Allow touchstones in comments/private comments field for a work

I'm trying to add information about suggested prerequisites and follow-ups to some works in my catalogue. It would be awesome if touchstones were enabled in a field like comments/private comments so that the titles could automatically turn into clickable links, but that doesn't seem possible at the moment.

Very good idea!
Bump

Oh, yes, this would be nice!

If you want this to be a permanent record, I suggest you go to one of your topics from a few years ago and see how many touchstones are broken. In one of mine from a few years ago (2016) Time and Again now points to Harry Potter and the half-blood prince. This was the seventh one in the list, and there were plenty more. URLs might work better, but they change as works are combined and separated. Even with links, you need to have both title and author listed to be sure you can find it again. (LT has lots of works with the title 'Time and Again'.)

Wouldn't this work with the work to work relationship section of the book? Without changing code for another section?

>5 gilroy: If the goal is to have the information showing in the member catalog, then using the work to work relationship section is not going to suffice. For one thing, that information is only available on the work pages. And while it is not in the main CK area, it is still work-level information, and editable by anyone who comes along.

Also, while the "suggested prerequisites and follow-ups" mentioned in the original post may have definite work to work relationships that could be enumerated in that section, it does not necessarily follow that this will be the case. They could be works that appear in a bibliography or "for further reading" section, but that do not share a material relationship beyond topical or thematic elements. I'm pretty sure the work to work relationship section isn't intended for textual linkages of that nature.

I like the idea of being able to use the touchstone system in comments (private or public), but it does seem like there would be a number of hurdles that would need to be overcome for it to work, and I would still want to have the author and title information listed in the comment in plain text, just in case something went squirrely with the touchstone link.

I agree with @shadrach_anki, I'm thinking of this as a very personal thing. For example, for the Epic of Gilgamesh I'm thinking of follow-ups as diverse as The Rocks Don't Lie: a geologist investigates Noah's flood and Contact by Carl Sagan. I don't think it would be appropriate to put this into the common database of work-to-work relationships.

Also +1 to the author and title being in plain-text, which is how I understand the touchstone system to work anyway. It would just be really nice to be able to just click into the next book without having to go via the search widget.

Without understanding the technical pros and cons, I would love to be able to use touchstones in Comments! It would really make going from one work to another much more efficient.

I suggest we allow Touchstones like behaviour in comments but using the LT Book ID. That would like to a specific work in your own catalogue.

For example "See chapter five in LTBookID".

I tried to show that within square brackets but of course they won't display here because, Touchstones...

>9 eqx: Book ID might work for books you have in your own catalogue. It is not sure to be stable if you use one from someone else's catalogue as people do delete things.

>9 eqx:
If wanting to link to a book or work record in comments/private comments, that can be done using HTML; in that example for a book it could be:
See chapter five in <a href="/work/book/LTBookID">name of book</a>.
– subject to the unstable warning in >10 MarthaJeanne: that they lead nowhere if the target book record gets deleted.

Or for a work:
See chapter five in <a href="/work/LTWorkID">name of work</a>.
– these also are not entirely stable. Although the site does have an autoredirect when a work ID gets lost due to combination, the redirecting can't take account of bad combinations that might happen over the years so a work HTML link from the past can end up going somewhere unexpected today.

>10 MarthaJeanne: Good point re: linking to others' books. I was of course referring more to linking to my own books, especially in private comments.

>11 Nevov: Thank you, I thought of using hyperlinks, however one downside is that the app doesn't render HTML markup at all.