When a molecular scene gets busy, notes can be easy to overlook. A note may be hidden, not visible, or simply hard to identify among other notes. Instead of checking them one by one, you can use SAMSON’s Node Specification Language (NSL) to match note nodes by their attributes.
Notes have their own NSL attribute space: note, with the short name nt. That scope matters: expressions such as nt.v are for notes, rather than every kind of node in the scene. The note attributes listed in the reference are inherited from the general node attribute space, so the same attribute concepts are available for notes.
Start with the question you need to answer
Use the attribute that matches the issue you are investigating. If you are looking for notes that are not visible, try not nt.v. To match visible notes, use nt.v. The short name v is an abbreviation for visible.
For notes that are hidden, the corresponding expression is nt.h; to match notes that are not hidden, use not nt.h. These are separate attributes from visible. The reference lists both, so it is useful to choose the one that describes your question rather than treating “hidden” and “not visible” as interchangeable terms.
Use names to narrow the search
If you remember a note’s name, search by name, or its short form n. Values are written in quotes. For example, nt.n "A" checks for a note named “A”; the reference also gives nt.n "L*" as an example. That can be a helpful starting point when you remember a name pattern but not the full label.
Quotation marks are important: the documented form for names uses strings in quotes. If a name-based match does not find what you expect, check the text you entered and whether you included the quotes.
Check selection-related attributes carefully
NSL lists three selection-related options for notes: selected, selectionFlag (short name sf), and the general node attribute hidden is not a selection attribute. For selection, examples include nt.selected, not nt.selected, nt.sf, and nt.sf false.
One detail can prevent a frustrating syntax mistake: unlike the inherited node attribute, selected has no short name in the note attribute space. Write nt.selected, not a guessed abbreviation such as nt.s. The page explicitly notes that the short name s is not available for note.selected.
A quick note-audit checklist
- Looking for notes that are not shown? Try
not nt.v. - Checking hidden notes? Try
nt.h. - Remember part of a note’s label? Try a quoted name expression such as
nt.n "L*". - Need to check selection? Use
nt.selectedor the documented selection-flag formnt.sf. - Need the full attribute name for visibility or selection flags? Use
nt.visibilityFlagornt.selectionFlag; their short names arevfandsf.
These expressions give you a direct way to ask targeted questions about notes, rather than relying on a visual sweep through the scene. For the complete attribute reference and additional context, see the SAMSON note attributes documentation.
Note: SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. Get SAMSON.