Inverse relations/Named relation backlinks

WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

It would be great if backlinks could be managed per relation type. Currently, there can be many relation types, but all of the inverse relations (the implied ones going in the other direction) are grouped into the single “backlink” category.

For example, if I define a “parent” relation, and I make A the parent of B, then on page B, I can see “parent: A”, but on page A, all I can see is “backlinks: B”. What would be nice is if I could add a “child” relation as an implied (or explicit) inverse of the “parent” relation, such that I could go to page A and see “children: B”

HOW COULD IT BE DONE?

  • Add an “inverse relation” field to all Object relations, and their edit pages.
    • Perhaps have a singular and plural version?
  • Add the ability to display the inverse relations on the target Object types
  • Perhaps also add the ability to make the inverse relationship editable.
  • Option to remove those inverse relationships from inclusion in the general “backlinks” display (by default continue to include them)

REAL WORLD USE CASES

  • e.g. “subsidiaries”/“owned by” for companies
  • Basically every object-to-object relationship can easily have an inverse defined, e.g. “A loves B” → “B is loved by A”
  • These are WAY more informative than a generalised “backlinks” list, which has no semantic value.

RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES

I can’t see any obvious ones, but there are lots of options for implementation details, I guess.

ADDITIONAL CONTEXT

Related to Are relations really only one-way?

There are link and backlinks which you should be able to find in flow pane (Cmd/Ctrl+O).

But semantic values and/or categorisation by relation or advance filter /sorting would be indeed be nice too.

Ah, true, I hadn’t seen that! Thanks! It’s great how that is split up by relationship type.

I think the main thing that I’d like to be able to do is to add an inverse relation field display for arbitrary single relation types, if that makes sense.

Currently you can add a relation field to the page body (and templates), and then it shows, but you can only do that for forward relations, or the generic catch-all backlink display.