Populating your Note
Exploring Properties.
As I noted in the last post, in my Zettel note, I have five distinct sections to populate with “data". Key Ideas are somewhat explanatory. This section is where I write concisely about a singular thought or idea. I aim to keep this section to no more than 150 words (excluding direct quotes, which are usually highlighted in a callout block), but in reality, this never really happens. Properties is a more complex idea, and where I want to start, as this is the backbone of my vault.
Properties are the metadata section of a note and can be anything and any number. Properties or YAML (sometimes referred to as Yet Another Markup Language) is a robust feature in Obsidian that is customizable to your needs and the conditions of your notes. To begin, in a new note on line 1 you type three dashes with no spaces (Fig. 1). This will initiate the properties feature immediately, and can autofill your prompt as you type if you have used the prompt before (Fig. 2). Once you initiated the property, you have a few options from this point. First, you can type in the property identifier, e.g., ‘title,’ ‘date,’ ‘status,’ and many more, followed by the field. For example, in my vault, the property ‘title’ refers to the note itself, and the note title ‘Test Note’ is typed into the corresponding field (Fig. 3). You can alter the property’s ‘type’ to the following: 1) Text, 2) List 3) Number, 4) Checkbox, 5) Date, 6) Date & Time. I use mostly text-type properties, which the above ‘title’ property uses (Fig. 4).
If you are old-school and want to create the metadata via YAML, then you need to switch to source mode (Fig. 5). This gives a little more customization and coding applications. Properties can be as many or as few as you want. My Zettel notes contain thirteen properties (Fig. 6) while my Coin notes contain thirty-three properties (Fig. 7 & 8). These properties allow you to perform more complex queries within your vault using the Dataview plugin. Properties can be hidden or viewable in your notes. Unfortunately, they are not viewable in Obsidian Publish. More can be discussed about the application of properties for your notes. The point here is to provide a brief introduction, but a word of caution is not to get too carried away with adding properties. I use properties as an exercise to generate quality data. In other words, what identifiers are the most accessible and logical for each note? I won’t rehash old beefs with Discord communities; however, in essence, you are creating a mini queriable database. This idea makes me consider whether I should apply LOD concepts of triples to my notes. Hmmmmmm.
