Just plain links, no parents or children?

[xja]

Why distinguish between parent links and child links? Why not just have "links"? It seems to me that parent-child relationship is a by-product limitation of the tree interface.

Just have "links" and then let the user decide what item(s) to use as the root of the tree and call that a "view" (let the user store different "views"). Then in the tree, for any item, show as children all linked items EXCLUDING the current parent item. So the "parent/child" status is not inherent in the link definition, but just determined by what you decide to have as the root.

So if I have a contact linked to several projects, I could have the contact displayed as a child for each project and I could have each project displayed as a child for the contact.

This is as opposed to how it works now where, if I make a contact a child of a project, then I can't see the project as a child of the contact in the tree. Rather I have to look at the Parent Items pane to find those relationships and then follow them by double-clicking.

This would also be useful down the road if you ever implement different display structures, like Mind Maps.