Faster method of creating links, mirrors.....

SamMarrocco

The current method of creating links and mirrors can be a bit tedious because It requires you to be at the ‘destination’ for the link, necessitating that you remember the ‘source’ from which you wish the link to be made. You then have to type the source into the Link/Mirror generations requester.

Intuitively, the user should pick a source, then pick a destination for any operation, and this operation seem reversed.

Might it be possible to augment the existing copy/paste methodolo :gy for a more intuitive method? For example:

Perform a copy on the item which is your Source for the link/mirror.
Place the cursor where you wish your destination.
CTRL-V to paste the item (as you would do now)
CTRL-ALT V to past a Link to the item to which you had ‘copied’.
ALT-V to create a Mirror to the item to which you has ‘copied’
These items would also appear as options when you right click (as does “Paste” currently.
Of course, these hot keys should be configurable in preferences.

Jay

The way to do it from the source is with the “Move” option - it’s in the right click menu or Alt + M. You can move the item or link/mirror it to the destination. Does that work well for your use case?

I like the idea of a more powerful paste that show some options. That could be a really powerful workflow…

I would also like at some point to change how link/mirror works. We currently link/mirror by ID. The reasoning was that with a link if you change the text of the target the link would still point to the correct item. But that has turned out to be fragile because pasting and importing rewrites ids (otherwise you might have duplicates), which ends up breaking links. Some other apps link by text, but then if that text is in multiple targets it has to guess the right one, and changing the text can break it. I’ve been thinking about doing a combination - it would use the ID but if it can’t find an item with that ID it uses the text to try to find the right one. But I’ve been too busy with the sync system to address that. Now that it’s (almost) done I’m hoping to look into this more soon.

SamMarrocco

Jay
Thought I’d give this a poke to see if there had been any progress. Remaining hopeful.

SamMarrocco

Per your mentioning of the “Move” option. Yes, that’s what I’m referring to as tedious…..it requires you to know in advance (or use the auto-correct/search) to determine your destination.

I totally understand about the IDs and how they can become stale if certain changes are made. Perhaps that is evidence of why a (proposed in another forum thread) Bookmark would need to be a new item….so it (and Links) could have a “name string” independent of what it is they are linking to?

Back to the proposed better method of creating links/mirrors: The simplest method I’ve ever seen for an intuitive “Source, Destination” of this is what Workflowy is currently using. Here’s how it works:

I select my source item (the entire line(s)), then perform a copy (i,e, right-click on Copy OR use CTRL-C hotkey). The source item is now in the ‘clipboard’ of the system.
I navigate my outline as I normally would to the line in which I wish to place the “Destination Item”.
I then can do any of the following (see my previous post about this) PASTE Duplicate (a copy), Mirror (a live copy) or Internal Link. Since these hotkeys can be set by the user, I use CTRL-V, SHIFT-CTRL-V, and SHIFT-OPTION-V respectively for each.

Creation of links, mirrors and copies is now a two-click operation, and you never have to think twice about “where did I want to put that mirror/link”. The process is now identical to what you would do for a normal copy/paste and becomes more intuitive by default.

Hope that helps. Mirrors, Links and Bookmarks are incredibly powerful, but it’s important that the user’s “Creation and Management Labor” doesn’t prevent utilization as often as you’d like.