note and document

[icornelius]

I carry over a concern I raised in #18, regarding expansion of ZettelGeist from note-taking system to writing system. The problem is that, after the deprecation of note and migration of the contents of that field to document, there is not a field dedicated exclusively to language extracted from sources. The cordon sanitaire between my words and my source's words is compromised:

The move from yaml to markdown expands the versatility of ZettelGeist but will require careful thinking about the content of the document element. In my zetteln, the note element (now migrated to document) has always and only been a verbatim quotation from a source; the source is identified by Better BibTeX citation key and page reference in the cite element. My own writing has gone in the comment element. I think this is the right disposition for note-taking, but the current expansion of the scope of ZettelGeist changes things.

If I am using ZettelGeist to write modular components of an article, I want to use the document element for my own writing, since that is the markdown-formatted element. I'll then have some zetteln in which the document element is a quotation from a source and others in which the document element is my own prose. I'll need to keep those separate.

I think @gkthiruvathukal is right to deprecate note in the new version of ZettelGeist, but I'd like to see a dedicated field for quoted language. Perhaps the field could even be a child of cite, like so:

cite:
  bibkey:
  page:
  quote:

Users who, like me, have used the note field to record quoted language will then want to migrate the content of that field to quote, not document. This will free up the new markdown document element for own writing.

[gkthiruvathukal]

@icornelius Based on our e-mail discussion, we have decided that note will be retained for its original purpose. @dbdennis and I also think there is no good reason to deprecate note after all.

The Markdown payload will just be treated entirely as a new property, document, and exclusively for writing purposes. document should not be used in the YAML header, and note is still fully supported. I see no reason not to support both as ZettelGeist can pretty much be expanded at will to include new fields.

If you agree with me, I think I'm going to mark this as closed, pending your follow-up. I actually could be talked into adding an optional quote to the cite block. But since we plan to retain note, do you see this as a necessary addition?

[icornelius]

@gkthiruvathukal I support this solution. If note is retained I don't see quote as a necessary addition. Thanks!

[gkthiruvathukal]

Thanks, @icornelius! I will close this out then.