#21

Is there any feedback somewhere from the devs about that feature? Now that we have URL schemes (yay!) it seems to me to be one of the last big features about the core of the note-taking experience.
Fingers crossed for implementation :slight_smile:

1 Like
#22

+1. Itā€™s a very usefull feature for knownledge managment . Devonthink does a good job at this aspect

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#23

I started a Zettelkasten i DEVONthink, but moved to Obsidian because it was to much work to construct links back and forth ALL THE TIME. :smile:

But I DO miss the way I could set aliases for notes and have them automatically be linked in all posts. Super useful.

3 Likes
#24

+1. At the moment Iā€™ve been working around this by creating the bilingual alias notes and have them only link to the original. This muddies the connection, but at least all the connections are there.

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#25

Wouldnā€™t dorsolateral [[prefrontal cortex]] do? Iā€™m honestly asking, as this is an approach I use, along with [[Plural]]s.

2 Likes
#26

+1 This would be a game changer.

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#27

+1 for alias with wiki links (and perhaps tags as well?)

I have a personal ruleset for tags (singular, lowercase, underscores) that I use across the board. It keeps things consistent, but Iā€™ve never liked the rigidity or the aesthetics. For Obsidian, where the links are surrounded by contextual language, the aforementioned rules just lead to awkward sentences. It would be amazing to not have to choose between options like [[dog]] and [[dogs]] or [[Mom's]] and [[Mom]]'s.

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#28

There have been a couple of implementation suggestions in this thread, but if I might add one more: Use frontmatter. So for a note called ā€œGetting Things Doneā€, have the frontmatter:

---
alias: GTD, GTD Method
---
[note content]

and then [[Getting Things Done]], [[GTD]] and [[GTD Method]] will all link to the ā€œGetting Things Doneā€ note.

Currently, as a (not ideal) workaround, Iā€™ve been creating alias pages that just link to the correct page. In the example above, Iā€™d have a ā€œGTDā€ note which solely contains

see: [[Getting Things Done]]]

Alternatively, you could use the wiki-like idea of ā€œredirect pagesā€ where you create an alias page like I do, then specify the redirect in the frontmatter like so:

---
redirect: [[Getting Things Done]]
---

Then it would be up to Obsidian to redirect to ā€œGetting Things Doneā€ when you click on [[GTD]], and also perhaps to remove ā€œaliasā€ notes on the graph while keeping (redirected) links in-tact.
Now that Iā€™ve written it out like that it sounds messy as hell. Maybe just not that optionā€¦

15 Likes
#29

Adding my vote for this as well. I work in three different languages and I would really like to link to a single page using its name in any language. Aliases would be a great way to make that possible.

1 Like
#30

Adding my vote as well.
I deal with too many terms for the same concept, this would be great to have :slight_smile:

#31

+1 for this. I currently try to reword my sentences to fit the links that I want to use. Iā€™m sure that as I get create more notes, Iā€™ll start forgetting words and end up with different words for the same concept.

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#32

Adding to my previously stated support for this feature with an additional example of why Iā€™m interested, because the more I work within Obsidian the more potential I see for a feature like this.

Part of the reason I want this is that I rely on unlinked references to point out connections between notes and ideas that might not have occurred to me. So yes, I know that I could write ā€œI want everything to be [[perfectionism|perfect]]ā€ but the whole point is that I use Obsidian in part to see connections between things that I might otherwise miss. If Iā€™m writing freefrom about goals, for example, and I just happen to be using the word ā€˜perfectā€™ over and over, it does me a service if my predefined alias points out that hey, youā€™re being a perfectionist again, maybe stop.

There are standard dictionaries, etc. for lemmatization, so perhaps those could be part of a solution? Obviously they should ideally be able to be toggled on and off, or modified according to individual needs.

Personally, I would like direct control over it. I want to be able to explicitly tell Obsidian that I want covid and coronavirus to link to the same page, or that perfectionism and perfectionist and perfect should all link to the same page.

5 Likes
#33

+1, very much needed feature

#34

This is a very useful feature, especially for finding backlinks for languages that have different spellings depending on the case.
For example, all Slavic languages

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#35

I know I am late to this party, and I love the idea

I have started experimenting with a solution using the existing embedded link structure which partially worksā€¦

  1. Create a page with the main definition as the name - e.g. ā€œOscar Petersonā€

  2. Create an ā€œaliasā€ page with the name ā€œOPā€, the contents of which are:
    ![[Oscar Peterson]]#alias

Try yourselfā€¦ if you write a sentence such as ā€œOscar Peterson (OP) was a great jazz pianistā€ then when you view linked and unlinked mentions on the original Oscar Peterson page, you see the alias listed as such, and if you happen to click through to the the alias ā€œOPā€ page in the linked mentions section, you also see the unlinked mention to the alias.

I realise this is only a partial solution, but when you link the unlinked ā€œaliasā€ mention it also works by showing a (nested) preview of the original source page on hover.

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Show siblings besides backlinks
#36

+1 plesse

#37

Giving a wholehearted +1 to this. As Iā€™ve started integrating Obsidian into my workflow as a biologist, this has started to become really important. Iā€™ve already run into several situations where this was necessary. Iā€™ll list two

  1. Drug names. Benadryl, diphenhydramine, Unisom, Sominex, 2-(diphenylmethoxy)-N,N-dimethylethanamine - all the same drug. And I need to reference them by specific name in a document while keeping everything consolidated because they have the same function.

  2. Proteins with a different gene name. Best case is it is one protein name and one gene name. More often, there are several protein names and several gene namesā€¦ biology is so messy! I need to be consistent with the gene name when reviewing papers, so using existing aliasing methods is really annoying.

Part of what I love about Obsidian so far is that it keeps me incredibly focused on my notetaking. So looking up alternate names is very disruptive to my workflow, unfortunately. Meanwhile Iā€™ll try implementing some of the suggestions above, but this really is a core feature that would change everything for me.

3 Likes
#38

Donā€™t have much to add other than Iā€™d also love this feature. Work in a field with a lot of TLAs where the canonical name is often a bit much to type.

#39

+1 for aliases

Implementation idea:

Some markdown flavors already have support for Definition Lists. I believe these were originally intended to be glossaries but perhaps it could work for alias defs too.

See Definition Lists in https://www.markdownguide.org/extended-syntax

#40

Perhaps like this:

[[Page Name]]
: [[Alias 1]]
: [[ Alias 2]]

1 Like