Namespaces / hierarchy: shortcut to parent?

Questions & Help
1

Logseq newbie here. I am migrating some longform notes from joplin, and created a namespace structure for some of them, just two levels deep max (e.g. Desktop > Keyboard Shortcuts; Desktop > Scripting).
When a child page is opened, is there a keyboard shortcut to navigate to the Parent page in the hierarchy?

I went through the documented shortcuts (Navigation section) and couldn’t find one.
This would be convenient as the Parent page acts as an ‘index’ to the hierarchy

2

No such shortcut. Avoid forming hierarchies with namespaces (namespaces are for disambiguation within a graph), prefer forming them with indented linked references. When inside a child, would Shift + click the backlink to the parent, to show the index at the right sidebar. Also consider this approach.

3

Hi, I have a question about this.

Currently I am structuring my ‘Projects’ as such, using Namespaces:
Projects / Project X
Projects / Project Y

And in some cases, for very large projects with several sub-projects, I go another layer deep (trying to keep it as minimal as possible):

Projects / MajorProject / SubprojectX
Projects / MajorProject / SubprojectY

This seems to ‘work fine’ with the exception that, if for example I want to get all TODOs for ‘MajorProject’ it won’t recursively pull them from the subprojects. Currently this is not a huge issue for me, as my main use case for having a hierarchy at all is to easily get a bird’s eye view of my entire Projects list all in one place; but I believe this is expected behavior.

Also, for the handful of projects that I’ve completed since doing things this way, I just rename the first component of the Namespace to ‘Archive’ and this effectively moves it under my Archive Namespace, with the otherwise same structure. (Idea taken from Dario daSilva.)

So for example, ‘Projects / MajorProject / SubprojectX’ becomes ‘Archive / MajorProject / SubprojectX’.

I think what you’re suggesting is instead doing:

Projects

  • Project X
  • Project Y
  • MajorProject
    • SubprojectX
    • SubprojectY

Do I understand that correctly?

If so, what are the obvious ‘pros’ of that approach, aside from being able to more easily recurse for references? I guess archiving of completed projects could be done thru cut + paste, which actually seems more clunky than the Namespace rename, but there are probably a bunch of other angles I’m not seeing.

4

So by “indented linked references” you mean something like this (using OP example)?

- [[Desktop]]
    - [[Scripting]]

This wouldn’t be equivalent to the features a namespace has, right? Searching for [[Desktop]] will give me above parent block. But I would need to figure out manually, [[Scripting]] is a child page (by looking at the result) and start another search. [[Desktop]] would automatically provide all results for [[Desktop/Scripting]], now being a namespace.

5

Yes, it is as simple as that.

Indeed they are not equivalent, one is a pain. I’d rather have a second look at what is inside [[Desktop]], than having to type it every single time I refer to any of its descendants.

Internally this uses a query, which can be used externally as well, providing higher flexibility, although at the cost of additional effort.

6

Welcome. You correctly understood the indentation approach.

  • If you simply want something that simply works well-enough for simple cases, there is not much difference (though read @kitsu_bash’s post).
    • I would still prefer the indentation approach, for being compatible with every hierarchical system out there, if I ever need to use one.
  • However, hierarchies are a weak system for things that are not strictly hierarchical.
    • It is possible to create recursive queries, but not simple.
    • Imagine:
      • a subproject that belongs to more than one major project
      • pages that participate to multiple independent hierarchies, beyond the belong-sub relationship
    • With namespaces, you are not even allowed to imagine, as you are stuck in a fixed structure.
    • With indentation, you can copy the subproject under multiple parents, because it is a mere link.
    • Better tools inspire the imagination for more powerful things, that better represent both our mind and reality.