Custom template when appending content

[jrabensc]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Appended content is only separated by new lines. I have to add a new heading or a date manually.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to be able to define a template which is automatically entered when I append text. Like this:

... Date: 2020.05.03 Title: Text: ...

[TheodoreChu]

OK, so this feature is not very difficult to implement, but I'm worried that it will create some clutter or create some unfamiliar or inconvenient workflows. I think a template could be useful if you were appending a single body of text per date/title. I currently type the date / title for my notes/journal every day because it's not that much to type. Sometimes I think I'm done, so I press append, but I realize I need to add something more so I append again. I think having to clear the text box because the template loaded would be inconvenient sometimes, so I'm trying to think through the details of what this would look like 😃

This is how I'm interpreting your request: Right now, the text in the Append box clears after you click Append. Instead of clearing, you want to load the template. Is that right?

What should happen if you load the note and it's empty? I'm imagining two options:

• The template is automatically loaded. This is inconvenient if you want to append to the existing text without the template because you would have to clear the template
• The template is not automatically loaded. In order to load the template, you would have to push a button (such as the Append button). This is more flexible because you can easily add to existing text without the template

Would it be better to have a separate action (e.g., button) required to load the template so you can sometimes append to the text without using the template? I'm mostly concerned about the scenarios where someone wouldn't want to use the template for a particular append. They would have to clear the template in their textarea. But if we added another button somewhere, we could be adding too much clutter to the user interface

Do you have any thoughts on this? Are there use cases where large templates would be particularly useful?

[jrabensc]

I think a button to enter a template from a list would be best. The input box could be empty by default and after appending something. I think this would solve all the issues you mentioned here.

It would be quite useful when templates would be somehow dynamically, like getting the current date or day using a variable like this: "Today is %day%".