Is it possible to not replace tags when renaming from dired?

[atanasj]

I have a number of notes that I have migrated from evernote and have reformatted the yaml header to be as close as possible to the denote format. However, I do not want to change the existing tags in the yaml. Can I skip over them without changing or manually selecting them from the minibuffer?

Ideally, I would want these tags to persist… Is this possible?

[protesilaos]

Hello @atanasj!

If I understand this correctly: you want the front matter to stay as-is and have the file name be renamed according to that data, right?

If so, check the command denote-rename-file-using-front-matter. Documented here: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote#h:3ab08ff4-81fa-4d24-99cb-79f97c13a373

[ Try it with a test file before operating on your actual data. ]

[atanasj]

Thanks for that, I did try that, but it did not work. I get the message:

denote-rename-file-using-front-matter: No front matter for title and/or keywords

The format of the yaml front matter looks like below:

---
date: 2017-07-25T05:38:27+0000
identifier: "20170725T053827"

title: "IASP - Special Interest Group: Suicidal Behaviour in Adolescents"
tags: ["Treatment"]
url: https://iasp.info/suicidal_behaviour_in_adolescents.php
source: web.clip

---

[protesilaos]

Yes, I forgot to mention that the file name must already have an identifier. It should, at the very least, be named 20170725T053827.md.

We will need to update the command to work on any file that ends with one of our supported extensions. Will look into it now.

[atanasj]

Okay… that worked after I renamed the file to that. I could probably fudge something on the command line to rename using the identifier, but if it is built in, all the better! Thanks for being so responsive!

[protesilaos]

Yes, it should be provided by Denote. There is no reason to keep the current restriction.

[atanasj]

That would be awesome!

[protesilaos]

@atanasj You are pulling directly from git, right? If so, please check the latest commit 1bdd0eb. I just tried it with sample.md and valid front matter and got the expected renamed name.

[atanasj]

@protesilaos, yes! That works as expected. 😄

[protesilaos]

Very well! Let's keep this open for a while longer. There may be some more refinements to be made. Will keep you posted.

[atanasj]

Okay… I seem to be having problems in marking and bulk renaming in dired.... I have ranger installed, so not sure if this is causing an issue... However, I disabled the ranger and it still did not work. The message I get is:

No marked files; aborting

Could it be something with my setup? I am also using evil, however the problem persists in emacs-mode within doomemacs.

[protesilaos]

Which command did you use? The error most likely is internal to Denote.

[atanasj]

I am using denote-dired-rename-marked-files-using-front-matter

[protesilaos]

I just pushed a change. It basically relaxes the condition of what counts as a writable file. Same idea with what I did for the single file renaming. Please try commit 46f123c.

[atanasj]

WORKING! Nice job! This solves the issue for me, so I'll gratefully close! 😄

[protesilaos]

Very well! Thanks again for your feedback!