Aliases for blocks/headings

Feature requests
1

Use case or problem

This feature would be helpful when you want easily linkable blocks/headings as well as consistency in the process regardless of where the blocks/headings are moved.

Proposed solution

Firstly, I understand that moving or extracting a block/heading into another note will break links to the block/heading. A solution to that is outside the scope of this request.

What I am thinking of is a middle ground between atomic notes and blocks/headings via block/heading aliases. If blocks/headings allowed you to define aliases, you would be able to more easily find that block/heading by its alias when trying to link or embed, regardless of a changing block id or heading name. So in a way it would assist with any difficulty remembering the names of headings that have been changed.

Of course, in the case of blocks, you could define a custom block id, but this workflow can feel brittle and exacting, and dependent upon no use of spaces. Plus you need to remember which note it is in. I see avoiding this limitation as one of the major improvements gained with this request. After extracting a block/heading, the process of linking to or embedding that block/heading would be the same as before via the alias, thus making the block/heading feel more atomic. However it is important to remember that after extraction you would still have to fix the broken links (see links below).

Related feature requests

Some relevant requests: Note Composer: links to blocks and headers should be updated when extracting, Automatic/inline update of links to headers and blocks when they are modified (no extra dialog window)

Thanks!

2 Likes
2

When you say “block” does that include headers (sections)? I’d be a fan.

You can search by using the caret ^ when searching for blocks as well.

And what about transclusion? I’d be a fan as well.

If internal references were objects and had properties, that would be cool.

In the meantime, if we could get display text to work for transcluded references, that would be cool as well.

Having an alias would help when I use a reference for a different reason or context where used.

1 Like
3

@writtenfool Good idea! I adjusted the request to apply to blocks/headings rather than just blocks as it originally was.

Thanks!

1 Like
4

Bump - I like this idea, too - just came up with a use case, searched and found this request.

1 Like
5

What’s the use case?

6

I too am curious about the use case of @d_toast. Personally, I think that this ability would make blocks and headings more safely and easily moveable between notes. In addition to the straightforward process of simply defining a block/heading alias, perhaps when extracting a block or heading to another note it would optionally ask to define the alias. The alias could be defined similar to note names in that you cannot have multiple notes with the same name in the same folder. However, these aliases would be vault wide. I feel like these aliases could be more quickly searched, and when used there would be fewer distractions from non alias results in the auto suggestion results, since there could be a syntax to narrow to only one of the defined aliases for blocks and headings.

1 Like