The ability to search for @, #, $, etc.
Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2020 11:27 pm
It would be useful if there was the ability to search for some of the characters that both global search, and search for text inside a note, now take as punctuation characters.
This would allow an easy use of keywords. For example, one might use any word preceded by # as a keyword, such as #car. (It is possible to do this with letters instead. For example, one could have precede a keyword with a special letter combination, such as "ll", so the keyword is llcar. But this is ugly.) One way such keywords differ from tags in that they would allow marking of particular sectiona in a note.
One problem with this suggestion, however, is that there are ways in which having @, # etc as punctuation characters is useful. So if they are eliminated as punctuation characters, this would probably mess up the way some MI users work at present. Therefore, it would be necessary to allow @, #, etc. to serve both as a punctuation character in a search, and as a regular letter. Perhaps one could have that search takes a punctuation character as a regular letter only if it is preceded by a special character, say, `. So a search for `#car would take # as an ordinary character, and would only find notes with "#car", while a search for #car would -- as at present -- find all notes with car, or #car, or @car, etc.
One elegant use of this would be as follows. If one could use @ (or # or whatever) as a letter in a search, rather than a punctuation character, this would allow easy searches for notes that link to a particular note. In MI 7, starting to type @ has the same significance as typing [[ in MI 6, and this makes it easy to set links to a note. So it is easy to set a hyperlink to, say, the note titled "car". At present, such a hyperlink shows in the note as the underlined word "car", although one can change what text is displayed. Suppose one ensures that the text to display is @car. Then to find all the notes that link to the note "car", all one would have to do is a global search for `@car (if one uses `@ to indicate that @ should be taken as a letter).
This would allow an easy use of keywords. For example, one might use any word preceded by # as a keyword, such as #car. (It is possible to do this with letters instead. For example, one could have precede a keyword with a special letter combination, such as "ll", so the keyword is llcar. But this is ugly.) One way such keywords differ from tags in that they would allow marking of particular sectiona in a note.
One problem with this suggestion, however, is that there are ways in which having @, # etc as punctuation characters is useful. So if they are eliminated as punctuation characters, this would probably mess up the way some MI users work at present. Therefore, it would be necessary to allow @, #, etc. to serve both as a punctuation character in a search, and as a regular letter. Perhaps one could have that search takes a punctuation character as a regular letter only if it is preceded by a special character, say, `. So a search for `#car would take # as an ordinary character, and would only find notes with "#car", while a search for #car would -- as at present -- find all notes with car, or #car, or @car, etc.
One elegant use of this would be as follows. If one could use @ (or # or whatever) as a letter in a search, rather than a punctuation character, this would allow easy searches for notes that link to a particular note. In MI 7, starting to type @ has the same significance as typing [[ in MI 6, and this makes it easy to set links to a note. So it is easy to set a hyperlink to, say, the note titled "car". At present, such a hyperlink shows in the note as the underlined word "car", although one can change what text is displayed. Suppose one ensures that the text to display is @car. Then to find all the notes that link to the note "car", all one would have to do is a global search for `@car (if one uses `@ to indicate that @ should be taken as a letter).