Multiple keywords for linking to individual markdown files automatically.

[greggh]

Hi everyone,

I am using Neovim as an editor for my creative writing. I had marksman for my LSP, but it's missing many features that IWE has. I just found IWE and am planning on migrating my Neovim config over to IWE for most of the markdown functionality.

It is missing one feature that I have really wanted, the ability to have multiple different keywords link to other files. Here is an example: I have a character named Wesley "Wes" Martin. I would like formatting to automatically link any instance of Wesley, Wes, Wesley Martin, Wes Martin, Mr. Martin, and so on. It should link all of those to the character entry I have made for Wes. Throughout the creative story people will get called different names by everyone from family, equals, friends, enemies, and more.

So I guess it's two new features. The ability to have format auto-link with wikilink style [[link]] to the correct markdown file. And to have a markdown file somehow state its title/name variations. I was originally going to do this with autocmd's and a lot of lua in my Neovim config, adding a metadata.yml file into each directory that would be editable to list the name variations. And maybe I'll still have to do that. But it's always worth opening the discussion I think.

[gimalay]

Hi @greggh,

One way to achieve what you described is to use piped links [[Wesley Martin|Wez]] where Wez is the title and Wesley Martin is the linked file. Using this syntax you can link the same file in a different way. More details are here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Piped_link

Another way to do it is to create one file per keyword, so you would have Wez.md and Wesley.md and put a link to the actual character details into each one of these. In this case you can also search for backlinks to find all links to Wez.md or Wesley.md.

Having configuration option for [[wiiklink]] auto-complete makes sense. I'll add this.

[greggh]

I just tested it, I don’t see it doing the auto linking of unlinked words/phrases when I save. I think you addressed something else, and I like that new option, but it doesn’t address what i was looking for. I was hoping that it would find anything that should be linked but isn’t, and automatically create that link, throughout the whole file.

[gimalay]

I see, you want the files to be linked "automatically" on save (format). I thought you want to have auto-complete with wiki-style links. At the moment, the only way IWE helps with linking is auto-complete.

Automatic linking may be complicated cause you may have multiple matches and it's unclear what to link. Also, user may not want to link everything that is linkable. It's going beyond formatting and changing the shape of the graph.

I was thinking about LSP having ability to find and suggest possible links and the user taking action to accept the suggestion. Will something like this work for your use case?

[greggh]

That actually sounds better than my idea, you’re right that it would cause issues for some people if it just did every possible file link. That would work for my use case.

[gimalay]

I'm thinking about LLM based solution here, the program will need to feed text to LLM to extract objects that are mentioned in the text and then suggest linking to the existing or creation of new pages. The downside is that it will require LLM access.

Another option is pure text matching. But in this cases it's not very clear what we want to mach - every combination of words from the current file (John+Doe, etc) to list of existing notes?

What do you think about this approaches?

[greggh]

If you go with the LLM option it would probably need to support local and remote so we could do it cheaper locally, or connect up to an API. The only issue I see with this one is a function that creates the right context for the LLM to make the decisions and forcing the LLM to give you back something you can use like a structured json, some LLM tooling supports enforcing that.

If it's the text matching option then I think I would end up wanting some way to supply metadata that gives a list of what words I want linked to what files. Something like a metadata.yml file structured to allow me specifying a list of words or phrases per file. Or frontmatter being supported in the markdown files, like simple yaml frontmatter with the data, and then a function to collect all of that for the text matching.

[athyfr]

I've recently created a separate discussion that solves one half of your issue; note aliases. (#216)

I've commented there describing some existing solutions to aliasing.

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As for automatic linking, I'd think a better solution would be something like Logseq's unlinked references.

If implemented in IWE, it might be accessed as an additional Code Action called something like "Find Unlinked References".

Its behavior would be similar to IWE's backlinks/go to references feature, but would also include matches that aren't explicitly linked.

This would be less intrusive than automatic linking (which could quickly clutter the references list), and would expose the feature to everyone regardless of configuration.