I just noticed something else ā¦ unlike all other searches in dynalist, the backlink search is āliveā i.e. if you have one instance of dynalist sat in an item, and then in another instance you create a link to the first item, that link appears in the backlinks section of the first without having to refresh or anything ā¦ nice!
2 Likes
I have a little trouble seeing the improvement over tags. Could you perhaps expand on why this is better than tagging?
I am not sure I would use this instead of tags, however what @Stephen_Dewitt described is exactly how tag systems are implemented in Roam.
1 Like
@Erica I only see the backlinks preference in the web app. Itās not shown in preferences on iPadOS, iOS, or macOS apps. Am I missing something?
Also, this section (āThis item is referenced inā¦ā) shown in the blog does not appear in Dynalist web version in Safari 13 on macOS, when backlinks is activated. No content blockers are on. No custom CSS configured in settings.
No does this appear in Edge on Windows 10. FWIW, doesnāt work anywhere for me.
Mmm the benefit for linking tasks to projects is probably quite obvious, but in terms of my GTD contexts, the functionality is the same as tags I agree, just a slightly different UI / experience so very much personal preference. I just donāt get on very well with searches as a main part of my system and psychologically really prefer having a āplaceā to go, plus a list of those places which act as reminders of what I should be checking - plus the minor advantage of being able to click the link to go to that place (and bounce around your lists by chaining through links) which you canāt do with tags (you have to run a search to see the equivalent list of items)
1 Like
Shameless plug: Quick Dynalist had this for a long time 
But nice to see this in the web now
5 Likes
Great! We need to take one more small step - unlinked mentions
1 Like
That doesnāt work for Dynalist, unfortunately. Dynalist tracks items and documents by id, not title. Consequently you can have documents of duplicate names in Dynalist but not Roam Research.
Would hate such setup getting buried under an announcement post. Maybe you can share it in Share & Showcase when you have time? 
It will be available on the desktop app and Android app very soon (in fact we just did some fixes for backlinks, so that the desktop apps donāt need to be updated twice). iOS will come later ā Apple has rolled out some new policies that we need to comply to, sighā¦ 
1 Like
Good point, will be fixed in the next web release.
Will be fixed in the next web release.
1 Like
Aww thanks yea maybe once Iāve lived with and refined it for a while
Iām an Android and Linux desktop user so thatās great news. Hopefully youāll be able to roll out to iOS soon.
@erica Great stuff. thanks for making this move. Not sure it will save me dynalist life, but it breathes hope into the picture.
Just love your editor. Did anyone mention open-sourcing it? :
:
1 Like
The back linking is very nice. I stumbled across it by accident the other day. Like, wait a minute, we can do this?
I would particularly like to use it to connect tasks to projects since I donāt do that now. I have a page of say @Computer tasks and then a separate Projects list. Just how I opted to set GTD up.
So, when I link a task to the related project, the back link in the task takes me to the project in the project list. But it then doesn link back to the taks in the project note. Am I missing something?
Peter
Thatās a good point. I like Dynalistās flexibility in allowing multiple nodes with the same name.
Perhaps one way to implement unlinked mentions would be to display the list all nodes that contain the full text of the zoomed-in node. This would accomplish the purpose of unlinked mentions (what nodes mention this one?) without needing to force nodes to have unique names.
A problem with your approach, at least in dynalist, is that you cannot build intersection filters (and).
If you use tags, you can create a filter for item that are both #athome #highpriority
How do you do that with pages?
Great update. In terms of backlinks, it would be nice to view more characters in the breadcrumb below each item returned as a reference. The nodes arenāt limited by character length, so why breadcrumbs?
This would be an incentive for users to add more notes under more folders, rather than a flat system which may run into performance issues.
Back-link feedback: It would also be nice if the āNo back-links foundā would not appear in the print version of the document. Tbh I will also probably never want to print the back-links anyways even if there are any.
1 Like