We have all these problems and concerns because TW breaks the fundamental principles of database design. Database design principles go back at least to the 1970s, and researcher E.F. Codd.
In TW, the same field is used for title and for tiddler identification. It’s also used for “hidden” setting and for “tree” structures. This is fundamentally a flaw. It’s great that we’re able to work around it, but it’s still a flaw.
Oh well, all software has flaws. I think it might be a computer extension of the Godel theorem.
If tiddlers and tiddler links were based on an internal id, renaming wouldn’t be so problematic. You could rename a title anything you wanted without causing problems. It’s likely almost all the other info systems you can think of with more than a thousand users use an internal id for tracking notes.
It’s great that we have the Relink plugin, but I don’t like having to depend on a 3rd party tool for an essential service.
Anyway, another way around the renaming problem is to not rename tiddlers. Give tiddlers the best informative title you can. Then use uni-link and aliases to create your links.
Another approach is to give the best title you can, rarely change titles, and then use tags as your main organizational tool rather than links. When you change titles, tags are automatically updated.
You could, in a worse case scenario, assign a unique tag to every tiddler that you want to link to. Then when you link use a {{{}}} filter transclusion to link to that tiddler by tag id.