Aliases, Inflection and Auto-Updating

[Zrzlinar]

Use case or problem

Languages commonly contain some sort of inflection that express word formations (gramatical cases) depending on the context, i.e. (example provided in czech, in english singular = link, plural = links):

Substantivum	singular	plural
nominativ	link	linky
genitiv	linku	linků
dativ	linku	linkům
akuzativ	link	linky
vokativ	linku	linky
lokal	linku	lincích / linkách
instrumental	linkem	linky

Commonly when refferencing I have to create alias to each node to capture inflection. The process itself is not extremely user-friendly (considering that Obsidian actually containts vocabulary containing the different inflections).

I have encountered these problems in several situations, specificaly:

Building pkm folder on Czech patent code (adding aliases)

I have attempted to build a folder dedicated to czech patent regulation. Due to inflection I have to often-times come back and add aliases to separate nodes. The resulting workflow is highly innefecient.

Modular document folder (Auto-Update aliases)

I aim to create a legal document generation modular folder in Obsidian, where each node would be rename-able (let’s say in contract generating - node that would be named “Contract” but would be possible to change to “Agreement” with auto-update across the entire folder). Unfortunately changing the Contract to Agreement currently updates only the basic word form. Rewriting the Aliases manualy unfortunalely does not auto-update the internal links scattered across the folder.

The resulting system subsequently contains numerous inflexible internal links and the work-flow to generate the modular document becomes burdensome.

Proposed solution

Adding aliases

Feaure should be added to easily add aliases to nodes either from different node (when generating link i would be able to add aliases, i.e. writing [[contract|contractual]]) or in the existing node by simple interface (i.e. in the side pannel).

Auto-updating aliases

Updating aliases in the node should auto-update internal links across the vault.

Current workaround (optional)

Abovementioned - adding aliases in the YAML, auto-updating manually.

Related feature requests (optional)

Automatically update links when aliases are renamed

Use case or problem I have a note called “A” with alias “tws” and another note B that links to it ("[[A|tws]]"). When I change the alias in note A, e.g. to “tws2”, the contents of note B remain unchanged and the alias in there is now stale ("[[A|tws]]"). Proposed solution I expect Obsidian to automatically update references to aliases the same way it also updates references to filenames. The current alternative doesn’t scale as you add more and more notes. Current workaround (optional) When yo…

"Fuzzy" or truncated aliases with placeholders (otherwise linking is basically neutralized...)

Use case or problem I have a note on the key concept “History”. To link notes with the words "historical", "historiography", "historians", "historicized" etc., I have to type in every single inflection manually, TWICE with lower and upper case. This gets much more complicated with German, where every single adjective and verb can have upwards of 8 (!) different inflections depending on the temporal tense and gender of the sentence subject (masc./fem./neutr.)… which also multiply with each ot…

[gobbletown]

+1 Upvotes

The ever-elusive Inline disambiguation-anator.

So bigly needed.

So fully absent.

[sonsche]

+1 This would be great and eliminate so much friction. I have abandoned looking at “unlinked mentions” altogether because creating inflection-aliases for them to be even remotely reliable creates such a balloon of nonsense-work.

Maybe this very clunky workaround might save just a little time:
With the plugin GitHub - mrjackphil/obsidian-text-expand: A simple text expand plugin for Obsidian.md by @mrjackphil you can “print” the results of the default search into a note using (as an example, there are different options for creating lists):

```expander
SEARCH QUERY
$link $searchresult
.

So you can enter the word stem as the search term, “print” the results with all the inflections, and then copy/paste the different inflections as aliases into the YAML section of your target note.

I have also suggested a plugin for quickly adding aliases without leaving the current note: Create alias from selected text in target note frontmatter - #3 by sonsche

[PAC]

+1 here! This would save so much trouble and would make everything much easier. Thanks!