Feature request: tag editor

[brief]

For the next version: an editor that enables the listing and editing (rename, delete) of tags.

[scrod]

I agree 100%. You might have noticed that tag support is still nascent. The larger question has always been how to browse them.

[brief]

It is apparent that tag support is still emerging and I'm happy to hear that there is an intention to expand it down the road. When you say tag browsing, do you mean how to list/navigate/edit tags or something else?

With Notational's interface being so heavily focused on the capture and searching of notes, I think tags should be browsed in their own window. Particularly since they serve a secondary function -- the categorization of notes.

This window would list tag names as well as (optionally) the number of notes assigned to each tag. The list could be navigated in the same way that notes are, allowing tags to be searched/added, renamed or deleted. Clicking on a tag name would search for and list notes containing that tag in the main window.

As an added bit of functionality, tags in the main window would also benefit from an auto-complete feature (which I imagine is on the drawing board).

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Now, to go off on a tangent, tags could also be added to new notes and searched more granularly from the main window. The Hit List has a tag entry/search model that I think would suit Notational Velocity: tags are added inline by prefacing them with a backslash.

For example:

• Entering Pick up milk /todo would create a new note with the title Pick up milk and the tag todo
• Searching /todo would only list notes with a tag of todo even if the body of a note contains the word todo

Notes with multiple tags could be entered/search in this way as well.

• Make a dinner reservation at Chez Velocity /phone /todo results in a note with two tags
• Searches for /phone /todo will only list notes containing both tags
• And to further complicate things, typing /phone Chez Velocity would return notes with the tag phone and the content Chez Velocity

This tangent does nothing for the actual browsing of tags however. And, as far as the tagging of new notes, actually counters your desire to uphold Monotony.

[axelGschaider]

Here's a little sketch how I think the tag-interface could look like: http://img.skitch.com/20100205-niwiwb6y48hnuyjsn2xmmik7kg.jpg

using a drawer (so you can get it out of the way if you don't need it) there would be the tag-cloud at the top (in this case alphabetically sorted with often used tags bigger than others).
Dragging one or multiple notes to one of the tags would add this tag to all of them.
Right-clicking one of the tags would bring up a context menu containing the options "Delete" and "Rename".
Clicking on one of the tags would only show notes with this tag. With shift-click additional tags could be selected. In this case he "one / all"-button bellow (yes I know, the name of the button is not perfect) would switch between showing notes that hold one or all of the selected tags.
The button to the right of "one / all" would save the current tag search as bookmark.

The text field at the bottom could be used to enter boolean expressions for tag searching. In this case all notes that either hold the tags "Work" or "ToDo" but not the tag "Done" would be shown.
Yes that boolean thing could be incorporated into the search/create-field. But I somehow felt that it would be nice to restrict that one to plain text searches. Just a gut feeling. Don't know if that makes sense.

[axelGschaider]

P.S.: when entering tags manually and in the tag-search field, typeahead would be nice

P.P.S.: sorry for hijacking this issue for a full tag-interface-proposal but since that was already brought up by brief I didn't want to open another one

[dorsolateral]

Wonderful idea. In looking for a new note-taking app/system/workflow I am still torn between NV and Notae since the latter one has a tag-browser (but no txt-file storage option, which wins over tagging)

I also agree with the browser being a drawer, or perhaps even "borrowing" Notaes way of browsing tags. Might be a better fit for NVs design paradigm.

[Lips]

In line with the simplicity of NV, please don't forget text lists of tags. Even in feature-drenched Adobe Lightroom, I can export a text file of tags to edit, create & rearrange. Children are indicated via indentation. I find tag-clouds to be painful.

• NV is already a text editor. How fortunate.

[MacJack]

+1 Tag Editor would be great

[janw76]

Stupid idea maybe, but in a Twitter-ish way NV already does support a pretty powerful tag system. Why not simply use hashtags, such as #mytag? Searching for them from the input line is super-fast. Exporting notes could also be fast and even creating a "tag browser" would essentially just be a filter that grabs all "#tag" marked tags.

[dorsolateral]

I think the tag-browser of the windows app CintaNotes is a supremely useful and simple implementation.

Tags prepended with any special characters (like @, #, / etc) are sorted separately in the list. Great for when you have different categories of tags. In addition, when you select one tag in CintaNotes, other tags are highlighted/subdued based on whether the notes with the selected tag also contain those other tags. Difficult to describe, have a look:
http://cintanotes.com/

By the way: I agree with janw76 in that I myself use inline tags in the note itself, prepended with an @sign, or #, depending on whether that tag denotes a todo item, a person, etc.

[ghost]

I also inline my tags (#todo, #work, ...) as proposed by janw76, cause its simple and works indepent to NV (so I'm able to open Textfiles with an editor).

It think it would be cool, if tags used in the note are shown in the "tags" column in the list of notes, not only these, that are explicitly defined there as "tags". And to be consistent, it would be nice if those tags defined in the note list would be appended to the note text (-> so that they are not "hidden" inside NV, but are also visible if notes are opened with some texteditor).

I like the idea of "global tag renaming" as much as a list of all used tags. A "tag browsing view" or a special "tag editor" would surely be nice, but I do not necessarily need them.

[ashcroft]

+1 for the idea of a tag-operator as first suggested by @brief. +1 for auto-completion of tags in the create/search box.

When working on application essays, I'd like to focus on notes tagged with "jobs". I'd rather not see all my odes to Steve Jobs or other notes containing this fairly common word... The distinction between content and meta-content (= description) is one of the main ideas behind tagging. It hasn't been adequately implemented in NV, yet (which should not be said without a "Kudos!" for the progress made in 2.0ß4) .

One can get this distinction by using # or other special characters (@, / ...) at the beginning of tags in the tag field. However, currently this breaks auto-completion -- which is another key feature of evolved tagging systems. @janw76 and others: Until now inline-tags do not support auto-completion, either.

In lack of an alternative, right now I'm tagging my notes in the tag field while manually replicating the tags as hashtags in the notes' first lines. Redundant and clumsy, but better than waiving auto-completion or content-tag-distinction completely.

[teoljungberg]

+1

[jchausse]

Since Scrod's last comment on this issue was over 2 years ago, I'm guessing I shouldn't hold my breath? :)

Otherwise, +1

[gajeam]

Honestly, I think that implementing tags would diminish the simple beauty that is Notational Velocity. NV is possibly the cleanest note taking device available because combined note searching/note creation, note selection, and writing in notes are more or less the only three functions available to the user. Tags would complicate things--to be done adequately, I think it would need a whole additional section like in the model proposed by @axelGschaider.

I think if you need tags any more complicated than internal ones, use other note taking software.

[robertpolson]

+1 for tag browser!

[kilatepro]

In the matter of TAGs, a simple request is: please sync tags with Simplenote. It would be enough, and would not affect the good simplicity of NV. No need for another window for tags.