Can't delete Portals

Archive Bug Reports
#1

Hi there,

I have the following issue:

the are 2 distinct documents A and B. In B are multiple portals to A.
I don’t know how they got there, but now I can’t get rid of them. “Delete portal” doesn’t do anything.
As a side effect, rems from document B are now in my queue of document A.

The weird thing is, that these portals seem to pop up just randomly and the more I try to solve the problem, the more confusing it gets.
How can I debug this? Not sure if this is a bug or I’m simply doing something wrong.

Any help would be appreciated.

#2

I was having an issue with portal self populating as well where the delete would not work with the back space but would work with the ellipses. Sounds like your issue might be slightly different as yours doesn’t work with the ellipses so not sure if it is related or not

Either way check this thread out just in case

#3

Hey @Marcus_Weber, welcome to the community :slight_smile:

Portals are automatically created if you move a rem from one position to another using the /move command. Have you rearranged certain rems that way?

Have you tried selecting the portal and pressing on backspace?

1 Like
#4

lol, what are these ellipses that you are talking about :smiley:

#5

image

#6

@Karthikk
Oh I didn’t realize that. This could be the reason for all those new portals I thought of as randomly occuring. I certainly tried moving rems to solve this…

So how can I remove them now?

@Badjer
For me it’s the other way around. Backspace doesn’t do anything, while deleting with the dots is “working”. The portal just pops up again immediately.

I’ve made a .gif to show what is happening, maybe that makes it a bit more clear.

portal_issue
portal_issue1211×692 256 KB

#7

Ok, now I get what’s going on.
The portals that you @Marcus_Weber are referring to are automatic search portals created for rems. These are visible when you zoom into a rem (by clicking on the bullet point)

You will see that there are four types of automatic portals that might be seen depending on a few conditions.

The types are :

  1. Linked reference search portals - these contain a list of all references made to the specific Rem and are automatically created the first time you reference a specific rem/ when you turn a rem into a document
  2. Text reference search portals - Same as above, but contains unlinked “text matches” to the rem
  3. Tag search portals - lists the rems that have been tagged using a certain rem, created automatically the first time the rem has been used to tag
  4. Portal Search portals - this contains and tracks the number of times a rem has been pulled into a portal, in other documents

Once the criteria for their invoke has been met, they are automatically created and populated. Even if you close them they will keep reappearing, as they have content inside to show. This is one of the superpowers of a networked note-taking tool, the ability to automatically have backlinks to your text.

#8

hah, they are just three dots - a common form to denote a menu. Calling them ellipses could be a little misleading :stuck_out_tongue:

#9

Thanks for the information @Karthikk :grinning:

So this means, that I would have to remake all affected rems in order to get my queue clean again?

#10

Nope, these search portal won’t affect your queues, unless you turn them into normal portals. Just keep them as they are and you should be fine.

In case you have turned a lot of them into normal portals, you might wanna just close those portals (delete using menu or select and backspace) .

Nevertheless these portals should only affect document level queues, your global queue will never consider these portals. RemNote identifies them all as being the same cards and hence prevents duplication of efforts while practising.

#11

They are called Meatballs Menu, obviously. :upside_down_face:

image

1 Like
#12

@Karthikk you are fast :slight_smile:

I only use document level queues at the moment (exam prep). Is there any other tactic I could use in that case, since the search portals are occuring in my document queue?

1 Like
#13

Love this, thanks for sharing :smiley:

I used to love the hamburger menu style that was followed for the zoomed-in rems earlier :wink: do you remember those days?

#14

hmmm, can you confirm if these automatic search portals are occuring in your document queue and not the normal portals(after turning them manually?)

Also @hannesfrank could you confirm this behaviour? I am not a heavy SRS user, so I might be a little wrong here. Do the cards appearing in these backlink tracking search portals (at the bottom of the zoomed-in state) get added to document queues?

#15

Yes, I can confirm that this top level rem has two flashcards:

image
image711×657 39.9 KB

Actually 3 since one has 2 directions.

#16

Ok, so for example I just started my document queue for “stochastik” and the first question that appeared was this:

a
a1363×612 25.1 KB

“GdhM” questions should not be there. Going to the question’s rem doesn’t even have a portal in this particular case:

b
b1007×761 88.4 KB

c
c996×753 67.5 KB

The highest level portal seems to be at the bottom of the “Algebra” document.

I think I kind of messed up a lot here, lol :sweat_smile:

#17

I think I can help you sort it out soon if we can jump on an audio call in the discord server. Would you be comfortable with that? Here’s the link to that if you are interested.

#18

Looks like these cards show up in the document queue only if the search portals are open.

Automatic Search portals seem to have two different states :

  1. Open/close
  2. Expanded/collapsed

Open state is when we click on a search portal and it comes into the body of the rem and is expanded automatically as well.
Closed state is when we click on the X mark and it goes back to the bottom of the rem’s zoomed-in state.

Expanded/ collapsed works when the search portal is opened.

How do these states affect our workflows?

  1. Cards inside these search portals count towards the specific rem’s document queue or it’s parent’s document queues - if they are opened (doesn’t matter if they are expanded/collapsed)
  2. Filters recognise tags for opened search portals (again doesn’t matter if the search portal is expanded or not)

@Marcus_Weber so if you have unwanted cards showing up, because they are seen in those automatic search portals - you just have to keep those portals closed by clicking on the big X on the right end of the search portal.

#19

I’ve joined the server now, which channel should I go to?

#20

In the chat room category, you might find an audio and text channel called community-chatter. Drop in and I will be there in a minute