EssenceText with linkable: true to optionally reference Attachment

[robinboening]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Creating an element for freely linking to any source works well by either using EssenceLink or EssenceText#settings[{:linkable: true}]. It works well until you want to display meta information in case an Alchemy::Attachment from the library is linked. Since only the URL is stored every other information is literally lost and there is no way to get to the file name, mime type or size.

Describe the solution you'd like

It would be nice to keep a reference to the Alchemy::Attachment in case of linking from an Alchemy::EssenceText, so I can still access its information.

[tvdeyen]

A EssenceFile should provide you with everything you need.

[robinboening]

🤦 Right! I got confused it. It does everything I need. Sorry for bothering.

Since we are talking about it... 😛 I think the EssenceLink editor UI could be improved. What I mean in particular:

Currently, the URL path to the file is shown but I think in many cases this is not great because the filename gets cut off due to limited space. I believe the editor usually doesn't care about the path, but the filename. The link_title is only visible in the overlay during adding/changing the link, but it might be important information for the editor if its set and should be visible right away.

I think the editor could benefit more if it shows

• the filename
• the file type
• the title if its set

What is your opinion on that?

[tvdeyen]

Linking a file is only one of the links you can put into a EssenceLink - and a very rare one, considering that you can use a EssenceFile instead.

Most of the features you miss are present on the EssenceFile editor.

The Link essence is mainly used for URLs, that's why the url is presented as the preview. I would not want to change that just for the rare use case of linking to a file.

[robinboening]

Yeah, thats right. It is an edge case. I haven't thought about it carefully enough, I suppose.

I am closing this now. Sorry, again.

[robinboening]

I am afraid there seem to be a misunderstanding. I got confused in a cascading way and didn't even notice 😆

@tvdeyen I'll try express again with other words. I hope this makes it better understandable.

A EssenceFile should provide you with everything you need.

I'd like the editor to freely choose from linking to an external website, internal page, or an internal file. This excludes the use of EssenceFile as it only supports file linking as its name suggests. But on the other side, it is the only essence actually storing a reference to the file.

As a conclusion, I can only choose between EssenceText with linkable: true and EssenceLink, but either way I won't be able to access file information in case the editor links a file.

Does that make sense?

[tvdeyen]

It does make sense.

And actually with the work I started with #2061 it should be possible to do that, because with the new normalized data structure it will be possible to have a belongs to association in every ingredient.

We could rethink the link ingredient to have an Attachment related or a Page etc.

Let's reopen this as a reminder

[robinboening]

Interesting! I'll need to have a look at #2061 in more depth to fully grasp the structure, but it sounds like a good idea.

[github-actions]

This issue has not seen any activity in a long time.
Please create a pull request with a fix or ask someone of the community if they can help.
This issue will be closed in 7 days if no further activity happens.

[github-actions]

This issue has not seen any activity in a long time.
If the issue described still exists in recent versions of Alchemy,
please open a new issue with. Thanks for reporting.