[tomboy-list] brainstorming representing rich semantics in tomboy

[Eric Drechsel]

I have a personal information semantics based on GTD that I like to
represent in whichever system I am using (the actual semantics are
from mGSD, a nice PIM soln using TiddlyWiki), which can be expressed
using the following tiered tree:

Type
  * Context
    * Workbench
      * Swap laptop keyboard
      . . .
    * Travel time
    * Call
    . . .
  * Project
    *
  * Person
    * Mom
    . . .
  . . .

Tier 0 just contains the root, "Type" term. Tier 1 contains types of
terms, tier 2 terms, and Tier 3 items in the term. This basic
structure is very flexible and can be implemented in any system which
supports tags by tagging each node with its parents (multiple parents
are allowed).

The obvious naive way to implement these semantics within Tomboy is to
use links, but this approach has two problems, one of which is
fundamental:

 * There is no distinction between passing mention of a term (for
example the word "call" used in a paragraph) and usage of the term as
a tag (fundamental)
 * Terms don't show contained items. The "What links here?" submenu
isn't appropriate.

Here are some ideas I've had to enable rich tag semantics in tomboy:

 * Invent a syntax for adding tags to the body of a note and implement
support for the syntax in a plugin
  * Is there one already? I don't think so.
  * Put a character in front, like @Tag
    - Not a regular tomboy link
  * Put tags in the 2nd line, separated by pipes (by convention) like:

Note Title
Workbench | Mom | Next Action
Main body

    + Still tomboy links

I like the idea of using the 2nd line for tags, and then introducing a
plugin which updates a note's tags automatically.

Some questions I have about tags in Tomboy:

 * Are tags also notes, in Tomboy's data model, or are they just identifiers?
 * If they aren't notes, is there any issue with having a
correspondence between a tag and the note with the same identifier
(ie, do they have the same constraints on allowed characters, etc?)
 * Are there programmatic interfaces for getting all notes with a certain tag?

As for the other problem, that of displaying linked notes with a tag
note, would it be possible to have a plugin add a header or footer tag
notes displaying notes having that tag (but not notes which link)?

Sorry for the brain dump, just interested in working on enabling rich
semantics, but don't want to do it wrong, so wanting
guidance/criticisms/etc.

Best,
Eric Drechsel
http://wiki.pdxhub.org/people/eric