliases, consider formatting it [wikilink|alias] rather than [alias|wikilink] because that is the order wikipedia does it in, so is likely to be more familiar/standard.

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Youā€™re right, it should be [[wikilink|alias]]. I made a mistake in my previous post. This is how Obsidian does it.

However, I found out that Hypernotes uses yet another alias notation which may be the least nerdy of all and transfers easily onto other apps. They do this: [[wikilink]](alias). Super simple and super elegant!.

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That would avoid trouble for user who have a pipe in some of their titles. I like that syntax.

However, is there a special syntax which the most apps use? If yes it actually makes sense to take that one

The pipe syntax is the most widespread one (Obsidian, iA Writer, Taio, etc., all support it). I also think this is the one that should be used in Bear but since there was resistance to it, and I know Bear team also cares about a simple user experience, I started fishing for alternatives.

Iā€™d really love to go back to Bear once they ship 2.0 but aliases is a non-negotiable necessity for me, so Iā€™m trying to nudge them in the right direction with this thread. :wink:

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Consider this a bump for this feature request. Having a link alias is a key part of my workflow in creating class notes. Having to display a lengthy link next to a short piece of text is, IMNSHO, suboptimal. If this canā€™t be added to Bear 2, I hope it can find its way into Bear 2.01.

Yeah, :+1:t4: on this from me, too. I was kinda surprised this didnā€™t already exist. Internal links that canā€™t use aliases just arenā€™t useful to me. Having to append anything that I would link to with ([[/Section Link]]) is way less useful and readable. I did discover the workaround mentioned by trix, but it wastes time and doesnā€™t get converted the way I want when exporting notes as HTML (which is hugely important to my workflow).

Iā€™d be down with either [[/Section Link]](section) or [[/Section Link||section]]. Or really any syntax that would make this work inline, like a normal link does.

Continuing the alias discussion from here.

@gnome.irdan , you said:

Iā€™m not even asking to create permanent note aliases but merely to allow for alternate display names for wikilinks. E.g., [[note name|display text]] will be visible as a link saying ā€œdisplay textā€ but linking to the note ā€œnote nameā€.

I understand the difference between link aliases to notes and adding aliases to a note by setting it in the YAML front matter. I thought you were requesting both alias functions.

Iā€™m just curious. Why only link aliases? What if I want to link an alias to a personā€™s name across all notes by specifying it once in the note?

Also, you mentioned that you simultaneously use aliases in a bunch of other apps: Logseq, Obsidian, iA Writer. So, if youā€™re importing/exporting notes between multiple apps, maybe this is really an export format issue?

Lastly, you stated that using note titles would be a problem since the callback URLs wouldnā€™t change if you decided to change the title of the note. In B2, why wouldnā€™t a find/replace work on a per-note basis?

find: ā€œopen-note?title=old-nameā€
replace: ā€œopen-note?title=new-nameā€

Iā€™m just trying to help you with some solutions here. However, Iā€™m out of ideas if you have a requirement for constantly changing multiple note titles and aliased links across your library of notes while transferring them back and forth between multiple apps.

I wouldnā€™t mind hard-set aliases in YAML like in Obsidian but I think it would go against the spirit of Bear, simple as that. And my typical use case is adjusting the wikilink to the grammar of the sentence. As I mentioned in the other thread, Iā€™m Polish. Every noun in Polish has 14 forms (7 cases + singular and plural number), so I have to do it a lot. Currently, my Bear notes typically have wikilinks in parentheses after the sentence, which is not as clean.

All apps I use use the same notation except for Logseq. I wish Logseq also followed the same pattern. One of the advantages of Markdown is the ease with which we can move content between apps. Iā€™m not interested in spending time writing scripts so I end up using a subset of each appā€™s capabilities to make it easier to transfer my content as I please. Logseq has so many idiosyncrasies that I simply keep it separate. (And donā€™t use it as much anymore.)

Why would I base my system on something that requires heavy manual maintenance? Taking notes serves a purpose. Itā€™s not a goal in itself.

I appreciate the sentiment. I donā€™t really need solutions. I have workarounds but if the team can add functionality that will improve my experience, I feel like this is the perfect moment to ask. If they donā€™t add aliases, Iā€™ll survive. But Bear will sure be more useful to me if they do add them.

Hello,

Iā€™m in the process of transitioning from Obsidian to Bear 2, and one feature I find particularly useful is using note aliases for backlink detection.

For example, having a note containing ā€œAIā€ recognized as a backlink to the ā€œArtificial Intelligenceā€ page could prove beneficial.

This is achievable in Obsidian through adding a YAML frontmatter. However, Iā€™m unsure if this method aligns with Bearā€™s minimalistic style, but exploring something along those lines could be interesting.

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