What I’m trying to do
Before listing this as a feature request, I wanted to be sure it isn’t a current feature I’m overlooking.
I would like the option for Graph View to show connections between links within a note, rather than just between the note title and the link inside the note.
For instance, if I have notes “Chicken Soup”, “Omelette”, and “Potato Salad”, and each note includes [[salt]] and [[black pepper]], I would like the graph to show a strong link between salt and pepper.
More specifically, since I’m using Obsidian for academic research, if I happen to write 10 different notes which each mention [[mining]] and [[violence between settlers and Indigenous people]], it’s less useful for me to see that mining and settler violence each connect to 10 notes, than to see “Huh, mining keeps appearing with settler violence”. If Obsidian can do that, the graph view is actually revealing something I might not have realized, rather than just giving me a visual inventory of which notes have the most links.
Things I have tried
I have searched “customize graph view”, “graph settings”, “graph nodes” and watched YouTube videos on graph settings and read the Obsidian website on graph settings. I’ve also gone through Obsidian graph settings one by one and tinkered with them over the past 6 months to get a better understanding of what the graph can and cannot tell me. I’ve tried several different configurations of which words go in the note title, which words get linked within a note, which paths the graph displays (and how), etc.
Another presentation of your problem
Key
"For instance, if I have notes “Chicken Soup”, “Omelette”, and “Potato Salad”, and each note includes [[salt]] and [[black pepper]], I would like the graph to show a strong link between salt and pepper.’
So the key word is “both” (salt an pepper).
Then you can start asking question: Do mixture taste better? Did I tried them alone? Do I need to buy more salt and pepper? etc… and maybe later create new topic.
In general:
Which group of links is most popular
from area of all opened notes?
Process should be like:
- Create new note with opened notes, which contain e.g.
[[Chicken Soup]] salt, pepper, eggs (why not?), chicken
[[Omelette]] salt, pepper, eggs
[[Potato Salad]] salt, pepper
- Open
Local Graph
- Set
Setting->Filters->Depth to 1
- Show group occurrence
- Show connection between
salt and pepper (even if there is no [[links]] inside them),
display number (3) how often they occur together or made connection thicker.
- rest
salt and eggs: (2)
pepper and eggs: (2)
salt and chicken: (1)
pepper and chicken: (1)
Notice
In traditional graph (with straight line link) it would be hard to display link which represent occurrence of 3 ingredients like: salt and pepper and eggs.
Did I understand well?
Thank you for the reply and for asking if this is what I am looking for.
The directions you provide are a useful way to evaluate connections I already now about . What I’m looking for, however, is to use the graph to discover connections that surprise me.
For instance, if I’ve written 200 notes, and 20 of them have both [[settler colonialism]] and [[traditional family]], and I’d never before considered those might be connected, I want to be able to have the graph of those 200 notes point out to me “are you aware you keep mentioning settler colonialism and family in the same note?” which provokes me to look further into that connection. The point is to flag relationships I hadn’t noticed.
I think this doesn’t exist in Obsidian currently because it only graphs literal links which I made on purpose, and I’m wanting it to show accidental relationships I might be overlooking. I think that, functionally, the software would need a new setting & capability “graph connections between two links in the same note, that are not already linked to one another.”
The method you describe is interesting, it just isn’t practical for my purposes because I have hundreds of keywords/concepts.