Tags - Lower Case Only?

[Almond001]

Greetings -

I appreciate the response. Not being a developer, but just an average user, I'll respond as I'm able.

You write that you're

@ipsum

unfamiliar with this reversion behavior you're alluding to.

Try this. Now that you've imported an ABBA tag, right-click and Rename it. Once the Rename pop-up is open, just click the OK button. No need to actually make any change. What happens? "ABBA" will change to "abba". That's what I meant by "reverted."

@ipsum

I'm racking my brain to come up with a use case where I would want/need another, different tag of "Abba".

I don't want or need two tags with similar spelling. I couldn't necessarily come up with any reasons for such a thing either. What I DO want, and what I believe many users want, is simply to have their tags capitalized when needed or wanted. I have a tag called "America." That was imported from Evernote with that capital letter. If I were ever to open and close the name of that tag, it would change to "america." Same with any other capitalized tag. There are reasons users want capital letters in their tags. The reasons are legion. The point is that users want that capability. Period.

You argue against making this change

@ipsum

"because we thought this approach enabled a better software design" and also "devoting hours to changing things for a handful of users is a poor use of our time."

I read that as the designers made a decision and, regardless of the desires of some number of users — perhaps a handful, perhaps more (has a survey been done?) — the software developers don't want to make a change. I think my original appelation of "an excuse" might stand. Perhaps we can agree to disagree as to whether that's an "excuse" or a "decision."

You also suggest that I believe that change needs to be researched and made

@ipsum

because I've always done things differently

No, I believe this needs to be more closely looked at, some numbers need to be run to determine (perhaps roughly) what number or percentage of users would find such a change to be of benefit, or simply useful and desired, THEN determine whether or not the change would be worthwhile. Or, the time needed to do that research could simply be turned to actually making the requested modification. I would think that the goal is to make the software more responsive to users' needs and to the way they actually use the software, and not to require users to accept whatever limitations have been imposed upon them.

Thanks again for the response. I appreciate the conversation.

Oh, as for your last question, I need to create tags with capitalization whenever I need tags with capitalization. (I use that word rather than "case sensitivity" because I'm not trying to create multiple instances of tags that rely on case sensitivity. They're not passwords. I don't want an ABBA tag and an Abba tag and an abba tag as well as an AbBa tag. I just want my tag to be ABBA and to remain that way until and unless I decide to change it.) It's really as simple as that.

Thanks.

[personalizedrefriger]

For reference, I think this and some of the other uses of .toLowerCase in the same file are the code responsible for making tags lower-case.

[ipsum]

Ah, I understand your desire better now. I've grown so used to the Evernote export emulation kludge that on the rare occasions when I want a tag with more panache than simple lower case I just view it as a "me" problem rather than a Joplin failing. I'd forgotten the irritation I first felt in having to use the note import workaround. I agree it would be nice for Joplin itself to allow the creation of mixed case tags -- even if the tags are translated internally to lower-case for search and other database functions.

That said, the change is far down on my Joplin wish list. Right now I'm trying to track down the specific note characteristics that stall Android syncs with the dreaded "[object Object]" error despite the Windows and Linux clients not having similar sync issues.

[Almond001]

Thanks very much for reviewing my response! I appreciate getting this change on your list at all. Knowing that someone has looked at the situation, evaluated it, and deemed it worthy of some work is a great start. Thanks again. Best of luck with the Android sync issues.

[zblesk]

I'll add my 2 cents - I love that all the tags are lowercase only. It's much neater, there's no room for ambiguity, and it just is nice.

Just sayin', so it doesn't look like everyone wants the horrid mixed-case tags.

[dpoulton]

@zblesk

I love that all the tags are lowercase only. It's much neater, there's no room for ambiguity, and it just is nice.

If mixed case were available you could still get what you prefer by just not pressing the shift key when adding a tag. As it is, I can press the shift key all day long and I will never get an upper case character so I can luxuriate in "horrid" MiXeD CaSe

Oh, and as for the lack of ambiguity when forced to use lower case only, which of the following represents megabytes (MB) and which one megabits (Mb)?

A) mb
B) mb

Just askin'

[zblesk]

@dpoulton

If mixed case were available you could still get what you prefer by just not pressing the shift key when adding a tag.

Har har, what a clever comeback.
That might be the case for when you are adding tags, but I use multiple integrations that read/write data to/from Joplin, and in those cases it's much more difficult to convince every single datasource to 'not press shift'.

@dpoulton

Oh, and as for the lack of ambiguity when forced to use lower case only, which of the following represents megabytes (MB) and which one megabits (Mb)?

A) mb
B) mb

Just askin'

Oh, right, almost forgot. This is probably the best reason not to allow tags that only differ in case. That's just bad practice, only increases confusion, and would just lead to users asking "My note is clearly tagged "Mb", why is it not in search results when I search for "mb"?"
Maybe you are able to to always be 100% focused and consistent, but for every such user there will be multiple who create both "oatmeal" and "Oatmeal" by accident and will come to complain here.

(Obviously, I am aware it's possible to allow mixed case for display and still disallow dpouldon's only-differing-by-case style tagging. I think that would be less bad, but also still bad.)

[dpoulton]

As the one and only member of the Global Society for the Promotion of Mixed Case in Joplin (GSFTPMCIJ), or as you would type it, gsftpmcij, I would like to apply the logic you used to a part of your last post.

@zblesk

... but I use multiple integrations that read/write data to/from Joplin, and in those cases it's much more difficult to convince every single datasource to 'not press shift'.

If mixed case is going to confuse your datasources this is probably the best reason not to allow multiple integrations that read/write data.

[InerrantEmir]

As the one and only member of the Global Society for the Promotion of Mixed Case in Joplin (GSFTPMCIJ), or as you would type it, gsftpmcij, I would like...

Count me as member No. 2

[dingolino]

No. 3

[Almond001]

Member #4.

[_Ben]

If you guys would like some mystery added to the mix, I actually have some tags in my Joplin profile that use upper case, synced across devices. These were tags that came from an Evernote import and seem to work fine.

So it's pretty strange - seems Joplin actually in a way supports cases in tags, you just can't create them!

[dpoulton]

@_Ben

I actually have some tags in my Joplin profile that use upper case, synced across devices. These were tags that came from an Evernote import and seem to work fine.

That's right. I think that somewhere in this long thread it is mentioned that an imported tag will remain mixed case until you edit it. I also believe that somewhere in here there is mentioned a method of creating a "fake" ENEX file that you can use to import mixed case tags.

This thread has been active for over five years now. That probably means that MiXeD CaSe tags is never going to happen. I will have to just stick with my custom CSS that tries to fake it by displaying tags with initial caps. Sometimes it is just enough to get me through the day....

[RobD]

Member #5.

Who cares if some people think it should be one way or the other? If it's not a big impost on the programmer, then change it and give people the choice. Not one post in this whole thread has convinced me one way or the other of 'right' or 'wrong', I just know what I prefer and that's what I would like to be able to do.

And a big thank you @dpoulton for your userchrome.css hack!

[roncinephile]

Wow, the barren hellscape you stumble upon when trying to do work in an old open source project is crazy. 5 years of people just wanting to have capital letters in their tags and nothing to show for it. Doesn't inspire confidence in this software. I'm trying to make it work but don't know if it's worth the effort when I see stuff like this.

[Almond001]

I thought I'd managed to push the issue a hair's-width forward about 15 months ago, but it's just stalled again. So far as I'm aware, the developers are all volunteers, so it's difficult to really push.

[Fallgrim]

Are you planning something to change this huge gap? I arrange it, but it restarts back to this position all the time. I'm sick of rearranging it.
Edit: Sorry I don't know why I replied in here... Didn't check the dates.

[bwat47]

@Fallgrim You can follow this issue: which icons are shown vs. hidden in overflow menu changes when toggling editors · Issue #12198 · laurent22/joplin · GitHub

[Almond001]

Take a look at the sample ENEX file below, then scroll up to the post from InerrantEmir from Feb 2024. He gives short, explicit instructions on how to create a set of capitalized tags. I just did it and it works. Just remember to change the names of the old, uncapitalized tags before you import the Tags.enex file, or it won't work. I think I may have tried that a year ago and it didn't work then, either, because I hadn't properly followed the steps.

@InerrantEmir

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE en-export SYSTEM "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/evernote-export4.dtd">
<en-export application="Evernote">
  <note>
    <title>Tag Workaround</title>
    <tag>PDF</tag>
    <tag>LaTeX</tag>
  </note>
</en-export>

[banan314]

Was there any pull request already made in the repo? I sometimes change the case directly in the SQLite database and then it shows capitalized in Joplin, so it's not a db limitation, was there an official issue already on Github?