I like YAML a lot, I just don’t like it all the time Many of my projects need a little, some projects would benefit from much systematic metadata. Some project don’t need any metadata.
Simplicity and flexibility are key just even for my varied uses of Obsidian.
Maybe I am missing something, but couldn’t YAML be implemented as a plug-in? Then people could choose if (and hopefully how) to use YAML to best support their projects?
YAML front matter is a de facto metadata standard for markdown used by editors and static site generators. Obsidian uses it for tags and aliases as a core feature. So no, I don’t think front matter support as a plug-in makes sense.
If tags and aliases do all you need, that’s great. That’s most of my uses too. I can think however of uses, e.g. a curated exhibition inventory used for internal and external purposes where additional YAML attributes would be most helpful.
That would be nice to have a UI selection for just that in Settings. Right now, unless I’m mistaken OR doing something wrong, ‘unlinked mention detection’ lists way too many suggestions, even when trying to limit the search parameters. My thought is that a limitation to YAML Aliases (and/or Tags) would be more advantageous unless I’m misunderstanding the issues.
In YAML, the construct [[something]] actually translates to an array containing an array containing the string “something”. While it would be wEiRd to treat an array containing an array containing a single string element as a link, it is a unique enough form that it is unlikely to conflict with other structured data use and a plugin that was able to treat these as links at least for the purpose of supporting clicks and automatic backlink updating on renames would be hella useful. I don’t know enough about the Obsidian API to know if a plugin can effect a fundamental working of the system such as defining a link to a note, but this would be one way of addressing this need.
For what it’s worth: the reason I want links in YAML is because it would enable me to use YAML to express semantic links between notes in a way that didn’t require introducing cumbersome new syntax to Obsidian links. For example, if I had a note about Luke Skywalker I could have some YAML like:
That would be so much better than doing it in the note text itself, I do a ton of that right now. Tags in front-matter would also be extremely helpful.
From the ‘use cases’ I have, I can only concur @ChristinWhite@usergenic . Systematic collections, such as inventories of curated archival items, would benefit from links in the YAML section.
May I add that having a plug-in to facilitate the entry, control and access to YAML metadata (and links) could be very helpful too. In other situations, it may be unneeded.
@usergenic and @FrancisH – this is what I use the dataview plugin for. You can query against the data and attributes you add (either as YAML metadata, or inline with content as “key:: value”).
+1 For this. I imagine there are multiple ways of having something work, but something well done here could be great. For example, maybe replacing [[]] with a different symbol in the frontmatter. Even something ugly like escapes could be fine at this point.
There’s been some discussion on the Metatable github page, but the solution should really be implemented directly in Obsidian, for the ability to get backlinks.
This feature makes sense, and it is essential to my workflow. I do not think that adding another block for metadata is a solution.
Specifying the relations in the body of the note feels forced to me, and I’ll stick with logseq as it does support links in the YAML frontmatter till this feature is implemented.
Bumping this up again because the use of links in YAML is quite important to my workflow as well. Also, being able to pull-down a search for available pages like we do with [[]] with YAML link syntax → [""] would be great.