How to quickly insert links to another topic?

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Debra Graham
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 10:30 pm

How to quickly insert links to another topic?

Unread post by Debra Graham »

When I'm inserting a hyperlink to another topic, the Insert Hyperlink dialog presents a list of all the topics in the project. A random topic is already selected as the topic to be linked to--I call this the "default" topic. I am then forced to scroll through all of the topics to find the one I want to link to. Is there a way to change what the random default topic is--for example, to the topic I selected the last time I inserted a link?

The problem is that if you have hundreds of topics, it is annoying to have to keep scrolling through all of the topics to find the one I want. I wish that the default topic would be the one I previously chose because it is more likely to be appear near other related topics in the list.

Or is there some logic that is being used to select the default topic and I just don't see the logic?
Tim Frost
Posts: 319
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:45 pm

Re: How to quickly insert links to another topic?

Unread post by Tim Frost »

I recognize this problem, but over some years I have managed to almost completely eliminate it. However I realize the method may not work for everyone, especially if you have a lot of named topics already. In general I have no links of the form " ... see this topic". Instead I try to keep all topic names either a single or a descriptive name, such as "Widgets" or "Using Widgets". Then I can say in the distant text for example "... see the Using Widgets topic", or "this turns off the Widgets", and all I have to do is highlight the relevant word or words and press Control-L, and the hyperlink dialog should open at exactly the correct place, or close to it. This all saves me a huge amount of time, and hopefully makes things clearer for our readers also.

And of course if you do find that the list in the dialog has started elsewhere in some cases, and you know the topic name, you have only to type the first few letters of the name in the highlighted box to cause the list to scroll near to it.
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Martin Wynne
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Joined: Mon May 12, 2003 3:21 pm
Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: How to quickly insert links to another topic?

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Debra Graham wrote:Or is there some logic that is being used to select the default topic and I just don't see the logic?
Hi Debra,

It's not random. The selected topic is the nearest alphabetical ID match to the text of the link you are creating.

So if you write "see banana", and then highlight "banana", and create a link from it, the selected topic will be your bandstand_roof_repairs topic.

But the important point is that you can change the text of the link in the dialog Caption field.

So the way to link to your desired topic is to first write something having a close match to its topic ID.

You would write "more about green", highlight "green", create a link, choose the highlighted topic "green_cheese", and change the Caption field in the dialog from "green" to "the composition of the moon".

Click OK and your link then becomes "more about the composition of the moon" which links to your topic about green cheese.

This is a lot easier to do if you have a good memory of your topic IDs. Which is more likely if you always edit them yourself when creating a new topic, rather than relying on the auto-created ID. I always edit the ID because I insist on having all-lower-case IDs with underscores (long story, we have been here before).

cheers,

Martin.
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