Import notes also from subfolders

[ghost]

In settings, there is a "Read notes from folder" option, which allows you to specify what folder does Notational Velocity read notes from.

It would be very useful for me that, by default, notational velocity also read notes from subfolders of the specified folder or had an option to allow this behaviour.

Thanks

[wtn]

Please explain a bit more about your situation. Why do you prefer to use a file hierarchy (subfolders)?

[Dilnu]

I think I understand the desire, here. I'd like to have this feature so that I could share a folder in dropbox with some of my notes if for instance I was working with someone on a project. Maybe this could also be integrated with Tags. I don't mean that all tags spawn a folder. I mean that you could in the tagging interface package a tag as a sub-folder. (This association is probably unwise and clunky)

[carlosefonseca]

I really like the simplicity of NV and I was trying a setup with folders to help organizing the "database" for access in more ways, like a better text editor on the iPhone and having all files in one folder isn't very good for that…

[Dilnu]

It's been a while since there's been any activity on this issue. I'd really like to use NV for collaborative projects but I am simply unable to do this if I have to share my entire database of notes for someone to have access to any of the notes in that database.

[scrod]

Aranittara,

If you'd like such a feature implemented specifically, please open a separate issue for it; what you're requesting differs from pmurillo's description.

[Dilnu]

I opened a separate issue about a specific use case for this feature. See issue 151

[justincampbell]

+1

I have a Notes folder in Dropbox with my personal to-do list, groceries, other random notes, etc. I have a Work folder with notes, to-do lists, other stuff for work. Other folders include Blog Posts, Ideas, and an Archive folder that I was moving notes into when they were no longer relevant.

Since NV only allows one tag per note, maybe a setting to use folders for tag names makes sense. If a note is tagged, it gets moved to that folder, otherwise it stays in the note root.

I don't use other NV features such as Simplenote sync or db storage, so I can't speak to the impact on those features.

[scrod]

Since NV only allows one tag per note, maybe a setting to use folders for tag names makes sense. If a note is tagged, it gets moved to that folder, otherwise it stays in the note root.

This is not the case; you can apply as many tags to a note as you want. Tags can be separated by whitespace, semi-colons (if not in this version, the next one), or commas.

Although I've definitely heard your suggestion before, and once I have a logical and consistent solution I'd certainly like to implement it.

[Dilnu]

I'd be willing to try implementing this but I'm fairly new to the language so any tips would be appreciated.

[sandrop]

I'd love to see this implemented as well

I use Elements on my iPhone/iPad and have multiple folders to separate notes from different projects

[fuzzy76]

This would make for a REALLY nice way to share notes with Dropbox sync. :) +1 and all that

Though using folders for tags sounds like a bad idea. What would happen if you add two tags to a note? Tags and categories is not the same thing, and Dropbox supports tagging as it is...

[SimonGreenhill]

Another use-case: I do a lot of my work in the terminal, and browse/edit notes from various other programs (emacs, textmate, whatever).

I'd love to be able to organise my notes into subdirectories as once you get more than a few hundred of notes they get difficult to handle. I currently do something like this (for my snippets of code in R):

R - some snippet.txt R - another snippet.txt ...etc

Collecting all those into one subdir ./R/ would really help organise things and tidy stuff up.

As for implementation, perhaps the / path-separator could be used. A note title /foo/something could be placed in ./foo/something.txt.

As an aside: this could help get rid of some of those requests for alternative notes directories for different projects as people could just give different projects a subdirectory).

[Dilnu]

Actually that's the best idea I've heard for how to do subfolders. That wouldn't break simplenote I don't think and it wouldn't have the one note in two folders issue of having tags based folders.

[andrew]

+1

I use plaintext on my iPhone and organise my notes into broad folders (it doesn't support tags) and it would be great if NV opened all notes in subfolders and tagged them with the folder name.

[Dilnu]

andrew, would the pathname method work for you in NV? If so i think it would be better because tagging doesn't translate well to folders even if folders can be translated to tags.

Scrod, where in the code would I be looking if I was going to implement the pathname method?

[andrew]

@Aranittara yeah I think so

[Dilnu]

Scrod if I could implement using / as a special character to allow for subfolders would that be something you'd be willing to integrate into the main source path?

If so, what file or files would I have to be changing in the source code?

[scrod]

Aranittara, you won't be able to implement this feature without rewriting a good percentage of the app. I'd suggest you not bother, especially as it's something I'd like to do eventually anyway.

[ghost]

The following question would settle for me whether subfolders is unimportant or imperative:

If I am to grow my reference library of text files (text files are too common a denominator for me to go back to db) into the comprehensive personal knowledge base it should be, won't the sheer number of files in a single directory start to weigh down Mac OS and Dropbox?

[scrod]

You're certainly not going to reach the limits of the file system. Likewise NV itself has very highly optimized routines for scanning directories for changes, so you shouldn't see any real-world difference vs keeping your files in a single database or even subdivided across a hypothetical hierarchy. As for Dropbox, this issues page is the wrong place for that question. You'll need to pose it yourself to their support team.

[Dilnu]

What portions of the app would need to be rewritten to implement reading from hierarchies?

[zamber]

:+1: This is what nvALT lacks right now for me too. We would use it in our company for note sharing. If we would get a starting point on what should be changed to implement I could commit some time to this and help out :).

[jrhorn424]

+1

[danott]

:+1: This would be great!

[jozala]

+1 Subfolders would be really useful to share part of the notes by Dropbox.

[daniele-orlando]

+1

[n8henrie]

Also hoping to drop SimpleNote for collaboration, Dropbox shared folders seems like an obvious alternative, but I won't do it until NV supports it (e.g. via reading notes from subfolders).