Could someone explain to me, as if to a child, how they use hierarchical tags in apps not designed for hierarchy?

Is it something like this?

1. Create a note in Simplenote
2. Give it a tag: "recipe"
3. Also give it a hierarchical tag, of the form "recipe.mexican" ( I suppose the tags could be two words, or use another separator, like > or -"

This, I guess, would do something like a two level categorization. Is that how folks here are using the term, or am I missing the concept?

The recent post about Zettlekasten may provide some food for thought.

If you can search for tags with wildcards, like "recipe.*" it sounds like your solution would work. Even if you can't, the additional information in the tag name could be helpful.

jaslar wrote:

Could someone explain to me, as if to a child, how they use hierarchical
tags in apps not designed for hierarchy?

Is it something like this?

1. Create a note in Simplenote
2. Give it a tag: "recipe"
3. Also give it a hierarchical tag, of the form "recipe.mexican" ( I
suppose the tags could be two words, or use another separator, like > or
-"

This, I guess, would do something like a two level categorization. Is
that how folks here are using the term, or am I missing the concept?

The only time I use them is within Lightroom's Keyword List Panel. It's an easy way to add multiple, relevant keywords. So, with keyword hierarchy I could add Toronto’ and the app would add ‘Ontario’, ‘Canada’ and ‘North America’.

It also properly keywords identically-spelled homophones: "People > body parts > chest" vs "Furniture > chest". When searching for 'chest' Lightroom lets you select the type of chest to search for.

The semi-automated assist of these types of keywords within the app helps me to use them. But I tend not to use tags in writing apps because I usually forget which tags I've created, and have tended to create similar tags over time that make a mess of sort and search.

Here is how they work in Bear:

https://bear.app/faq/Tags%20&%20Linking/Nested%20Tags/

FS notes can handle them as well.

NotePlan uses nested (= hierarchical) tags in the same way as Bear.

More on the NotePlan website: https://noteplan.co