Delete #mention of entity and recover previous state of Rich Text

[B_Sp]

Hi again guys,

Along the lines of using highlighting in Rich Text to create entities that I just posted about:

Bi-directional auto entity creation for many-to-many

Hi Guys, I am enjoying the auto-relating of entities I create when highlighting text within a Rich Text field. However, I noticed this doesn’t work if the related field is a many-to-many. I’ve seen a few instances around Fibery where many-to-many relations don’t have the same functionality as many-to-one, such as with Lookups. In general I’d love to see the same ability to show relations, expose fields in-entity (another limitation is when you have a many-to-one, the “parent” doesn’t have cu…

I’d also like to flag up another issue that comes up from time to time for me: When an entity is created inline this way, sometimes it’s useful to remove the mention. In some other apps like ClickUp you can simply click “x” and the mention is removed. In Fibery however, the only way I know how to do this is actually delete the entity, which then leads to an odd remnant text.

So I wanted to suggest could you add the ability to simply remove the mention/reference if it’s not needed any more?

Many thanks guys, and sorry for all the requests today !

[Pawel_Badenski]

Personally I think that the idea for “Create Entity” to convert text to mention is extremely problematic. The reason I find it problematic is because of the consequences to preserving document content and information it contains. Mentions always display entity name - changing that name will change the text being displayed, deleting entity will result in a “not found” block, etc. I think “Create Entity” mixes up two concerns text manipulation and mention references. In comparison:

• “Link Entity” is very clear - text content is left intact, entity reference is overlayed via pop up
• “#” command is very clear - there’s no text content, entity mention is explicitly requested
• convert link into mention is clear enough - link is a form of reference anyway, converting it into mention just modifies the rendering of it

In terms of specific examples how “Create Entity” mixing up of text manipulation and mention references can cause problems:

• capture of live chat with a user - the content should never change and certainly shouldn’t be lost (ie when entity is deleted)
• meeting notes
• phone call transcript

I specifically inform everyone on my team to avoid using “Create Entity” for the risk of misunderstanding what it does and further consequences to the document’s original content.

I believe “Create Entity” should work similar to “Link Entity” - create an entity and then create a reference block (not sure if I’m using the right vocabulary) instead of a mention.

There could be a separate “Convert to Mention” action - similar when you convert link to mention. This would then explicitly be a destructive operation of losing textual content and instead converting that textual content into an entity mention.

[Polina_Zenevich]

Hi!
In fact, we have a Text history (although we didn’t have one when this topic was created)

I do agree with some of your concerns

• capture of live chat with a user - the content should never change and certainly shouldn’t be lost (ie when entity is deleted)

Noted!

Not sure that I got the problem with Meeting Notes and Phone call transcripts. Is it about the “Create entity” action, or more about access management - to limit the number of users, that can change the text?

[cannibalflea]

I have to say I actually really like the how in-line entities are created in Fibery. There are several advantages from my perspective:

Quick Operation to Create & Link to New Entities
You can create new entities and link to them in one operation (this is one main reason for using it). There isn’t a great advantage when linking to existing entities.

Reference Context
When you use the # or create entity approach, the reference in the referenced entity includes at least the entire paragraph. So if I had the following text in one meeting note:

The explicit inline reference provides a better context than the other than the “linked reference”

Of course, the user can highlight longer sections of text, but that means more highlighting and disruption to flow. I think this can be better resolved once there is a way to show the context of the reference a bit more clearly (as described in Show in Reference Highlights Referenced Entity more clearly and In Highlights, “Roam-like” inclusion of Hierarchy of Text Blocks)

Issues

However, I think the concerns here are quite valid:

Deleted entities
I had raised the issue of loss of context when entities are deleted here:

Replace Inline Reference of Deleted Entities with Plain Text

Along the line of discussions regarding replacing all references to an entity , conversion & deletion of entities, and search & replace, I was also wondering if it would be possible to replace in-line references to a deleted entity in rich text areas with the actual entity name prior to removing it completely. For example, if you have an inline reference to a particular project in notes: [image] If that entity is deleted, you are left with very little information about what it was: [image] I…

I do feel this is actually a serious issue because it is easy to miss and can become a problem many months later. I think that a search and replace operation should always be done when there references attached to an entity.

Renamed entities
I think the more interesting case is when an entity is created and named in context, but later on the name is changed because it doesn’t make sense in other contexts (like in a list view of other similar items). I think there is again a loss of context in the original text that would be detrimental to future reviews. I think this is where the suggestion to retain the original text separately really shows its value.

[B_Sp]

@cannibalflea

I think this can be better resolved once there is a way to show the context of the reference a bit more clearly (as described in Show in Reference Highlights Referenced Entity more clearly and In Highlights, “Roam-like” inclusion of Hierarchy of Text Blocks)

Thanks for the good commentary here, and pointing out the issue I quoted above. Right now, the only way I solve is to always write new paragraphs or bullets using a “soft” return of “ctrl” + “return” so there is no true line break recognized by Fibery. So this feature you highlighted would really be helpful, but it appears reading posts by the Fibery team that it’s coming relatively soon, I can’t wait for that!

[Pawel_Badenski]

@Polina_Zenevich

Not sure that I got the problem with Meeting Notes and Phone call transcripts. Is it about the “Create entity” action, or more about access management - to limit the number of users, that can change the text?

It’s about “Create entity” action - there’s not much deeper meaning to different items on this list, I was just enumerating examples

@Polina_Zenevich

In fact, we have a Text history (although we didn’t have one when this topic was created)

That’s true - if we rely on history however it really needs to be bulletproof. At the moment I’m aware of at least one outstanding bug where upon Creating Entity text history wouldn’t be properly preserved and consequently permanently lost.