Batch-editing documents outside Legend desktop app

Jerud

I want to change all instances of #tag1 to #tag2, throughout all my documents. Legend doesn’t handle this within the app (yet?).

An obvious solution is to open the document file in any word processor and use Find/Replace. For that I need to identify the active local copy of the document, quit the app, do the Find/Replace operation, then relaunch…but where is that file?

In Settings–>Desktop–>“Save local files in:” the filepath is %APPDATA%\Legend\docs. But all the files in that directory are named with gibberish (presumably the document ID) and over a month old. That doesn’t seem right. When I make an edit in my document I can’t find any file anywhere on my drive that is getting modified at that timestamp.

Any ideas where I should look? @andrew? @Jorge? @LauraH? @webalstrom?

Eik

What about %AppData%\Legend\legend_cache\ <someuniqueid> \docs. I’m using beta, so not sure if this is the same for stable.

Jerud

Eik thanks but no dice, that directory has the same mod date as %AppData%\Legend\docs – over a month ago.

The only things in the \Legend folder that seem to be getting touched are the individual files, \backups, \Network, and \blob_storage.

LauraH

Not sure on the file Location.
But you can export as OPML, make the change, then re-import?

Jerud

Export/Import doesn’t “update” the exported document; it results in a new one.
That’ll break links/mirrors since the items within the newly-imported version of the edited document will have unique IDs.

Obviously the best solution is an in-app tool to bulk-edit Tags…I wish I could just make a group-by-tags Pane and RMB on the tag-heading to edit-all.

Jorge

Sorry Jerud I haven’t figured out the storage yet. I barely deal with the backups location.
But in any case if your document is encrypted at rest you wouldn’t be able to see anything but gibberish even if you found it.

webalstrom

My first thought was an export/edit/import as LauraH suggested. I don’t use mirrors and links very much so that wouldn’t be an issue for me, so I didn’t think about that aspect.

It would be nice (and convenient!) if there was an in-app solution for this. I think Dynalist implemented this when I used that app. Workflowy has a third-party bookmarklet that can do find and replace (https://rawbytz.github.io/find-replace/). Maybe someone who is tech-savvy could modify that for Legend?

Another option could be a Chrome extension that can do Find and Replace in an online doc. I assume it would work for Legend since it is editable text. But maybe not. I have not tried this, but thought I’d put the idea out there for some brave soul to test on their Legend doc! One example I found is:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/find-replace-for-text-edi/jajhdmnpiocpbpnlpejbgmpijgmoknnl?hl=en-US
I know nothing about this extension, it was just the first one that came up in a quick Google search.

Good luck!

Jerud

webalstrom using a find/replace browser extension is a clever idea. Never occurred to me such a thing existed!

I tried the one you linked to – didn’t actually find any other attractive options. I’ll be keeping it around because it’s a nifty tool but sadly it just barely doesn’t solve this problem : ( The Outline area of Legend must be something more complex than a “text box” because while the extension can see the content of a Note popup, it doesn’t recognize any Pane contents.

So close!

Find/Replace has been in my wishlist for some time but I haven’t bothered posting it (nor many others) because I didn’t want to distract from debugging efforts with feature requests. Feels like that decision was years ago… I always thought of it as a “nice to have” but the reality is that introducing links/mirrors turns it into a necessity. The export/import end-run is a fine workaround for those desperate enough to need it. But with links & mirrors in the mix that workaround is off the table.

Thanks to all, for taking the time to look at my question and offer input.

Jorge

Jerud It wouldn’t need to recognize the panes if you open a pane with your whole outline in there expanded and then let the extension to the find/replace? Now if you need to do that in multiple documents at the same time it could be a problem.

Jerud

Jorge That’s exactly what I had planned to do. The extension will look for any selected text or page elements with the focus, so can handle multiple text-entry areas on a single screen such as Legend’s Panes. But it only seems to work in vanilla clear-cut “text box” type elements such as what you might have in a webmail interface. Works great in the forum post editor, for example. But I think it’s limited to detecting only those conventional types of elements.

I gather the Pane contents area of Legend is something rather more complex than that?

Somehow the extension can pick up the first couple lines of a Pane’s content, and will cycle though 1 of x, 2 of x, etc. It will even make replacements. But it won’t see further than those couple lines. It also doesn’t highlight the matches as usual.

Jay

Editing the local files would not work, unfortunately. In version 2.1.0 it caches files locally but does not sync changes made in them. I would like to find a way to support editing files locally but I haven’t figured out a way to do it in a performant way. I’ll keep thinking about that though.

Pane contents of Legend are very complex - it uses a custom virtual list to display only the items that are in view (to make it fast), so an extension wouldn’t even be able to see text outside of the visible pane area.

Once the sync stuff gets stabilized I would like to add this feature. I’ve been wanting it myself too 🙂