Provide an option to use shortened backlinks

[matthewmerendo]

I love showing my tasks in a single page with a query, and I love being able to click the backlink to find the originating context for the task. But backlinks are so long and unwieldy! It would be great if there were an option to use "shortened" backlinks -- instead of the entire page name, perhaps just a link arrow or something like that. So in our queries, instead of 'hide backlinks' we could do 'shorten backlinks' or something like that.

I thought about using CSS to zero out the font on backlinks and use a before pseudo-class to add an icon, but the link doesn't work then, which defeats the purpose.

Thanks!

[therden]

Hello @matthewmerendo .

Like you, in Tasks' query short mode, I wanted to see a link to the source file for each task, but I don't want to see the whole filepath and filename.

I accomplished this by editing the addBacklinks function in the file main.js file that is located within a hidden directory of your vault: .obsidian/plugins/obsidian-tasks-plugin

Just open that file and insert the line

        link.setText("src");

in between these two lines:

        link.setText(linkText);
        postInfo.append(')');

and save your changes.

As far as I can tell, the vault needs to be closed and re-opened for this edit to take effect.

You can replace "src" with something else, if you prefer.

Of course, this step will need to be repeated after subsequent updates to the Tasks plugin.

[therden]

@matthewmerendo: You can ignore my previous comment.

I saw just now that @schemar has released a new version of Tasks that supports a link emoji for backlinks in short mode.

See changelog at https://github.com/schemar/obsidian-tasks/releases/tag/1.5.0 for more information.

[matthewmerendo]

Hi, @therden. Thank you for the response!

I also came up with a solution, though I used custom CSS rather than code:

.tasks-backlink {
    font-size: 0;
}

.tasks-backlink a {
    font-size: 0;
}

.tasks-backlink a:before {
    content: "\e809";
    font-family: 'its';
    font-size: 1rem;
    margin-left: 8px;
}

The code way is probably better, but at least with the custom CSS, you won't lose it when you update the plugin!