Tag Summary plugin

Hi, guys. A few days ago I developed a new plugin called Tag Summary to create summaries of all the paragraphs of blocks of text that contain a tag or tags. It is not available in Community Plugins yet, but you can find it at GitHub.

People is finding the plugin and reporting suggestions, bugs, and conflicts with other plugins. This is great, but I’m getting emails and messages everywhere, so I’ve decided to create this post to not miss anything. If you try the plugin and have something to say (insults are welcome, I don’t mind :slight_smile: ) please post it here.

I’m trying to keep the plugin simple and I’m also currently working on other projects, so please be patient if I don’t answer right away or don’t implement a feature.

Thanks to the community for all the support
JD
www.jdgauchat.com

5 Likes

You can do almost the same thing with embedded searches:


```query
tag: #chapter1
```

The other examples can all be handled, too.

The only difference is that Tag Summary will show the whole block of each result, and embedded search will only show part if it’s long. Maybe that difference is important to you — but if so, consider making a more general plugin that makes search results show the whole block.

Hi, Cawlin. If I’m not wrong, that gives you the same result as searching for a tag. I’ve seen that feature, but that’s not what my plugin does. My plugin creates a summary with the whole texts associated to a tag or multiple tags, so you can have all the texts in one place. It is a completely different approach. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I couldn’t find that feature anywhere. All I was able to get was a list of tags with a sneak peek, but then I had to click the items one by one to get the whole text.

1 Like

Yes, it gives you the same result as searching for a tag. Unless I’ve misunderstood, that’s almost exactly what your plugin does, except that your plugin shows more text for each result. That’s slightly different, not completely. But of course it’s an important difference if you want the whole text!

If you use the “Show more context” button in search, I think it shows the same results as your plugin. Unfortunately we can’t use that option in embedded searches. If your plugin could enable “show more context” in embedded searches, it would solve your use case and many others at the same time. I understand it might not be so easy, or might not even be possible if Obsidian doesn’t give you the right access, or that you might not care because the plugin does what you want it to. But it would be a more widely useful tool without making the tag use case more difficult.

I’m also a little confused by the name. Showing the complete text is the opposite of a summary. Are you thinking of the blocks as summaries of their pages?

Anyway, sorry to nitpick! Congratulations on making a plugin that you and others find useful.

If you use the plugin, you will understand why the name. It creates a summary of all the paragraphs or blocks of text associated with a tag or tags. You can have multiple blocks of text with different tags in one single note, for instance. So if you want a summary of only the blocks of text that include a specific tag, you got it. With this plugin, you don’t have to go through the note to find the blocks of text that contain that tag or search for the tag and then click on each item on the list to read the text. It is completely different. And if someone creates a plugin that expands the text on a search, as you suggested, you still wouldn’t get the right text and have to click on each one of them to be able to copy and paste it. It would also be more uncomfortable to read. I think that if you see the plugin at work you’ll understand that there is a HUGE difference on what you are suggesting. In my personal experience, searching for a tag is completely useless, but this plugin works great.

Anyway, right now we are dealing with some issues and conflicts with other plugins. I’m still not sure what’s going on yet. If anyone can try it and share their experience, it would be appreciated.

I feel like we’re talking past each other. I don’t normally use plugins from outside Community, but maybe I’ll test it in a spare vault to try to understand. In any case, good luck!

I am using this plugin to create a vocabulary/phrase notebook from my reading notes, based on tags like ‘newword’ ‘goodphrase’. And I must say that this plugin completely matches my conception and meets my requirement.
Thanks JD.

2 Likes

I have similar usage with @syc2021 and the plugin really helps a lot. I would like to request three features if possiblem

  1. sub-tag query: summarize all #abc and #abc/* blocks
  2. two-way linking if a block-id exists
  3. query results sorting

thanks again @macrojd. great job!