The Archive
Created from: Daily Notes Don’t Feel So Important Anymore 202207051407
What makes The Archive special?
I realized that one of the things that I love about using the Archive is that navigation between files (literally as simple as going to the next and previous files in a list) is possible through a non-arrow keyboard shortcut. I don’t know why this is so difficult for other apps to implement, but it has a huge contribution to how smooth the note-taking experience feels. It makes it so you feel like you’re flying through your notes. This is also something that Nota 202207051532 provides, although it’s a little less intuitive (you need to jump out to the notes page first using cmd + shift + E, and it’s a different shortcut while you’re navigating through searches — it’s control + n/p). However, it mostly works just as well. This then raises the question of what’s unique about The Archive (relative to Nota)? 202207051535
#update 12-27-22: I just realized that this was nvALT’s killer feature! The Archive is basically a souped-up, Zettelkasten-focused nvALT.
Things I like about it
The fact that anything in the double brackets automatically gets searched (instead of just looking for a direct file link) works so well with the “links to nowhere” / “breadcrumbs for future links” model espoused by Taylor Hadden in his Links to Nowhere. An example: 202211232312
Feature requests
- I wish that there was a “Jump to Previous Link” menu item just as there is a “Jump to Next Link” one
- It’s a little hard to tell when the focus is on the search bar, the notes sidebar on the left, or in editing mode. This is especially apparent when you click on a link, although I just realized that when you click on a link, the text in the search bar is highlighted, meaning that focus is definitely in the search bar.
- The Archive doesn’t work very well when links are super long and you have a bunch of them together in the same place. I wish there was a way to hide links, although I doubt the developer will ever do this since this seems to be against the general design philosophy of the product.
- Funnily enough, I think the name is pretty terrible. It’s not very memorable for a lot of people and it’s difficult to grep for (needs the quotes).
uid: 202207051453 tags: #notetaking