Ability to search for, see and link (perhaps one button link-all) Unlinked Mentions with Aliases to augment them?
For example, let’s say I have a page called “New York City” and I link to it all through my notes. But New York City also has nicknames like “The Big Apple”. I would also want to link all references to the title page even if it doesn’t match exactly.
Another example would be if I have a page titled “Linked Notes Apps” — but perhaps because of the grammar of a particular sentence, i mention that “Anytype is a great new linked notes app”. It wouldn’t match the title page exactly because it’s not plural but clearly I may want plural/non-plural references linked.
It would greatly benefit biologists (vernacular names Vs. scientific names of species: killer whale or Orcinus orca), doctors and chemists (molecules Vs. commercial product names: acetylsalicylic acid or aspirin), lawyers and solicitors (married names Vs. maiden names) and too many other use cases to count.
When it comes to aliases ObsidianMD has a function for this. Since it is markdown you type:
Alias: “name of the alias”
When you link a page and type the alias name it automaticly links to the main page. Works great.
Anytype could have a function on the top of the page to add alias to that page (could be placed next to the layout and relation buttons for example) and shows these in a nice format below the main title of the page.
Aliases should exist as unique references. Using OP’s example, if one day I decide to change “The Big Apple” to “The Big Pear”, I can just edit that alias, and this is updated in every occurrence (while still keeping the link to “New York City”).
Ability to create these Aliases in the moment I’m actually creating a reference to an object (ie. no need to go into the object to create the alias). For example, the first time I decide to reference New York as “The Big Apple”, I can just (1) start typing @New Y… until the desired object shows up, (2) pick that object (thus adding “New York City” as a reference), then (3) editing the text in that reference (to “The Big Apple”). That would automatically create that alias. Another option is, in step 2 above, to have an option in the menu to “Create new alias for this object”, or something like this. (I understand this might require figuring out how to differentiate between creation of aliases and simply changing the text that links to a reference, which is also something Id like to be able to do)
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
When building up a knowledge database, its hard to know if you will deepdive into a topic. So when referencing a topic, you just type it in plain text. Then sometime later, you deepdive into the topic. However, you have no way to relate the new topic’s object to all the other objects that reference it.
For example:
I create a journal set with objects for daily reviews
in most of my daily reviews, I write about my manager “Chris” in plain text
After 6 months, I decide to create a contacts set with an object for “Chris”
I want to know all the days that I talk about “Chris” in a relational manner
I would have to use the main search bar to search “chris” and manually go back and replace “Chris” with the @“Chris”
Describe the solution you’d like
Once I create the object “Chris”
there is a “find and replace” functionality - much like a word processor
Search for “Chris” and shuffle through all results and choose to replace it with the referenced link to the “Chris” object
all resulting features available to referenced objects are now active
Describe alternatives you’ve considered
Manual search and replace.
Additional context
I have tried many tools and I am not sure I have seen this functionality at all. This could be a real differentiator. If you think about it, its so necessary if you want to build a second brain because there is no way you could plan out all the terms or phrases that you should create objects for but when you do it would be a waste if you did not connect it to previous mentions!
Even better if the matches are shown first in a preview list, allowing user to unselect any occurrences that are not related (for example, some other person named Chris)
I have tried many tools and I am not sure I have seen this functionality at all.
+1 I would class this feature as one of the few “game-changers” anytype could pursue. As far as I’m aware this is unique to Obsidian (and Roam?) and a key differentiator - when building a web of networked ideas you are very limited if you can’t retrospectively add links. Adding this functionality could really put anytype on the map (and even the lead) in the Personal Knowledge Management space.
I realize this when I want to insert a linked page in the middle of a sentence. I use @mention to achieve this, but the link can only show with its title, which breaks the fluency. So it’d be great if can create aliases for linked pages.
This especially: if I’m writing and I want to link the page ‘Apple’, but the sentence wants ‘two apples’, it would come out as ‘two Apple’, which is kinda ugly. An option to change the display name of a linked page would be excellent, like Obsidian does (in Obsidian you add a pipe after the name between the brackets and add whatever you want. In Anytype it could look like this? @Apple|apples )
I’m a bilingual researcher and this feature is really the one reason I can’t consider using AnyType fully instead of Obsidian. I really have to have the ability to use aliases and unlinked mentions to any new additions to my KMS.
I think it’s implied in some of the above posts, but just in case it’s not explicit: Besides being able to have aliases, I’d like to be able to name the aliases as well. This would make it possible to use them in Sets, grabbing all the maiden names vs current married names, for example.
In fact, it might be worth it for aliases types to be objects of their own, so that there’s a natural place to document them. Naming is a big deal, with all sorts of complexities and subtleties (ask any programmer). Anytype should offer more sophisticated support than just extra key-values for names.
I just realized this is not a thing and I really want/need it to be one. I’ve got to the point whenever I’m doing any story writing I tend to use placeholder names.
Because I’m terrible at coming up with names for things in the moment so I have to stew on it for a while.
Far too many times I’ve named something and literally within days I’ll see something that uses it or ruins the name for me. It might be superstitious but if I have a name I avoid writing it down and making it real to test haha.
Really hope this gets some more attention either for the core team or the community later on.
This sounds like the “unlinked mentions” feature from Obsidian, where you can choose to link the occurrence to the current note. Definitely a good one!
It would be very useful to have the option to ##customize or add the backlink text ## to display the specific word that was linked instead of the object name. This would improve clarity and usability when navigating between related objects.
