I have recently realize just how usefull aliases can be when used properly. For the longest time, I had always looked at them for their face value - assigning alternative names to notes in very rare cases. But I have found them to be so much more than that.
This was first realized when writing my UMAP note. The actual title is Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection, but that is not what it is commonly known by. I set the alias there for easy searching, but realized a few things.
- Linking to the umap note was so much easier. I could just type UMAP into the link context, and it would link it ALONG with changing the display name to be the alias.
- For notes with some off character titles that cover a very common subject, I noticed that this also allowed for the “suggested backlinking” or forward linking functionality to suggest links based on the alias name as well. This was huge, as the link suggester only worked on the actual title and not on the semantic meaning ( from something like smart conntections plugin ). This didnt fix the semanctic thing, but allowed the alias to be reduced to its shorter keyword alternative.