Tags workflow: creation, copy/pasting & exporting

Rando · 2024-04-11T12:55:32.163Z

A few questions/requests about tags creation/management.

1. Auto-complete
As discussed in the Autocomplete tag not user friendly topic, I also find myself struggling when creating new tags, as the auto complete seems to be "working against me".
Auto-complete is something I rarely use in general, as I would simply write the whole tag I have in mind and I am pretty fast writing. So, my question is, when I'm creating a tag, is there a faster way to jump to creating the next tag while ignoring the auto complete, or do I need to absolutely highlight the "create new tag" voice at the end of the drop down menu? If there isn't a way, I wish that the "create new tag" voice would be the first in the drop menu and therefore always automatically selected, instead of being the last one... unless there is a key command that I am missing (such as tab or #) that allow to ignore the auto complete menu, create the tag according to what it's actually written on the input field and move on to the next tag that needs to be created? Or could a CSS script move the voice of the drop-down menu?

2. Copy / Pasting
Another thing I struggle with is how to copy the tags of one note into another note. I think Joplin stock does not do that, so I downloaded the plugin "tagging" that does indeed have the voice "copy all tags", but strangely enough I cannot seem to find the "paste all tags" voice anywhere? Anything I may have missed, or is the plugin no longer working?

I've also tried the inline tag plugin instead. Great, but it has limitations. It does not work in wysiwyg, and it does not parse existing tags. It would have been great otherwise, as I would simply manually select copy/paste all those tags in the first two lines of the notes.

The only workaround that I found so far is to duplicate a note, delete the content and use it as a new note while keeping the existing old tags.

3. Export
If I understood correctly, the tags are omitted from the MD note export, but they are included in the MD+frontmatter export. Great! But what if I wanted only the tags into a MD export, omitting the other info of the frontmatter (date created, modified, title, etc)? Can I tweak the frontmatter "template" somehow?

Thanks for any tips that may speed-up my workflow... obviously for some stuff it's all matter of getting used to how Joplin works, but I thought I'd ask just in case I'm missing something.

shikuz · 2024-04-11T14:25:11.794Z

Workaround: The top of each of my notes includes a line dedicated to tags, such as tags: #tag1, #tag2, .... (I actually thought of abandoning this custom since Front Matter was introduced, but haven't yet.) This can serve as a workaround for auto-complete (you can type your tags), copy / pasting (you can copy and paste like any other text), and export (it's always present in the MD note). However, this doesn't allow batch-tagging multiple notes.

You can then convert these inline tags to Joplin tags on-the-fly (if you don't mind the auto-complete) or using an inline tag converter, so that they are properly indexed by Joplin. Alternatively, you may search these tags using Joplin's text search instead of tag search, or use inline tag search.

Rando · 2024-04-11T19:31:36.975Z

Do I understand correctly or this involves some manual discipline to start every note by adding the inline tags after the text "tags:" ? Or is there any custom template you created?
Also, this would work for the next created notes only, but not for the ones that have been already created, right?
Also n.2 I guess this does not work in rich text?

You can then convert these inline tags to Joplin tags on-the-fly 2 (if you don't mind the auto-complete)

~~How?~~

or using an inline tag converter

~~How?~~

Pretty much all figured now see post below, sorry for rushing up the post!

Rando · 2024-04-11T20:20:40.321Z

edited!

I figured, how to convert the inline tags of a note into Joplin tags via your plugin inline tag navigator. Pretty dope!

image794×582 51.2 KB

Now... I clicked on "convert note's inline tags to Joplin tags" and did not click on "convert all inline note's inline tags to Joplin tags", but still every new note I create the behaviour to convert the inline tags to Joplin tags remained switched on. Do I need to re-click on the same voice in the menu to turn the feature back off? Or is that how is it supposed to be? I actually don't mind, but that would not explain the existence of the two different voices in the menu.

I guess the convert all button will convert all my previous notes' inline tags to Joplin's tags? That'd be great actually.

Still unfortunately I don't think that this workflow would work in the rich editor, as the inline tags do not get created while typing. And copy/pasting the inline tags (even from the markdown editor) does not seem to create inline tags. So how would I copy/paste the tags? And the auto-complete behaviour of the inline tags plugin works exactly as the Joplin stock. So I'm kind of back to square 1?

I am confused about the two plugins "inline tags" and "inline tag navigator". Specifically I'd like to know which one does what. But I am close to obtain what I'm after. So a few questions:

Do I need both plugins installed? Am I right to think of your plugin as an enhancement of the "inline tags" plugin? Yours does not create inline tags without the inline tags plugin also installed, correct?
If I remember correctly the inline tags plugin works only within the markdown editor, but after installing also "inline tag navigator" anything followed by a # is now considered a tag, even in wysiwyg. GREAT!!! But that is the case only if I have both plugins installed, right?
I'm real close to do what I want... but there is a missing piece of the puzzle left... I can now copy/paste the inline tags quickly into a new note, the auto-complete is bypassed while creating new tags, and everything works weather I'm on markdown or in rich text. Now... my Joplin tags cannot still be copied... so I wish there was a "convert note's Joplin tags to inline tags" button so I'd have everything merged. So this solution seems to be working only from now on, if I stick to the workflow, but not for my previous notes
Also, I was obviously intrigued by the searching functionalities that your plugin offers.... but did I get that correctly or your plugin searches only for inline tags and not for Joplin tags?

Thanks so much for developing this btw Really useful and dense plugin!

Further edit!
Everything is a bit temperamental btw (on my system at least). There are times in which I type an inline tag such as #inlinetag and the tag is not created as an inline tag, but then your plugin may still create a Joplin tag anyway (although occasionally it does not), then thanks to your CSS snippet, the inline tags are now displayed highlighted, but they may be not tags nor inline tags. It kinda need some constant double checking unless I'm missing something?

shikuz · 2024-04-12T02:25:58.546Z

Thanks for all the feedback, glad that you found these tools useful @Rando.

I can see how this can be a little overwhelming at first, I only provided hints to plugin-based solutions. I believe that you mostly got things right, and hopefully the following lengthy explanation will help clarifying these concepts.

Some definitions

Inline tag: This is nothing more than a word in plain text that can be recognized by an automatic search query (for example, because it begins with a hashtag). Every word that starts with # is an inline tag (unless you change the default settings). Rich Markdown can recognize these words and highlight them, but these are just cosmetics; the inline tag converter can copy them into the list of Joplin tags; or inline tag search can extract all tagged paragraphs and display them in a panel. Ultimately, the tag remains just plain text (so you can edit, copy, paste and move it around freely), and will therefore be exported with the note no matter which way you do it. Each plugin that operates on these tags only searches for a pattern in plain text, and does so independently from the other plugins.

Inline Tags plugin: This plugin does 2 things: (1) It has an auto-complete feature that pops up in the editor while you start typing a tag; (2) If you select a tag from the list it will also add a corresponding Joplin tag, in addition to the plain text inline tag. This means, that if you skip the auto-complete (or "create new tag" option), it will not provide the second feature. You need this plugin only if you're interested in features (1) or (2).

Inline Tag Navigator plugin: This has a number of features, but we focused on 2 of them:

(1) It may convert all plain text inline tags in a note into Joplin tags. If you want this to happen automatically, you can define in the plugin settings a periodic conversion of all your notes (for example, every 5 minutes). While the Inline Tags plugin (the one from the previous section) converts each tag that you select from the auto-complete list to a Joplin tag, the plugin here operates differently, searches for all #-starting words in the note, and converts them to Joplin tags in a single action. This means, that even if you skip the auto-complete menu of the Inline Tags plugin (or remove the plugin altogether) the tags that you typed will still be converted to Joplin tags. This also means that notes that you wrote in the past and contain inline tags in their text can still be converted to Joplin tags in a single click. (As always, I'd be careful with converting all notes in a single click before testing a few notes and checking that you get what you expect from the plugin. Maybe also generate a backup of your notes first.)

(2) It can search for inline tags and display the paragraphs where they appear. You don't have to convert the tags in order to use the search, and you don't have to use the search panel (just hide it with the toggle command) in order to convert your inline tags. Furthermore, the Inline Tags plugin is not required for these features. It's indeed true that it does not search for Joplin tags at the moment, but if you consistently tag all your notes with inline tags (the tag list at the top of the note that I mentioned), then it will effectively search all of your tags in all of your notes, whether they were also converted to Joplin tags or not.

Rich Markdown plugin: If you're only interested in highlighting inline tags in the text (you're handling typing them manually, and searching for them using standard text search), then all you need is this plugin and none of the others, because each of these plugins operates independently on inline tags in plain text.

Rando:

Do I understand correctly or this involves some manual discipline to start every note by adding the inline tags after the text "tags:"

Another plugin worth considering is the template plugin, which you may use to create notes that already include the tags: placeholder. (It's generally a great plugin.) In any case, the plugins above allow you to choose any format to add inline tags, be that at the top of the note, bottom, or scattered all over.

Rando:

so I wish there was a "convert note's Joplin tags to inline tags" button so I'd have everything merged.

Indeed, while writing the first reply it occurred to me that this could be something that you (and perhaps other users) would be interested in. This is a good suggestion, and I'll consider adding this feature. It's a little challenging, because deciding on a format to add the tags to the body of the note is something that many users will want to customize to their needs.

Rando:

an inline tag such as #inlinetag and the tag is not created as an inline tag

If everything is set correctly, any tag that is highlighted by Rich Markdown should be recognized by Inline Tag Navigator (unless it's a HTML note, or within a code block). If you have a specific tag that does not follow that, please share and I'll be happy to check.

Rando · 2024-04-12T12:30:45.441Z

Perfect. Thanks so much for the clear and detailed explanation, it was truly needed and it did indeed clear up any confusion I had.
The other point I was also missing is the fact that your plugin scraps for the inline tags every 5 minutes (or any set time). I was expecting any word following a # to be turned into inline tag as I write. Maybe this behaviour info could be emphasised at the first plugin run with a pop-up?
Now that I now how it works, this plugin is a killer tool!

Maybe it's an obvious thing for most, but as it wasn't in my case, perhaps you may, also, want to consider revising the plugin's description that you see in the Joplin's option/plugin page? Something like this maybe:
"Inline Tag Navigator v0.4.1
Create inline tags and quickly convert them into Joplin tags. Also, search and organize all your inline
tags in an advanced dedicated search panel."

It currently is:
"A system to organize, search, browse and convert inline tags and note mentions via dedicated panels."

It may seem obvious, yet, a newbie like me thought it would not create the tags This is also due to the fact that the name "Inline tag navigator" may imply that this is a companion plugin for the inline tag plugin?

Indeed, while writing the first reply it occurred to me that this could be something that you (and perhaps other users) would be interested in. This is a good suggestion, and I'll consider adding this feature. It's a little challenging, because deciding on a format to add the tags to the body of the note is something that many users will want to customize to their needs.

I understand the challenges there. Perhaps further developing the search functionality so that it can search through Joplin's tags as well may be easier? It'd be one step closer to join both worlds in one place.
I was also thinking that a further step could be that if the user flags the auto-conversion to Joplin tags, then it could be prompted with a pop-up asking if he/she wants the #tags texts to be removed from the note's body automatically? This would, obviously, imply that the inline tag navigator plugin can search for Joplin tags as well at this point. But, then again, because of not being able to copy/paste the Joplin's tags that would not make much sense (for now at least).

I'm very happy with this, btw. Thanks so much man!

shikuz · 2024-04-13T12:42:29.190Z

You're welcome to check out v0.5.0, which introduced commands to convert Joplin tags to inline tags.

Rando:

your plugin scraps for the inline tags every 5 minutes (or any set time)

Also check out v0.5.0, where the panel is automatically refreshed with inline tags and search results while editing the current note.

Rando:

thought it would not create the tags

I'll think about the description a little longer. It borders on a philosophical discussion whether inline tags are even "created" (and what creates them) when they are essentially just typed text in a note.

Rando · 2024-04-13T13:09:36.038Z

Impressive! Yeah that seems to be working really well! Wow man, thanks so much! I'll continue on the relevant topic...

Spoiler

Tag with spaces

Rando · 2024-04-13T14:39:19.269Z

shikuz:

I'll think about the description a little longer. It borders on a philosophical discussion whether inline tags are even "created" (and what creates them) when they are essentially just typed text in a note.

What about:

"Type inline #tags in your note editor and convert them into Joplin tags as you write. Search and organize all your tags in an advanced search panel. Also, convert your MD and Obsidian tags into Joplin tags".

shikuz · 2024-04-14T10:31:47.754Z

Thanks! Sounds like a better description to base the next version on.