If you add <$link to=“Tiddler A”/> in Tiddler B, and go to Tiddler A that has a viewtemplate showing backlinks to it, it will not show as a backlink. I consider this a serious deficiency. If you need to use a tooltip or CSS class for a link, you need to resort to a link widget. But any system of bi-directional links (for example, in Stroll, a viewtemplate showing a list of the backlinks), will be rendered incomplete because the links using the link widget will not be shown.
Why did I discover this? Because I was thinking about adding some CSS to distinguish types of backlinks, so that <$link to=“foo” class=“parent”/> and <$link to=“foo” class=“source”/> would render as a different font color than regular links. That way one could distinguish between different types of links - links to a tiddler considered a parent to the present tiddler, links to a tiddler that is a source, links to a project tiddler, etc.
I am not concerned so much for my use case, because there are easy workarounds. So please don’t address the use case in your replies. And I am not just thinking of a solution for Stroll, because Stroll is just one tool that uses backlinks. Again, ignore Stroll in your replies. The problem is wider than just Stroll.
Bi-directional links are an important feature of most note taking tools now. And linking is an important part of any wiki such as TiddlyWiki. So any defect that weakens backlinks is a problem for TiddlyWiki. My personal opinion is that the devs here should consider this deficiency, and find a way for all links to show up as links and backlinks in list widgets.
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
