Card Depth (view child cards recursively)

I’m pretty happy with the current sort system. Especially I like that SN remembers the sorting options for specific card in Sidebar.

Снимок экрана 2020-07-01 в 12.35.28

But I still think one important option is missed: there is no way show the parent cards together with all their children recursively.

Here is an example. I’m collecting quotes from books that I have read:

Reading
  Author1
    Book1
      Quote1
      Quote2
      Quote3
    Book2
      Quote1
      Quote2
      Quote3
  Author2
    Book1
      Quote1
      Quote2
      Quote3
    Book2
      Quote1
      Quote2
      Quote3
etc

In current sorting implementation if I open Author1 card I’ll see only two cards: Book1 and Book2. But there are times when you need to look at all the containing cards recursively (in this example: including all the quotes cards, that relate to Author1).

So, I suggest to add a checkbox Show children cards near the sorting options to show/hide the children.

What do you think? Without this option you can not view all the related cards from the ‘bird view’.

2 Likes

Hi @Valery_Kondakoff, you have hit the nail on the head here. We have this feature planned, and internally are calling it “Depth” - potentially allowing you to configure how deep you would like the recursion to go.

This will be most likely be released alongside a “Graph View” for your note-cards.

4 Likes

Hi there,

I just came across this idea: Add a switch with the effect that when opening a card in the noteboard, not only its children are shown, but also its children’s children, its children’s children’s children, and so on. This one could (or even should) restrict to priority cards to limit complexity. That would be so neat!

Does anyone agree?

Regards, Robin

1 Like

Hi @freisatz,

Yes this is definitely great idea and is something we have thought about for a while and will be adding it in the near future, I mentioned it previously in our future plans.

So everything is in one place I am going to combine the responses into one topic called “Card Depth”

3 Likes

Thats great news! For me and my workflow, I think this may turn out to be a killer feature

I was not aware of this thread, thanks for merging.

1 Like

Currently, a Noteboard only loads one level of children for the selected notecard (i.e. the direct children, but not the grandchildren, or the great-grandchildren).

This limitation makes a Noteboard’s Graph view almost completely useless, because it only ever shows one level of the tree. This one-level limitation also hamstrings the power of filters (i.e. I always navigate to Home before using filters, because doing it in a Noteboard never gives me a useful result).

I’d suggest adding a selector to the Noteboard menu (i.e. the ⌄ button), which lets the user choose how many levels of children to load into the Noteboard. It should probably default to 1 (i.e. the same as now), but could also allow the user to load 2, 3, 4, or ∞ levels of children.

Suddenly Graph view and Filters are unleashed across the entire tree! :sunglasses:

3 Likes

Great feature request @JamesT. We’ve been wanting to support this for a while (and there is even an existing FR, which I will merge this with) – the challenge is performance and we’ve been prioritising other features. However as you’ve said with Graph View it will be very powerful! We will try to get this out soon.

3 Likes

Thanks, and apologies for not finding this previous request. I searched, but with the wrong keywords, so I didn’t find it.

1 Like

@Tobias you might have already seen this, but the graph view in Hypernotes has some ideas that might be worth stealing.

In particular, I like:

  • Their implementation of depth (they call it “focus”, which I don’t think is as good a name as “depth”, but their slider widget is interesting, as is the fade-out effect)
  • Card names are always visible, which makes the view significantly more useful as an overview
  • Direction arrows on the links
  • Spring-based attraction on the links to create natural clustering

Also, it’s clear that they have started a naming escalation war with you, so may I suggest a rebrand to “Super Ultra Mega Hyper Notes”. :wink:

Hi @JamesT, thanks for the suggestions.

All these features seem very useful. We’ve experimented with a few of these already on our own accord, although we haven’t included them yet as they can drastically reduce the performance with large graphs with thousands of nodes. Performance for us is a priority, but we will see what we can do.

Also we will never ‘steal’ or add features for the sake it / if other apps have them. Our roadmap is informed by all of you here on the Community and every time we add a new feature we will make sure that Supernotes becomes more functional but also more simple to use. There is only one Supernotes :wink:

Makes sense, and I agree with that prioritisation. As you know, Supernotes’ performance was one of the key attractions for me, and continues to be critically important.

I meant “steal” in the sense of “Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal”, rather than implying that you would just be lazy and take other people’s work without thinking about it. I hope that my choice of words didn’t offend.

You’ve proven that with each new release, and it’s what fills me with hope and excitement for the future of the product!

1 Like

Sounds like my desired view style will be covered by “card depth” but just to be sure… I’m mostly using “Broadsheet” on an ultrawide monitor. I love being able to see lots of different notes at once and having surprise connections jump out at me. I’d like whatever level I’m viewing to show all levels of descendants at once, and I’d just peel layers off the top of the hierarchy (rather than the bottom) by drilling deeper to focus.

1 Like