DataView Fields Incompatible?

Hi Everyone,

I can’t get ExcaliBrain and Metadata Menu to work together.

I believe that Obsidian supports “metadata” like this:

---
status: started
---

(see: https://help.obsidian.md/Editing+and+formatting/Metadata)

But some plugins have implemented “dataview fields” aka “inline fields” (probably for some technical reason) and they use double colon syntax:

status:: started

(see: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview)

Because of this, I can’t seem to ever get things working exactly as I want - creating tremendous friction.

I am trying to implement Metadata Menu
(see: https://mdelobelle.github.io/metadatamenu/) so that I can simply choose options to populate my metadata - but it seems this plugin uses the standard “metadata fields” and ExcaliBrain (see https://github.com/zsviczian/excalibrain) only uses the “dataview fields” - so I can’t use the two together - such that I can select (via Metadata Menu) from a list of potential values for Excalbrain (“up”, for example) and easily link things in ExcaliBrain.

Or is there some way to do this?

(For now, I’ll just use an embedded callout that queries and displays the fields I’d like to use - and then manually enter them in the syntax that Excalibrain requries; any better ideas?)

Thanks,

Russell

Hi Russell,
I just stumbled over the same issue. I’m pretty new to Obsidian (two weeks) and couldn’t get my head around why sometimes there is a single colon : and sometimes a double colon ::
Now after some research, I understand it this way:

We can either add the specific value of a field (e.g. “Top-Category” shall be the parent of our note) in the dataview section at the top of a note, like

---
up: Top-Category
---

OR we add the specific value anywhere in the body of your note, like

Text bla bla
up:: Top-Category
More text bla bla bla

No matter what, ExcaliBrain will be able to recognize Top-Category as the parent of our note.
As well, the plugin dataview will recognize the property up as a field, so it can be used for any queries.

Does this make sense for you? Or are there any subjects still not covered? Maybe an example would help to get into further discussion.

Kind regards,
Gudrun

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