Plugin: obsidian-trail. Search/GraphView enchancements

[y9san9]

Hello fellows! I am capable of developing obsidian plugin, but I never had an idea before. But now I am ready to share something that I want to try to implement.

Recently I passed over 3k notes and I stopped using folders (since they don’t help anymore). I moved all my notes into root and have less problems because no need to move files and select a single folder when note is well-suited for several.

But I got a little problem as well. I can’t now highlight all notes that belong to ‘work’ note in GraphView, because there is no ‘work’ folder anymore. But what if I could highlight every note that backlinks to ‘work’ recursively? That is what I want to implement in the plugin.

I called this plugin obsidian-trail because this plugin will find trail of single note. And to combine trails I also want to implement custom search option (idk if it’s possible yet) called trail: (e.g. of search statement file:daily OR trail:work).

Please, submit you ideas on improvements or maybe there is already such plugin, but I can’t find it.

[PietArt]

Hello, I’m not sure if I understood your query correctly as I’m not a native English speaker. You can add a tag to all notes that you would have saved in the same folder (e.g. “#work”). Next, open graphview, go to the wheel in the top right, create a group and add a color of your choice for each group. Now the notes in the graphview are separated by color (Screenshots 1 - 2).

However, in case I have completely misunderstood your concern, there is another idea in the attachment that I have been thinking about for a while. If you get inspiration from them, feel free to use the layouts as a template.

The idea: Grapview as a flow/trail in columns. The active note is always displayed in the middle column. Once an incoming or outgoing note is double-clicked, it automatically appears in the middle column and becomes the active note. The notes in the left and right columns (incoming and outgoing) are automatically updated. This allows for a very easy and intuitive walk through my connected notes without having to engage in unnecessary thought processes. Two solutions: The note titles are at the top or floating in the middle (Quick-Navigation 3 – 5).

[y9san9]

Hey! You understood my idea right, but the thing is that I don’t want to annotate every note with all the tags. Here is the example:

I have NoteA with the following contents:

Note that references [[NoteB]] and [[NoteC]]

Then NoteB:

Note that references [[NoteD]]

Based on this input search query “trail:NoteA” will result in 4 notes:

NoteA -> NoteB -> NoteC
      -> NoteD

Basically I want to introduce a new search operator that will follow the path of links from this note to all the others (or in reverse as a setting).

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Regarding for what you described for GraphView, you might want to try Juggl which can do such kinds of stuff, but on steroids

[PietArt]

Now I got it, thank you for your explanation. I would also solve this visually. Outlines and mind maps have the same type of structure. Allowing a hierarchy starting from a single point/note. In your case it needs some kind of concept map that allows multiple connections between different notes.

Therefore, your extension idea needs to build a self-organized temporary network/structure. I know three apps that can do this

Example:
NoteA → NoteB → NoteC
→ NoteD → NoteC

1. KnowledgeBase Builder (best of its kind, but I believe it is discontinued)

2. Taskheat (needs improvement)

3. Omniplan 4

(Screenshots 1 - 3)

The trickiest and most demanding part of your extension idea is rendering a self-organized map. I would do this in Obsidian Canvas style (Screenshot 4).

[PietArt]

I checked Juggl, thanks for that, but went back to the traditional Graphview. As the network grows, it is better to keep it as simple as possible, including visually.