The basic rules are roughly the same as for absolute paths:
- the relative path always begins with a dot-dot-slash (../)
- navigating upwards, a dot-dot-slash is used for every level of outline traversed.
- navigating downward use the name of the notes working down from that point divided with a forward slash between each nested container's name.
- the path does not end in a slash character.
- the path may contain spaces but does not needed to be enclosed in single quotes, although for consistency it may be a good idea to quote. Since v4.6, syntax has been moving towards explicit quoting of all strings.
- any path containing forward slashes must be enclosed in quotes.
For the following example assume the currently selected note is 'Child B' within 'Second Root'.
$Created(../Child A)
$Created(../../First Root/Child A)
$Created("../Child C/D/Child of D")
A relative call from Sibling B2 to its grandparent (Second Root) would be:
$Created(../../Second Root)
The above examples show two subtle points to note about relative paths:
- to access a sibling (or its children) you must go 'up and back' to the current note's parent. You cannot call a sibling by using its name with no slash prefix.
- when accessing notes under a different root, you must navigate to a level above the root note (effectively the document itself) before you navigate downwards.
If you are used to UNIX file navigation, note the absence of the dot '.' method. Also, if you are used to HTML relative links, note the 'up and back' method of navigation: you cannot cite a sub-folder or sibling simply by using its name (without a preceding slash). So some slight variance form what some more expert users may intuit but the usage is consistent within Tinderbox and not difficult to learn.