Glad to clarify. Bases can only find content based on file information or properties. Let’s say you have notes that reference a particular author (e.g., Meredith Kline) but didn’t link Kline in the note when writing. The only way Bases could surface that content right now is if you include Meredith Kline somewhere in the frontmatter or file information (e.g., file name).
With the Search plugin you can find all notes based on a specific query, e.g., “Kline”:
The drawback with the Search plugin is it is read-only and has strict filtering & sort options. Let’s say you wanted to somehow surface all files that reference Meredith Kline and include them on the “Meredith Kline” author note-file you created. A common use case with authors is when you create a “Quote” note. But you must link the author file either in the note or in the properties. That’s all good, but often in writing you may reference an author (or anything else for that matter) but not link them in the note.
Currently, you can embed a query in a note, but you may end up with several results that you are not interested in, based on the query. For example, maybe you want to filter out certain property types that you know if the name “Kline” is referenced it would not be relevant (e.g., a task, or project).
If I create a base that surfaces all files that link to the “Meredith Kline” author note (backlinks and outgoing links), I only see a limited number of results since these have been hardcoded in (via links or properties).
There is some level of filtering that you can do with Regular Expressions, but not the level of granular control that you can have with Bases.
Proposed Solution
Add in the Bases “Filter” control a “Query” option (e.g., right below “file” in the image below). Basically, combining the “Search” plugin capabilities into the Bases, but giving the user control over what kind of results are displayed as well as surfacing editable properties.
The search results of the query could be contained in a temporary column called, for example, “Results” (only appears when a query is applied in filtering). In essence, taking the results as they appear right now in the Search plugin, but moving them inside of the Base.
Hope that clarifies what I’m proposing!
