Wiki Link anomalies?

DEVONthink Tips
1

I’m trying to work out how wikilinks work in DT.

If I set “Mashed Words and Aliases” in prefs, it seems to work as expected, e.g. WikiLink is coloured and creates a page if I click on it. However, if I set “Names and Aliases” it doesn’t work as I’d expect (based on my experience of VoodooPad). If I have a file called Wiki and type Wiki into a document, it is not automatically converted into a link to the file. If I manually convert it to a link, then if I subsequently type Wiki I would expect it to be automatically highlighted as a link.

Similarly, if I add wlink as an alias to Wiki, that doesn’t get highlighted either.

Is DT Pro Office 1.3b3 buggy, or is it behaving as expected?

-Rick

2

Rick, have you tried saving the document? This was far from obvious for me at first, but wiki-links only appear as links in my documents, after I hit command-s (even in three- or two-pane-view).
I tried out refering to a “wiki” document. It works, but the link only appears after I save the document.
Hitting command-s often is a useful habit anyhow…

Good luck,
Mark

3

Huh! Who would’a taught it?! I save often, but didn’t during my test (it was a file I intended to throw away anyway).

Not sure why DT works like that. VoodooPad highlights and creates a link while you type. Very useful for being reminded of wikilinks you’ve created in the past. I think DT should do the same, but I suppose wikilinks are not its forté. I’m new to DT, so it’s hard to say whether it’s a good idea to require a Save before creating/highlighting wikilinks. Works well in VoodooPad, but that’s a different kind of application.

Thanks Maak,

-Rick

4

Hi, Rick.

As someone who occasionally creates typos, I think it’s a good idea to require saving the recently edited text before the Wiki link is created. :slight_smile:

Actually, as I’ve got many thousands of documents in my database, I rarely use Wiki links for one reason. All too often, I’ve already got a document with that ‘Wiki’ name, and it would be inappropriate to link to it. MashedWords would solve that problem, but I don’t like them. So I mostly stick with static links.

Once in a while, though, I do have uses for Wiki and am glad that kind of linking is available.

5

Hi Rick,

I think you should report this as a bug. It should not be necessary to save a document for WikiLinks to show up as links.

6

I agree it would be nice to not have to save. If a feature is offered, I think it is just fine to ask for improvements to that feature!

I use wiki links extensively and for the most part, they work well enough in DT. But Voodoo Pad’s way of implementing them is immediate and glitch free (I have had instances in DT where I have a wiki link, it says it points to the right file, but when clicking it I get ‘no selection,’ and have to manually go to the file in question to get the link to work, as well as a few other glitches). I just couldn’t use Voodoo Pad the way it is with the many thousands of documents I have in my DT db.

But my major impetus in even wanting to try Voodoo Pad was the powerful way it handles wiki links. I too had at the beginning some issues with file names I had to change so wiki links weren’t created erroneously. But once I got through that, I’m now very much in the habit of watching how I create file names so I don’t get wiki links I don’t want. I depend on wiki links completely now and couldn’t do without them. If I tried creating static links for every instance where I wanted a link to some reference material, the time cost would be enormous.

7

Btw, I’d love it if the little glitches I mentioned Dt exhibits in using wiki links could be fixed! :slight_smile:

8

I agree with Alex – I had to pay for VoodooPad and use it for months before I understood the “zen of wiki” – having unexpected links pop up when you type a word is actually a great thing, similar to DT’s “see related” in a way – with a wiki title, I feel I’m building my own mental safety net to remind me about topics I’ve already written about.

Having closer to a VP level of wiki-ness in DT Pro would be great.

9

I’ve submitted a request to have the strange “Save to see WikiLinks” feature moved in the VoodooPad direction.

Having used DT for a week now, I realise that it’s not a substitute for VoodooPad. I was hoping to do everything in DT, but I think I’ll continue to use VoodooPad to map out new ideas.

10

:smiley:

I’m glad to see that a comfortable portion of DT users continue to prove incapable of pressing Cmd+S occasionally while typing. It’s even more amusing to see that a few of them were the same ones arguing with my request for a tagging capability, – on the grounds that it’s only slightly more work to drag a given article to every single group in which you want the article to appear.

11

Well, while it would be nice if wiki links were instantaneous, I myself really don’t care about pressing command+S, since it’s habit anyway and I find myself doing it even in programs that don’t need it. Since DT doesn’t do autosave until you leave a file, I don’t know how easy this would be to change.

Nor did I get involved with the tagging issue. While I can definitely see its import for other users, for me, tagging is no big deal. I don’t bother with tagging much. I dump something into Dt and move on. I don’t want to fiddle much with it, since I’m usually in the middle of other things and just want to get something into DT quickly. Which is why I also love wiki links. And with the amount of information in my dbs, I need DTs ability to ‘remember’ what is there and create these links for me.

For retrieving and organizing information beyond that, I myself am quite comfortable with using folders, DT’s search capabilities, replicants, and, on occasion, the comments field or Dts implementation of smart folders.

But I WOULD like to have the glitchy behavior of DT’s handling of wiki links worked on a bit. Sometimes they work great and other times I have to recreate a file or the like to get them to work, and yes, this is a pain in the butt when I have to stop and fiddle around with this crap to get a link to work properly. And sometimes they don’t work at all and I have to give it up and live with what is.

In other words, they are, well, as I said–glitchy. So, since DT offers wiki links, I feel just fine in asking for improvements in how they work.

So in that sense, yes, I’d like it if DTs implementation of wiki links was more like Voodoo Pad’s, which is non-glitchy and instantaneous and no bother.

Thanks,

Alexandria