So I use Obsidian all the time and I like to make notes not only about ideas, but also some technical notes like definitions of words, personalities, countries. I usually mark them with a specific tag (e.g. for definitions I use tag #word) so I’ll be able to hide them while surfing the graph. But the more I work with the base, the more #word-s become true permanent notes on their own. So, in one hand, I still want to use them as a hint for myself (like wikipedia does with most of it’s links), but, on the other hand, I do not want to see them on the graph as connections. Similar problems appear with many other types of notes.
Case
I made a note about speed of light and wanted to mention Einstein in the note since he used invariance of c as one of the postulates of special relativity. But I also didn’t want to create a connection on the graph.
Current workaround (optional)
So I came up with a temporary solution: instead of making [[Einstein]] link, I make fictitious {{Einstein}} link to remind myself that I actually have a note about Einstein and can search for it, if I’d like to, but also to avoid creating a connection between «Speed of light» and «Einstein» on the graph.
Proposed solution
I’d propose creating some sort of “fictious” links that can be used to easily navigate the base, but also would not affect logical connections and hierarchy of notes on the graph
I was thinking about how you might do this semantically with HTML (since that’s where Markdown, in theory, rolls up to).
Couple questions:
When you click the highlighted item, do you want Obsidian to run a search for that term? (Find any note with “Einstein” in it?)
Would you rather Obsidian search for notes with that term in the name? (Find any note with “Einstein” in the title?)
Nah… Obsidian would do nothing.
In HTML you would do this with either MARK or CITE.
MARK is like highlighting. It marks text, but without any semantic emphasis. (Bold/strong and italic/emphasis give a word or phrase extra semantic oomph). Obsidian uses double equal signs to ==highlight something==.
That won’t show on the graph, and without a new feature, you’d have to make that a standard convention that you use in your vault.
CITE is specifically for referring to an author or text, not a concept. I could imagine cite being expanded a little to allow any kind of reference that is not a link or a tag.
You can use the <cite> tag in your Markdown now, but there’s no cool way to select some text and hit a hotkey to make it a cite.
CITE can have a visual style. (It usually shows as italicized.) And javascript can trigger off a click event to post a search. Kind of like how tags work, but not showing in the graph.
If there was a feature like this, it would provide a new, important kind of way to associate things:
links give us explicit references
tags give us general references
folders give us spatial references
backlinks give us inferred references
cite provides optional, implied references… not inferred, like a backlink, but implied
As a BONUS, the Discord Knowledge Management channel would now get to expand the debate to links versus tags versus folder versus CITEs.
As another current workaround, you can use Obsidian URLs to link to documents, and those links don’t show up in the graph. But they are still workable, jumpable links. Hide specific links in graph
Yeah, that topic covers pretty much the same problem I have. Sadly, I haven’t been able to find it earlier, since Obsidian URL really does work as a workaround. And yet I’d love to have a more elegant solution for a few reasons:
Creating a URL every time is relatively time-consuming. Best case scenario, you’ll have to go to the note, that you want the URL of, use hotkey to copy obsidian url, go back to previuos note, find the place in the text and only then make a link. Compare this to just putting [[brackets]]
URL-link looks worse in both Edit and Preview modes compared to [[the link]]. You could say that the appearance in the Preview mode is subjective and I would agree. But I doubt anyone would say that links with urls similar to the folowing look good in edit mode: obsidian://open?vault=Vault&file=%D0%91%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0%2F%D0%A1%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C%20%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B0. My guess is that it looks so bad because I’m russian, so my notes are titled using russian letters, that need to be converted to that nightmare before they can be used as a link. Btw, this is the URL to the Speed of light note («Скорость света» in russian). Imagine what it does to notes with longer titles.
URL-link lacks of many great features [[the link]] has, such as being able to see the content of the note by hovering it, opening the note in the new pane and so on.
Few months passed and I still have the same problem. Suggested solution with URLs did work for a while, but over time it became even worse than I predicted: links not only look ugly, but also make text unreadable if there is more than 1 or 2 of them in the text, especially if they are close to each other.
So I came back to using my workaround with {{curly brackets}}. Sadly it does not allow me to make beautiful text in the preview mode and quickly navigate through base, but at least now the text is readable. It’d be really great if we could have some form of “weak” connections that does not affect graph — I find it super useful for notes containing definitions or another reference information
Definitely support this one, I often find myself wanting to link something in the note just for the comfort of moving around the notes, but I DON’T want to ruin my graph clarity with kinda unnecessary/redundant link that clutter the view.
URL workaround is ok, but as stated earlier, it becomes unreadable quite fast. I also found out that if you have the Admonition plugin and for example use a normal [[bracket]] link inside a collapsible note, it does not create a link on the graph view. It’s another workaround, obviously creating collapsible note just for one link is ridiculous, but may sometimes be useful.
Eventually I think there were some ideas about “Tiers” or different levels of links shown on the graph, this would somehow resolve the problem if you could filter “level 2” (less important) connections from the graph.
I would love if the “fictitious link” syntax were something just like what you wrote in your workaround.
If I want a normal link, that is a clickable link and also appears in the graph then I use [[Einstein]]
If I want a “fictitious link”, that is clickable but does not affect the graph or relationships between notes then I use {{Einstein}}
It would also be very nice if “graph links” and “fictitious links” were separated in the backlinks pane.
Extra points, if I could write click a “graph link” to get the option to Convert to "fictitious link".
I use Breadcrumbs and Juggl to establish a “Tiers” graph, which is independent from the local graph. I reckon it as a different solution to this case, instead of keeping the local graph clean.
I am honestly surprised this didn’t get more attention, even with a workaround present (especially since the workaround is heavily flawed (can’t move, can’t rename the linked file).
This would allow to keep the graph useful while not having to limit navigability.
There are three kinds of situations where I feel like this would be most helpful.
You describe something you link to. If you leave those aspects linked, they may seem to misdirect on the graph (since they don’t apply to the subject of the note itself).
There is a hierarchical structure. So X belongs to Y which belongs to Z. If you only link Y from X and Z from Y it looks nice on a graph but it’s less convenient to navigate.
You write what a subject of a given note is not. Of course, you don’t want them to be connected in this case.
Let me give you an example of 3, though with a little feel of 1.
Unlike most of the shops opened by [[Ramen Jiro]] employees, Chuka Soba Hirai doesn’t serve [[Jiro-style ramen]], but instead focuses on [[tsukemen]].
Especially in case of this being something publishable it’s good to have the Jiro-style linked here, the reader can quickly check what it is. However, it would misdirect you on a graph view, if you look at it. After all it would have it connected to both Jiro-style and tsukemen, and Jiro-style tsukemen is a thing, so from graph you could assume this is what they serve.
So a few months later I’ve found another workaround. I suspect that it was implemented after this FR was published, since no-one mentioned it. At first it seemed kinda obvious and ingenious. Sadly, it isn’t and is still a workaround. So here it is:
[viewed text](link.md)
For the most part you’d think that it does wonders. It even updates links when the title changes. However:
If the link contains (brackets) you’re screwed.
You still cannot preview the page.
Adding a link requires you to have it name memorized or do some other shenanigans since there is no autocompleting/built-in search (like, you know, in [[links]]).
Honestly, if not for the first point, I’d say it is good enough. Sadly, it isn’t. Unless you are absolutely sure that you’ll never make a link to page with a name that contains (brackets). Otherwise, be ready to corrupt your database and discover it a few months later. Gladly that did not happen to me, since I’ve learned to crushtest everything before using, but I can still imagine how it would hurt someone who haven’t.
I have the same problem and recently I found this Glossary plugin, which I think is exactly what you’re looking for.
Basically what it does is linking a keyword to the note from specified glossary folder. So in your case, you can create note titled “Albert Einstein” in the glossary folder, then whenever you write “Albert Einstein” in any note it will automatically link it, the preview on hover will also work, but most importantly it wont messed up your graph!!!.
The only drawback is that the live preview is not available and the link only visible from reading mode (which honestly not a problem at all for me). I think you should try this out and I hope this will help.
Also (for some reason ) this plugin is not available from obsidian community plugin. So you have to download it from the GitHub page and move it to your vault plugin folder manually.
This would be perfect. It would solve problems with other unwieldy workarounds mentioned in this thread, especially if able to elegantly autocomplete by searching note titles when creating a new fictitious link the same way making a normal [[link]] does.
It’s nice to have, but it doesn’t take into account synonyms and different wordnforms, as far as I understand. In many non-English languages that would be a huge problem, but even in English what would you do in the goose-geese situation? Or any plural at that point.
You might suggest avoiding using plurals, but a) I came into Obsidian for flexibility, not to have to second guess myself on every word, b) there are a lot of situations where it isn’t possible, especially if you’re not writing in English.
There is also a problem of words with the same spelling, which seems completely insolvable this way.
So, in conclusion, yeah, it’s another one of workarounds, and not a bad one—and thank you for that—but it is still far from being perfect.
) this plugin is not available from obsidian community plugin. So you have to download it from the GitHub page and move it to your vault plugin folder manually.