unique reference by anchors

[ceg]

Idea: A feature to create items with a unique (per notebook) reference ID (number), that can then be used in other parts of the notebook. For example by entering an item appending a pound sign to the checkbox, like in this one:

 ()# @websitebugs Provide low res fallback for mobile browsers.

The function could add a tag that contains the required information (i.e. notebook=<name>, id=<number>) to the wiki source. And this tag could show up as a (non-editable) ID number in the checkbox line.

If such and item is imported with a page from another notebook, prepend a new tag to the existing tags in the source file, and show a small hint in the checkbox line that points to the other ID(s) (e.g. "imported from Other-notebook/<number>).

[Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg)]

Sounds like you describe a solution without telling us what the problem is
that you try to solve. Could you add an example of a use case for this
feature ?

-- Jaap

[ceg (ceg)]

Sure. I keep many tasks like bugfixes or things to do for my own projects as checkbox lists in zim.

I often have to shuffle those items around, to reflect the dependencies as they show up and to arrive at a somehow ordered (but still changing) list to work on. (Bug #839572 "moving list and checkbox items")

Then, I often refer from the description (text) of one work item to other ones, or point from a page dedicated to some problem/feature say to a specific item on the testing page. The item may already be completed (checked and not show up in the task list anymore) and I may even have changed the title/name in the meantime to improve precision. Here, a "unique reference IDs for items" could really help. I try to manually include item numbers, but moving the items around I it is quite hard to remember what the last number was that was assigned.

(A related wiki tag may have similarity to the html #anchors and may even get exported as such if saving to html.)

[Jaap Karssenberg (jaap.karssenberg)]

I wonder if this idea can be a special case of using anchors (see discussion
feature request anchors for status of that feature). I'm a bit reluctant to
have a third type of ID next to anchors and tags, so any re-use of those
features would really help.

Maybe it can be as easy as making links to anchors do a noteobok-wide lookup
when the anchor is not found in the current page and no page is specified in
the link ?

If you have that maybe the only step missing is an "insert anchor" that
automatically generates a random / unique ID.

-- Jaap

[ceg (ceg)]

Yes, there it is. Looks like the anchors could perfectly cover my usecase. Very good, thank you for pointing it out.