One of the powers of “The Graph” is allowing the user to see a visual representation of all the connections they consciously manually made. However, “The Graph”, as it is now, does not allow the user to see connections that might be lurking underneath all the objects that were created and that their conscious mind never realized existed.
WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?
Allow the Anytype application to display the connection amongst different objects that have the same values stored in their relations.
HOW COULD IT BE DONE?
Add a feature that allows objects to be linked by their relations that have the same value.
REAL WORLD USE CASES
For example, suppose I have an Set called “People” that lists every person in 15 different friend groups. My conscious mind would only link people that, in my mind, belonged to the same friend group. However, what if the “People” object has a relation called “Favorite Food” and another relation called “Neighborhood”. What if, people from different friend groups happened to have the same “Favorite Food” relation or live in the same “Neighborhood”. My conscious mind would have never thought of making connections between people from different friend groups in Anytype. However, adding this feature will allow these “hidden” dynamics to reveal themselves to the user.
RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES
Cannot think of any. Open to suggestions
ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
There are many other scenarios I can speak of. Please ask if you would like additional context.
Here is a screenshot of Obsidian's filtering capability for their graph. It allows you to include and exclude folders, tags, etc.
Welcome to the community @ferchizzle. This is a good discussion of feature you have raised. I have a few questions for you that I would like to know more.
What type of relation do you use? Text based or Object-supported relation (as the latter will be more difficult to implement) or something else?
What do you mean by connection points? And what would be your usage? And how do you imagine the graph to display? With linkage grouping - like certain types of relation near each other? As something like a coronavirus?! Could you give some illustrations like drawings?
Set/Collection
Maybe the coming improvement of set/collection could do what you need. This will be
I imagine it might take more features to get graph to show what you want. Here are a few way that might suggest “hidden dynamics”.
Depth for local graph (This feature is already in experimental stage.) e.g. local graph for NeighbourhoodObject, to show NeighbourObjects with secondary linkage to FoodObjects
Better graph filter because:
– You might have lots of things linked to the HumanObjects, not just NeighbourhoodObject and FoodObject, as well InterestsObject or RelationshipStatusObject/Tag (e.g. friends or relatives).
– Perhaps you would also have lots of IngredientObjects linked to the Food/RecipeObject as well
Variation of Connection force (a pending feature request) to show neighbours or favourite food together as cluster
– Node size to display the amount of linkage to your searched FoodObject to indicate more people like it (This is already possible, but might not be obvious)
Relations as Objects is a big feature request because it probably needs structural change to:
– How we input relations
– How objects works (if users are allowed to open relation as canvas to edit)
– Adapt more data that would need to be managed (if 5 relations per object, Anytype would need to handle 5 times the objects we have - that’s a lot).
– ↑ I am a big supporter for relation as object, but implementing wouldn’t be easy.
Manual but systematic adjustment to Graph view (which I am planning to write a structural feature request on, but really slowly and probably not about all the below points)
– Ability to change source of nodes (from object to relation)
– Identify an Object within the Object-support relation OR identify objects that have a specific type of object-supported relation in all objects, then ‘transcend’ them into nodes
Multi-dimension relation to create complex relations. This is also a complex feature in itself. We are to make [Preference(Love/Hate) to FoodObject]Relation as a node, that’s an extra level..
HOW I APPROACH RELATIONS IN GRAPH
Despite my support to relation as object, I might have a different take to how relation could/should be display in graph.
Relation generally shouldn’t be an extra node because it is the linkage between the two nodes. It is simply the line, and whatever indicator or description it might have on top.
– E.g. if A is inspired by B and alone (A – inspiration →B), A doesn’t have an extra connection to an inspiration object then a second link to B (not A → inspiration →B)
– I understand we might want the characteristics of nodes for relations. Thus I imagine an upgrade of the current relation box as a clickable node and a different type of object.
My use case for Connection point would be to display characteristics of an object
– This can be defined by Relation or by Editor-Blocks.
– For example, an ObjectA explained Point1, then when ObjectB mentioned ObjectA in Point2 but specifically Point1, I would like to be able see Point2 connecting to Point1, not just B linking to A.
– I imagine this to be displayed with different level of zoom. In local graph, zoom in for block or relation level to see how other objects are linked specific points. Zoom out for whole object level. ← This is an alternative to partially mimic obsidian canvas.
↑ These are probably complex to implement as well.
Thank you for writing such a thoughtful response. Your response (and you) have taught me more about Anythings features/capabilities that I was not aware of … that means more time playing around and wasting time
At present, I am only working with relations as text and not as Objects.
Here is a representation of what I had in mind.
This idea was inspired by my experimentation with the limits of what Obsidian was offering and I found that was limiting my ability to discover unrealized connections as well. So perhaps a “Graph Filter” would work?
