Backlink

[amelchi]

are they working bicycling?

[complexpoint]

Alas, I’m too old and slow to understand the question

If there is one, could you unpack it a bit ?

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( Hyperlinks into, out of, and within Bike documents all working well here, if that’s the topic : -)

[amelchi]

I was joking with the name of the software…
backlinks are the ones normally in [[ ]] in various wiki…
Am I too young to explain it you, our guru?

[complexpoint]

Got it For some reason this old grey-beard thinks of those as wiki-style links – I must expand my vocabulary in English.

[amelchi]

that clear, are they existing or not (in a near future…)?

[jessegrosjean]

They don’t exist yet.

Bike does have ID based links. I see them as the foundation for links in Bike. They are nice because they are standard URLs and ID based. They can be used from apps external to Bike and they won’t break when items are moved or renamed.

At the same time right now they are ugly:

bike://rootidsomethinghere#ND

So working toward a final link solution, first I would like to implement basic rich text editing in Bike. At the moment I see that as bold, italic, and link, though once the basic mechanism for tracking rich text ranges is in place it shouldn’t be hard to add new rich text types.

With rich text in place Bike links will become nicer since you’ll be able to hide the above ugly looking link behind a range of text that you choose.

Once that’s in place then I think we can look into making them easier to create. So for example an interaction that makes it each to find existing item to link to, or makes it easy to create an item when the link is first activated.

Does that make sense, seem reasonable?

[amelchi]

it is reasonable, ok
but… will bike links work when read by another application, eg on iOs?

[complexpoint]

@amelchi

another application, eg on iOs?

That sounds more like another operating system than ‘another application’

Any macOS app that can process local hyperlinks should be able to process Bike links. See under custom url scheme.

( Access to our local files via http protocols from another system is, very fortunately, only possible if we run a server. )

[amelchi]

Actually it was exactly Jesse that suggested using another software opml compatible to interact with Bike on mobile…

[jessegrosjean]

@amelchi

will bike links work when read by another application, eg on iOs?

Not without specific support (same for wiki style links, or really any link I can imagine).

That support would be relatively strait forward to add since it’s all based on HTML standards, but still the any apps wanting to work with bike links will need to check for that link type.

Jesse

[alltom]

@jessegrosjean

Bike does have ID based links . I see them as the foundation for links in Bike.

That works! But what’s your workflow for getting those links?

I’m used to editors where typing [[jessegrosjean]] would automatically link, but it seems like with Bike today I need to search for “jessegrosjean” to find your row, copy its link, then go back to where I was to paste it. Is that the way?

[jessegrosjean]

@alltom

I’m used to editors where typing [[jessegrosjean]] would automatically link

That “wiki” type of link doesn’t exist in Bike yet.

I think Bike links are both better and worse then those wiki style links:

• Better: Bike links work outside apps. For example you can paste a Bike link into TextEdit and then when activated you will be linked into a specific row in your Bike outline. Contrast this to wiki style links where you are limited to your app since they are not URL based.

• Better: Bike links continue to work through renames and edits. For example in the above link if you rename the jessegrosjean target to jesse, then the link will break. This doesn’t happen with Bike links.

• Worse: Bike links are much less convenient right now. I see them as a bedrock technology, but at the moment there is not much user interface for making them usable. I don’t currently use them for anything. The two ways to easily create them now are:

  • Edit > Copy > Copy Link
  • Drag row handle while holding down option key
  • But the end result is always an ugly looking link in your outline

In the future I expect some sort of “Insert Link” command which will open a search that you can use to find an existing row as another option. It may even be that in the future Bike will support wiki style links also, but I don’t know about that.

Before working much more on link features I want to implement rich text editing (and before that I’m still just working on request small features and bugs). I think rich text editing is important for Bike links (and web links) so that the raw link text doesn’t always need to be visible.

[Stephen_Wilson]

@jessegrosjean

Once that’s in place then I think we can look into making them easier to create. So for example an interaction that makes it each to find existing item to link to, or makes it easy to create an item when the link is first activated.

Does that make sense, seem reasonable?

Jessie I find Bike links really great as they can link to a Note or a Note/Paragraph but this older post promises even more and in the absence of a file browser I would love it if the “interaction that makes it easier to find an existing item to link to” existed and for it to be “easy to create an item when the link is first activated” .

Is this still a possibility for the future as as my Bike document list grows it is something I feel would be a great addition.

[jessegrosjean]

@Stephen_Wilson

Is this still a possibility for the future as as my Bike document list grows it is something I feel would be a great addition.

It is, I just need to do it.

Generally I have a whole list of future features, work on making links easier being one. I try to only work on one or two features at once, and the rest aren’t really ordered or prioritized. So hard to say “when”, but I expect not in super near term.

Right now I’m working indirectly on accessibility. Once that work is done I’ll likely step back and decide what to work on next, likely presenting a list of possibilities to this forum.