[FEATURE]: Dedicated attachment manager

[wein-geist]

Describe the feature you'd like to see

After some months of usage, my list of attachments (mostly images) has grown quite a bit. and there are two main issues with that:

• I always have to open an existing note and act if I wanted to insert a file, for even just viewing my attachments.
• I have no possibility (to the best of my knowledge) to see, which attachments are in use (and by which note(s), which I can delete safely
• I dont get a warning when deleting an image. The note will just lose its attachment silently.

Wireframes or mockups (optional)

So what I suggest would be the implementation of an attachment manager with the following features:

• in its first iteration, it could essentially be identical to the floating window, when trying to insert an image, but with the addition of an indication if an image/attachment is used (cherry-on-top: showing/linking the respective note(s)).
  • maybe a page icon with a folded corner, and when hovering over it, you get a floating list of connected notes, clicking them leads you to it.
• Maybe a list view (toggle) would give more space to indicate the usage of an attachment, size, last changed or upload date, sortable by date/size/number of appearance in notes, multiselectable to mass delete unused, etc.

From a UI perspective, it could look something like this:

---

The attachment manager could be opened

• either with an icon next to the hashtag (see above mockup)
• or more discreet in the dropdown settings menu

Minor additional suggestions in that regard

1. Even after using Jotty between daily and several times a week, I every so often I am still confused about the naming "Images" vs "Files". Because mostly I want to attach an Image from my files. But images maybe rather means "Web embedded". Maybe "Web-Images" vs "Local" or "Attachment" to go along with the attachment manager.
2. In my oppinion, the icon of the web-links is wrong (and makes me search longer for it, when using those). It seems to be a paperclip, whereas it should be two chain links. And from the looks of it, the icons for "File" and "Link" are actually identical.

Checklist

• I have searched across other issues to make sure this has not been already suggested.
• I understand this request may be declined if it is not in line with the project's goals.

[fccview]

This is a great idea in theory but practically I have absolutely no clue how to achieve it.

Again, the issue is that there's no database, the only way I can see this working is to grep the attachment name across all notes on every page render, but that's very, very expensive computationally. The more attachments, the heavier it'll get and it won't scale well.

Without a database what you are suggesting is a little farfetched, sorry.

I'll keep this open and have a think, but it really may be unachievable, at least the way you are proposing it!

[wein-geist]

I understand (from a very non-dev user perspective).

But what about the pictures metadata? I imagine the following workflow:

• upload image, notes-ID in image metadata is empty.
• insert image into a note, note-ID is added to image metadata upon save
• insert image into other node, additional note-ID is appended to the metadata.
• image removed from note: remove note-ID from pictures metadata
• attachment manager: when displaying all images, the metadata is directly accessed to find the number of references a picture would have, and from which notes.

adding/removing images to/from note (especially when directly edited in Markdown) seems the most challenging to me. but maybe since you already use git to history track the notes, you could use it to track additions and removal of image references in a note and therefore update image metadata every time a note is saved? But I have no idea about performance penalties of something like that.

[fccview]

• insert image into a note, note-ID is added to image metadata upon save

Ehm...
that is actually genius. I'll have a play with this, you may have solved the problem overall lol