GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 578283
Updating title of note breaks text/timestamp of all linked notes
Last modified: 2009-04-07 18:49:55 UTC
Please describe the problem: This has existed for a long time but I sort of ignored it. When you type a phrase in a note, a link is dynamically created to another note which has that phrase as a title. Example: (see 'how can I reproduce this problem') I have hundreds of notes that only make sense because I recall what I renamed each file, or I can deduct the meaning from the context. I take blame for naming some notes "a" or "where" - but I still consider this an issue. It's going to be complex to keep this feature as simple as possible but also fix the above issue. Having a special marker link text to notes would work. ie, [ASAP] or <ASAP> like what MediaWiki has. This solution sucks because it adds complexity. If I'm so lazy that I title a note "a" there's no way I'll add [ ] to link notes. And I do link notes willingly. At the very least, have a dialogue pop up and warn the user that there are N notes linking to this note via title, and should I proceed with renaming the title, all the links will be either (and these are options the user chooses): Renamed (current behavior), Unlinked, or Cancel (revert to the saved name, discard new name) Actually the VERY least is to have a warning display if the user puts a very short title, or the title matches a common dict word. Nothing intrusive. A notice that 'this may have unwanted consquences down the line'. (Knowing this now, I make my titles much more descriptive.) solution #3 should be implemented either way. It's what I would expect. There's another problem. When links inside notes are renamed (because the original note was renamed), each notes updated_at date gets updated. So down the link when I rename ASAP to Way Passed Due, the Joe Reminder note will be on top if I sort by Last Changed DESC. Solution is easy here. Steps to reproduce: If I have a note titled "ASAP" and then 2 weeks later I'm writing something like "I need to call joe ASAP monday," the word ASAP will become a link to the note titled ASAP If I leave these notes as-is and then go back to the original ASAP note 5 months later, and rename the title to "Way Passed Due" - then every single note that has "ASAP" in it will have that text renamed to "Way Passed Due." That Joe reminder note will now read "I need to call joe Way Passed Due monday" Actual results: 1) every single link in every note is renamed. Lots of notes means it causes the problem to become unresponsive (I manually killed it before I realized what was happening) 2) timestamp on all automatically updated notes also updated, so notes are now out of order Expected results: I would expect a dialogue asking me how to proceed or at least warning me of what will happen if I do proceed. Does this happen every time? yeh ! Other information:
Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find. Also, feel free to add your suggestions in a comment on the active bug. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 350990 ***