Are cross links possible ?

[573]

Will it be possible to reference other zettelkastens using the z: protocol ? I. e. using

[2011406](z://neuron.srid.ca)

instead of Creating and Editing zettels 2011406.

[srid]

In order to visually distinguish (in a more obvious manner) regular z: links from cross links, the later could probably look like this:

[neuron.srid.ca/2011406](z:)

And rendered in HTML using "neuron.srid.ca/2011406" (in place of the bare ID) as the link text.

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But I fail to see the value of adding this feature. What's the real-world use case for linking between Zettelkastens using z: links (instead of normal links)?

[573]

Nevermind, just thought about having a convenient way to refer to other peoples' zettelkastens.
Maybe that is out-of-scope of the zettelkasten idea anyways.

[srid]

I'm opening this, because I find myself wanting this feature lately. :-)

If I add a regular link to an external zettelkasten like this:

Users are delighted of it: <https://haskell.zettel.page/2016101.html>

It currently renders like this:

But it would be great if it rendered like:

[dpwiz]

I would suggest InterWiki-style links, where each server is responsible for its map.

This would allow for shorter and more stable cross-linking.
I.e. somebody migrates their ZK to a new domain and everybody else is left with either broken links or search-and-replace task on their hands.

In addition, this would allow some server-to-server functionality later. Maybe even Fediverse integration.

[dpwiz]

And the maps don't have to be http! One can even uplift their instance to IPFS/GNUnet namespaces, while keeping notes intact and content-addressable for everybody.

[srid]

@dpwiz Interesting ideas. Today I can imagine doing the following:

1. Add an "interMap" key to neuron.dhall where you specify a mapping of $siteName to $siteBaseUrl. Like InterWiki configuration.

2. In the Markdown, support a special linking syntax <haskell:2016101> which links to the 2016101 zettel on the external zettelkasten aliased with siteName=haskell and siteBaseUrl=haskell.zettel.page.

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Interestingly, the interMap syntax <haskell:...> is consistent with the <z:zettels...> of #59 (comment)

[srid]

Neuron NG has an interesting feature based on the union filesystem of Linux. Where you can "merge" multiple Zettelkastens to present an unified view (and it hot-reloads when any of the zk is updated).

This doedsn't address cross links per se, but links like [[Foo/Bar]] are supported as well, to help disambiguate things. Special cross links syntax might be one solution but since they wouldn't have editor support they may not be ideal.