Pinned is obviously useful to keep a few rem as entry points or top of mind, but what are explicit Finished and Draft for? Surely they could be replicated in a matter of minutes by creating and pinning “normal” Rem (ideally there would be a way to create a kanban board, but I guess there is still some work to be done to allow even simple tables). Finished could be useful if it automatically “deadened” rem by removing them from full text search.
That’s an interesting idea to “deadend” Rem from search. I see how that can be helpful so great suggestion
As for the drafts, way I see it is kind of a dump of all documents that haven’t yet been assigned a parent folder. But since I make so many documents, it gets pretty messy, so personally I don’t really use it either and only use the pinned.
I also want to mention you can always change the name from Draft or Finished to anything else by using searching “document sidebar” and changing the name of the portal
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I’m not too sure how the the tickboxes in the knowledge-base view interact with the sidebar. Perhaps once full queries are in there will be a reason to customise the sidebar portals, but it’s basically a single tag search at the moment, isn’t it?
Thanks, @UMNiK for your response to my post at What is the difference between Draft and Final?. I’m continuing the discussion here as you suggested.
Here is how I would like to use the sidebar (or already do to a degree).
Pinned. Dispense with “document” designation, instead call it “pinned” to use it as a way to keep high priority or current project rem easily accessible/visible in the sidebar. I’m currently doing this in “draft” but I like @mattygrov’s idea of using “pinned” this way, so I think I’ll move things over. It seems to me a challenge in RemNote is keeping down the clutter (esp. in sidebar and searches), and this is an easy way to do so, making the sidebar useful for navigating.
This last point is very important to me and a major reason I like RemNote: it gives me several ways to access data. First, I can use spaced-repetition cards to get it in my head (the best place to access). Beyond that, I can use (1) general search, (2) my rem hierarchy – i.e. sometimes I know which section something is in even when I can’t remember a search term, (3) by date/calendar, as sometimes I remember when I took a note, (4) via backlinks/tags, which gives additional contextual access beyond a simple hierarchy. My old knowledgebase (a Google sites wiki) got me #1 and #2, RemNote gives me much more.
Draft. It still bothers me that there is no easy way for me to locate (and further categorize or just delete) top level non-document rem that have no other context. These tend to proliferate, often accidentally. It would be nice if “draft” had a powerup search that collected them all at the bottom.
Finished. I could see a use for something like “archived,” i.e. rem that I don’t really need to work with much anymore. Perhaps cards that I’m no longer keeping in the queue could be automatically archived. It would be nice if these were automatically hidden and un-pinned, as well, once archived. However, I would rather this be a powerup tag than a separate section to which rem must be dragged. I might like to “unarchive” them at some point, and would want to retained their place in my rem folder hierarchy.
Customized Commands I would love to be able to “pin” often used commands from the / menu or hotkeys into the sidebar with a hierarchy I could arrange myself. There are just too many hotkeys for me to remember conveniently in RemNote. I’d like to see the / menu access this command hierarchy in the sidebar. I remember years ago studies showed that the old Lotus 1-2-3 slash menus were much more efficient then the upstart Microsoft Excel’s mouse gui. Perhaps /s could access the sidebar commands, and one could touch-type into them.
Finally, I think RemNote should dispense with document “source” and add editable hyperlink capability via a powerup tag instead (as with italicizing or highlighting). “Document/source” conflates two separate functions: display in sidebar and linking or tagging. The reason I want to link a source is because I want to follow the link, but the way RemNote currently works I cannot follow the link until I first open the document in its own window. Further, I want to be able to de-clutter my sidebar without losing my source links.
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This should be covered by the Stub tag, which gets automatically added to any rem that was created by reference as top level and has no other connections.
You can always view the hotkeys or remap them from the ? in the bottom left corner. Definitely would be nice to have all functions available from the / menu though.
I’m wondering the same thing…
I’d prefer to decide myself how I organize and keep track of my documents/Rem status.
I understand the need to have a Draft section, to be sure new documents don’t get lost.
However I’d like to be able to organize my documents on the “root” of the sidebar, instead of inside the Pinned section. I know I can rename “Pinned” to something else. But that wouldn’t address the main issue, which is that I don’t really need a “section” there (even if I did rename it, it would be to something like “Documents”, but then it seems redundant since there is the Documents button right on top).
I’d also expect to be able to create folders wherever I want in the sidebar. Right now it always goes into Draft. I end up always needing to move it into Pinned.
In general, it would be best to be able add whatever I want to that sidebar too, just by adding children Rems to the Document Sidebar power-up Rem (instead of just Search-based sections). This includes Searches, individual plain text Rems, dividers etc.
Just some thoughts. To be honest I’m still not fully sure how to organize my stuff there. It’s not a big problem, since RemNote is quite flexible. Still, when using an app I always prefer to use its features as they are intended. The sidebar (and document status) is still a bit confusing to me.
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The option to power-up statuses with little functionalities like “suspend all Rem from queue” could allow the sidebar to reach full potential within RemNote. For example, ‘Finished’ could be customised to suspend your cards for students who study in modular, non-consecutive classes. Or a flashcard enthusiast could make ‘Pinned’ suspend their cards as they experiment reformulating their notes. Different users, different needs and mental models, a more flexible sidebar.
Inspired by: Discord
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You can already do this, just not in a search portal (which is all the current sidebar can be populated by) nor from the document context menu. Just create a new top level rem, e.g. “Limbo”, make sure it is a document of any status, apply the “##Suspend Cards” powerup and drag anything you want suspended under it in the sidebar.
See also hannes’ excellent Guide: How To Build A Sidebar to see how to create and customise a better sidebar (or top or bottom bar if you have panes enabled).
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