Is there a way to have the system always accept and create links?

[Bridger]

I have been building my realm here, and i'll be creating many links to various characters and locations, etc. However, every time I save it asks me of I want to create links to these other topics that it has found. The answer has always been yes. Is there a way to not have this window pop up every time I add a new link and save?

 

[Pollution]

I have been building my realm here, and i'll be creating many links to various characters and locations, etc. However, every time I save it asks me of I want to create links to these other topics that it has found. The answer has always been yes. Is there a way to not have this window pop up every time I add a new link and save?

No. And here's why.

Let's say you have an entry in your character section for mechanics about how you house rule a power or ability. I'll use the latest example from my own game (Hunter the Vigil). I created a section called Willpower, which describes the way characters can use Willpower to gain benefits or bonuses. We are used to playing oWoD, and nWoD does things differently. I put this there so that the players can easily access the info at a click.

Now, when creating an entry for an NPC, I put a note in there that the NPC cannot use Willpower to do X because of his template type (race). Or, I'll put Willpower: 5 to show, hey, this guy's got 5 willpower. OR, I'll put in that if the players do something specific in this scene, they'll gain back a spent Willpower point.

Now, EVERY time I use the word Willpower, RW wants to link it to my Willpower rules in Mechanics. That's bad, it's ugly, and it's not needed. Now, maybe if I'd chosen a better title in Mechanics than Willpower, it would be okay.So, here's another example.

I put in RotRL into RW. When putting in the cast members of the chronicle (NPCs) I broke them down into cast lists. Namely, Sandpoint. So I have a Sandpoint cast list. BUT, I also have a Sandpoint entry for location (city) with all the shops under that. Now, whenever I say Sandpoint in an entry, it wants to link. BUT, do I want to link to Sandpoint (cast list) or Sandpoint (City)? I need to tell it that.

Basically, you can't turn off the scan for links dialog without losing the ability to link. That dialog is what's doing the actual linking for you.

The tool is VERY good at picking up links, but you will still need to micomanage it a little bit to ensure that you're not getting links wrong or don't want a link in that spot.

So, what do you do? Just say Yes to all for each link and move on. Really, it only takes an extra 2 seconds every time you save a new entry. And if you add one after you've created it (i.e. gone back and edited it) it picks up the new ones.

 

[DaFranker]

So far, the automatic detection of links has been working fine for me. In every new article I find myself just spamming my enter key every time I save some new snippet.

That's just extra work for nothing.

I understand the reasons why it's querying the user every time like this, but to me it's just illogical to not at least have the option. Let me tell RW to automatically link everything that is unambiguous. Let me even tick three boxes and go through four confirmation screens to tell it to automatically pick its best guess when there are multiple possible links and link it anyway!

I have about two hundred thousand words of notes on my campaign here that I want to put in RW so I can leverage its capabilities, so I've got better things to do than manually sitting through a process that could very well be happening without me. Things like figuring out good, unambiguous topic names and good aliases so that the auto-linking gives me useful links that I will actually need and use during gaming sessions.

So if the only reasons there's no way to auto-accept-all-links are "it would be ugly" and "what if there are some ambiguous names?", then that's not being nice to your users, it's imposing a lowest common denominator on them. I'm a power user, I know the risks and about the 'ugliness'*, I can deal. Give me the autolink, in a sub-menu somewhere of my user options or even a separate config file somewhere in the program folder.

* I actually like the linkspam. Every single instance of the string "PCs" or "PC" in my my campaign db is linked to a page about the PCs. That's fine with me.

 

[DaFranker]

No. And here's why.
(...)
So, what do you do? Just say Yes to all for each link and move on. Really, it only takes an extra 2 seconds every time you save a new entry. And if you add one after you've created it (i.e. gone back and edited it) it picks up the new ones.

Those reasons are good reasons to have this by default. They are not good reasons to not have the option. Valid reasons to not have the option would include:

• It is provable that no human could ever possibly need this feature.
• The feature is too difficult or costly to implement relative to the benefits it would give to users.
• The developers are working on it, it's just not there yet.
• No users currently want this feature.

I can demonstrate the first and last point false by presenting myself as a counterexample. I need and want this feature, because entering my hundreds of thousands of words worth of notes into RealmWorks in order to leverage RW's capabilities on my notes/content is already painful enough, cumulatively this means I will lose over four hours¹ spamming keys for something that could very well be automated, but isn't because I'm not given the option.

I understand the "risks", I know about the "ugliness"². Now either the devs tell me that putting a setting to automatically put RW's best guess (I've found that decent consideration of aliases and topic names makes RW guess correctly what links I want >98% of the time) is simply too difficult or too low-demand to warrant attention, in which case I will have my doubts but shut up, or they actually go ahead and put this on the to-do list. Anything else is just noise to me. Respect the power users too, don't force everyone into the lowest common ground.


1. (0.5 second * number of detected links and/or 1 seconds * number of unique detected keywords to link (for link-all-instances) (I'd say 4 average to be safe, but so far I'm 90% confident it's much higher), * total number of saves that include new text content (at least 6 per topic) * number of topics I will have in total (approx 700, as an out-of-my-hat guesstimate), == 16800 seconds, or 4.66~ hours)

2. I love the linkspam. It's my favourite thing about working with RW. I literally have it link every single instance of "PCs", "PC", "Player", "Player Character", and many variants thereof to a topic reserved for the party, to give but one common example. That means in some cases >40% of the text is blue in some topics. That's fine with me. I have the tools to manage link overload if I need to.

 

[MaxSupernova]

I'd really like to have this feature, or at least the option to turn it on.

Only asking when it needs to clarify a choice, and even then, setting one of the choices as a default would be nice.

And saying that I need to choose a better name than "Willpower" for the Willpower section of my ruleset? Really? Come on.

70% of the stuff that gets asked for would "only take 2 seconds every time you save", but that 2 seconds adds up and is an annoyance.

I think tidying up how links are requested and approved would be a really nice improvement in UI.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

70% of the stuff that gets asked for would "only take 2 seconds every time you save", but that 2 seconds adds up and is an annoyance.

I think tidying up how links are requested and approved would be a really nice improvement in UI.

I have to 100% totally agree here. It physically gets me annoyed when answering of a message of "DO YOU REALLY WANT ME TO DO WHAT YOU JUST SAID TO DO"! Arrrrg!

I have no conflicts of duplicate names in my realm so having to be asked if its ok to link to the one UNIQUE topic/article every time I save is just annoying. Its a stupid pet peeve of mine which probaly is not that big of deal to many people which why I kept silent about it.

But it would be SO nice to stop being asked.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

I have to 100% totally agree here. It physically gets me annoyed when answering of a message of "DO YOU REALLY WANT ME TO DO WHAT YOU JUST SAID TO DO"! Arrrrg!

I have no conflicts of duplicate names in my realm so having to be asked if its ok to link to the one UNIQUE topic/article every time I save is just annoying. Its a stupid pet peeve of mine which probaly is not that big of deal to many people which why I kept silent about it.

But it would be SO nice to stop being asked.

+10
and your not the only one with that peeve.... every time it does it I have a "Microsoft Vista" flashback(NOT a GOOD THING)

Are you sure? Are you Sure You're Sure? Sorry you don't have admin rights even though you logged in with an unlimited admin profile.. So.... click here if your wish to proceed... AHHHHHAAAAAA!!!!!!

 

[rob]

For the record, this item is high on the priority list. It's not something that will be on the survey because it's simply going to get added. However, I feel it's NOT appropriate to just have Realm Works take its best guess.

A proper solution will allow topics (and aliases) to be flagged for intelligent handling by link detection. For example, certain names should be completely ignored (e.g. "Stairway", "Empty Room", or the "Sandpoint" cast topic used by @Pollution). Other names should be designated for preferential treatment, either to pick them by default or avoid them by default. Only after users have the ability to tailor things like this will the auto-linking become smart enough to truly "fire and forget".

There are many programs out there (especially those originating from Redmond) that think they know best and end up butchering things worse than not having them at all. I don't want Realm Works getting painted with that brush. It's a difficult tradeoff, but I'd rather force the user to be responsible than let the user get complacent while Realm Works does things in undesirable ways in multiple places for a protracted period. The former is an annoyance. The latter is grounds for major frustration, since now the user has no clue where all the errors lie and everything has to be scoured for the mistakes.

This is definitely on the radar and will be addressed in the reasonably near future. We just need to do it "right" as opposed to "quick and dirty".

Hope this makes sense!!

 

[MaxSupernova]

Super fantastic.

You have consistently shown that you have much better judgement in figuring out how to handle this sort of thing than I do...

I anxiously await your solution!

 

[Jaynay27]

A proper solution will allow topics (and aliases) to be flagged for intelligent handling by link detection. For example, certain names should be completely ignored (e.g. "Stairway", "Empty Room", or the "Sandpoint" cast topic used by @Pollution). Other names should be designated for preferential treatment, either to pick them by default or avoid them by default. Only after users have the ability to tailor things like this will the auto-linking become smart enough to truly "fire and forget"

Any chance we will be able to manually add simple names/topics to a 'blacklist' (that RW wont try to link to) for future reference.

Common words like 'World' and the examples above are straight forward, but some campaigns may have specific simple words you/we/I may wish to exclude also.

 

[Dark Lord Galen]

For the record, this item is high on the priority list. It's not something that will be on the survey because it's simply going to get added. However, I feel it's NOT appropriate to just have Realm Works take its best guess.

@ Rob >Glad to hear , & thanks for chiming in with the approach perspective too. Certainly makes LWD's position more transparent for its customer base

 

[DaFranker]

Any chance we will be able to manually add simple names/topics to a 'blacklist' (that RW wont try to link to) for future reference.

Common words like 'World' and the examples above are straight forward, but some campaigns may have specific simple words you/we/I may wish to exclude also.

I assume this is part of what rob meant by "doing it right" and giving the user fine-grained control. An unmodifiable blacklist would be waaaaay more pain that it's worth, considering the very common edge cases that could happen, e.g.:

The .hack// universe mainly happens in this virtual MMO called "The World". If there's a blacklist that cannot be changed that includes both of those words (it probably would!), then you have to manually add any and all links to this page...

I'm fine with this approach to the solution. +1. More work than what I was thinking about though, for sure

If I understand correctly, the current plan is to have something user-friendly but functionally equivalent to an Anchor tag that could be put anywhere and is automatically created for topic names and aliases?

 

[Bridger]

As others have mentioned, I'd love to have the option to auto-accept all links and then remove the ones I don't want as i go. That would be a lot less work than manually accepting every one, because 98% of the time I want the link there.