Any consideration to have a tag field?

The ONLY thing that I’ve never enjoyed w/ Bear is having the have a spot within my notes to manually type in the hashtags so that it creates a sidebar section. I get the pros and cons of my request, but I was curious if there was even a plan to add a section ABOVE my note content where I can select/create hashtags to keep my note content “clean”. Attached is the idea…

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I’d love that, too. The in-body-tags are the one things that really feels messy in the otherwise so polished app.

@adrenallan

Do you mean a better and clear separation of tags which are related to the whole note as note on one side and those tags which are related to parts of the content of a note on the other side?

That makes sense to me.

I also agree. It’s either something like Allan mentioned or provide me with a template that I can adjust/create but I realize that it comes with its own level of maintenance. I have gotten in the habit of adding my Tag at the top right after the header like Allan shows and then I add a horizontal separator to keep it clean and out of the way. Unfortunately when adding notes from a Browser or other apps, I have to then go back and make that adjustment.

@adrenallan how do you foresee supporting multiple tags?

-tom

I can imagine to use the beginning of a note for title, creation date and tags related to whole note. Some users or the devs may consider that as pedantic. But i like that

Yeah definitely multiple tags

i had asked about this on the subreddit. tags could not only be positioned inside of a note but also with a concept of metadata. this is another item that would fit perfectly in the drawer with the TOC and note metrics.

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@meraxes
What do you mean exactly with metadata? Some fields like author, topic, genre and so on to which you cann add different values?

Hey @krssno - where there could be opportunities for all kinds of metadata fields, I was speaking only to tags. I think an example is how drafts does it. I think Evernote even operated this way. This could be in addition to current tagging methodologies providing a way to group or filter notes without explicitly defining a tag for that purpose within the note.

I also agree that this would be ideal. One of the benefits is that you could allow users to tag things more quickly in the field. Instead of having to write the hashtag to invoke the tag look ups, users could just start typing in the field.This would be especially convenient on mobile.

In Ulysses you cannot place tags inside of a note but on the other side you cann add keywords/tags to the sheets of the note listing (second pane). In comparison to bear i consider the solution of ulysses as limitation: nor you can set tags to headings or paragraphs, neither it is possible to write a word inside a sentence as tag. In bear however you can identify a tag as note-related or content-related by its position in the note (f.e. last line of the note to show that it is note-related). Nevertheless i would appreciate a way of having a more convenient, cleaner and more strictly seperation. But i am not sure how it would look like.

Hi Allan,

Many thanks for taking the time to post, and to leave a suggestion.

Regarding the current implementation of tags, this was a conscious design choice.

We like to keep the editor as simple and as clean as possible - with the more powerful actions accessible, but not always visible. For this reason we may not implement the above suggestion.

Regardless, i’ll pass on the feedback to the rest of the team and we can consider it when discussing design and development ideas when moving forward.

If you’ve any further questions in the meantime let me know as i’d be happy to help!

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This sounds like a job for YAML front matter, which Panda renders quite nicely:

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Hi TedwardBear,

when you start with a note by adding tags you have to drag along these tags. I find that distracting. Furthermore a fix and always visible place (f.e. in panda: the header of the note) shows all the times which tags you have given to a note without scrolling. In matter of usability i believe allans idea is not that bad. It might be difficult to implement it in bear but in panda there is a good place.

Regards

Thank you for the additional feedback Chris, i’ll forward it onto the team :slight_smile:

Pertaining to my original post, with regards to my typical use cases, I don’t spam hashtags all over any given note. I tend to simply use a single hashtag for the purposes of organization in the sidebar.
I often find it difficult to decide where to place these tags…
The first line of a note?
At the end of the note (which forces me to scroll if I need to edit it, etc)?

Having a dedicated section for tagging notes - even if this can simply be hidden after creation - would suffice.

You are right, ideally it should be placed at the very beginning of the note. There are two points that speak up against the end of the note:

  1. The already mentioned effect that you have to drag around the tags while writing. In my opinion a tag should appear inside of the note JUST when it marks a part of the note (chapter, paragraph or a word inside of a sentence). IF the tag is note-related the beginning is somehow mandatory, at least in my logic. :smiley: (In regard to another element apart from tags that has to be dragged around i am going to open a new thread)

  2. The position at the bottom of a tag, which is related to the note as a whole, can easily be overcome just by writing after the tag

That is the question: at the beginning or at the end of note? The former ist not less simple and clean: on the contrary it avoids distraction by dragging around the tags or scrolling to the end of a note to edit them

Nah, that’s to geeky for me! :wink:
And it would require the overall usage of yaml for tagged notes. Generally i like the separation your suggestions offers but the most users just want to write tags without creating front matters. I am thinking currently of a header for a note where such stuff can be placed. But i do not believe that it will happen in bear. I still hope that panda will not only become a standalone editor but that its development will be continued with a slightly different approach than bear. To encourage the devs: I am willing to pay for 2 pieces of software, maybe other users also

I don’t think these are incompatible; it’d be great to have a separate Inspector window or a header region like you describe for editing note metadata (author, date, tags, etc) which could be saved to the note as YAML front matter. The YAML data wouldn’t even need to be shown in the main note window at all if it were accessible via a dedicated metadata window of some sort.

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I know what you mean now, but that has nothing to do with the topic here :wink:

Thank you for your additional comments and feedback :slightly_smiling_face: