So, I would like to propose the term “bullet-pointer” to replace what I mean by outliner. By bullet-pointer I mean apps like Dynalist, Workflowy and of course Roam Research. In these apps, you can only input text (at the basic level) as either two things:
- Title
- Bullet points (with collapsable nesting obviously).
Loosely speaking, virtually everything is, or is part of, a bullet point. This is perhaps, a more note-taking style/convention/philosophy than anything else. To understand more, I think it is straightforward to replicate this behaviour in org. Essentially, if I wanted to use org as a bullet-pointer (as I have defined it above): everything I write should be in a (sub)headline. In other words my org file would look something like this:
* Point one
** Nested Point one
* Point two
** Nested Point two_a
** Nested Point two_b
* Point three
But I should never do this:
* Point one
Some text, or the other.....
** Nested Point one
* Point two
** Nested Point two_a
** Nested Point two_b
* Point three
Importantly note that I am not using the outline nature of subheadings, instead I am treating them as bullet points. I am not using the headings to outline a manuscript for example, but as nested bullet points. Now, I know there are bullet points in org but doing the above means I can exploit some functionality of org. Indeed, functions like org-refile work at the heading level (under the said note-taking style, I would call it at the “bullet-point level”). The confusion of calling this style an outliner should now be clear.
In a bullet-pointer, linking, back-link context, and transclusions should naturally be at the bullet-point level (read heading-level for org users). I think this is somewhat obvious. Now, I would argue that being a bullet-pointer is a core identity of Roam Research. It has profound effects to approaches to current and future features in Roam. It’s not just back links that makes Roam Research what it is.
I think that org-roam should have the option to allow for bullet-pointer note taking. At the very minimum, and I think most people agree on and would like to see this: backlinks context should include nested elements where the link is part of a heading. I think this would benefit even non-bullet-point type note-taking styles. Until then, I would argue that org-roam would be better described as org-backlinks. Again, not undermining the importance of backlinks and the work done already I am very excited to see where this goes.
This then leads to the arguement, should relevant future features (such as transclusions, which I admit is more general than OR) also be done at the heading level where appropriate/possible?