Quoted Fields

[ChristinWhite]

Issue

I have a few fields that I'd like to be able to use some characters that syntactically significant and/or invalid for use in an unquoted YAML string such as !, :, [ and ]. This isn't a problem if I quote the string Prefix: "!Question" or Icon: ":obs_note_glyph:" in terms of Yaml but Metadata Menu doesn't seem to be able to handle this case.

There are a couple of different behaviors here that I'm seeing:

• Input !Test: Nothing saved to frontmatter, field remains <empty>.
• Input :Test: Value is saved but Metadata Menu treats it as <missing>.
• Input [Test]: Value is saved and Metadata Menu treats it as Test, valid but not actually what I wanted.
• Input "Test" or 'Test': Value is saved as Test.
• Input "!Test" or '!Test': Value is saved as !Test, Metadata Menu treats it as <empty>.
• Input ":Test" or ':Test': Value is saved as :Test, Metadata Menu treats it as <missing>.
• Input "[Test]" or '[Test]: Value is saved as [Test], Metadata Menu treats it as Test
• Input \!Test: Value is saved as \!Test, Metadata Menu treats it as \!Test usually but I've also seen !Test, I can't reproduce it however.
• Input \:Test: Value is saved as \:Test, Metadata Menu treats it as \:Test.
• Input \[Test\]: Metadata Menu doesn't let you save and converts the string to \:Test in the entry window.

Desired Solution

Ideally, Metadata Menu would know that an entered character needs to make the value quoted and do so. But accepting ' and " in the input field would be another reasonable and probably simpler solution.

Either way, Metadata Menu should be able to correctly read a quoted property.

Workaround

Not sure yet, my best idea is for fields that I need this kind of behavior I can edit the frontmatter manually or I could turn the input field into an object with string field and a type like List Callout or Icon Shortcode and add logic to Dataview to prepend an ! or wrap the value in : symbols respectively but that's a lot of complexity.

That said, this is not a high priority issue for me. My use cases are primarily presentational, not semantic.

Environment

Obsidian: 1.5.8 Metadata Menu: 0.8.3

[mdelobelle]

Hi can you test the latest beta release? https://github.com/mdelobelle/metadatamenu/releases/tag/0.8.4-beta-2 It should suit your need

[ChristinWhite]

Flawless, you rock!