Org-noter: an interleaving/note-taking package for documents

Org-noter, by Gonçalo Santos, was inspired by the now-orphaned Interleave package, by Sebastian Christ. In Sebastian’s words (with minor edits):

In the past, textbooks were sometimes published as interleaved editions. That meant, each page was followed by a blank page and ambitious students/scholars had the ability to take their notes directly in their copy of the textbook. Newton and Kant were prominent representatives of this technique. [find reference]

Nowadays, textbooks (or lecture materials) come in PDF format. Although almost every PDF Reader has the ability to add some notes to the PDF itself, it is not as powerful as it could be. This is what this Emacs minor mode tries to accomplish. It presents your PDF side by side with an Org Mode buffer of your notes, narrowed down to just those passages that are relevant to this particular page in the document viewer.

Org-noter’s purpose is to let you create notes that are kept in sync when you scroll through the document, but that are external to it - the notes themselves live in an Org-mode file. As such, this leverages the power of Org-mode (the notes may have outlines, latex fragments, babel, etc…) while acting like notes that are made inside the document. Also, taking notes is very simple: just press i and annotate away!

Org-noter is compatible with DocView, PDF Tools, Nov.el, and DJVU-image-mode. These modes make it possible to annotate PDF, EPUB, Microsoft Office, DVI, PS, OpenDocument, and DJVU formatted files. Note that PDF support is our prime goal. Other format have been supported by other contributors, but we need code contributions from users of other formats to maintain/progress usability with those formats.

Installation

vanilla

clone this repo to a local directory

add to your init file:

(add-to-list 'load-path "<path-to-org-noter>")
(require 'org-noter)

straight.el

In plain straight.el syntax

(straight-use-package 'org-noter)

straight.el + use-package

(straight-use-package 'use-package)
(setq straight-use-package-by-default t)
(use-package org-noter)

Alternate form cribbed from dmitrym0#3

(use-package org-noter
             :straight
             (:repo "org-noter/org-noter"
                    :host github
                    :type git
                    :files ("*.el" "modules/*.el")))

MELPA

(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))
(package-refresh-contents)
(package-install 'org-noter)

Features

original org-noter (up to 2019)

Easy to use annotation interface: Just press i in the document buffer and annotate away!
Keep your notes in sync with the document: When you take a note by pressing i, it saves the location where you took it so it is able to show you the notes while you scroll, automatically!
Easy navigation: You may navigate your document as usual, seeing the notes buffer scroll and show you the respective notes; however, you may also navigate by notes, only seeing annotated pages/chapters.
Isolated interface: Each session has its own frame and the document and notes buffers are indirect buffers to the original ones. Killing any of these things will terminate your annotation session.
Simultaneous sessions: You may open as many annotation sessions as you wish, at the same time! The root heading of each document will be made read-only to prevent you from deleting a heading from an open session.
Resume annotating from where you left: When org-noter-auto-save-last-location is non-nil, it will save the last location you visited and pick it up when you start another session! You may also set this per-document, read more here.
Keep your notes organized: You may arrange your notes however you want! You can create groups and nest notes (and even nest documents inside other documents)!
Annotate org-attach‘ed files: If you have any attached files, it will let you choose one as the document to annotate.

new (all formats)

org-noter-enable-update-renames: Optional feature to update document paths when renaming or moving document files or notes files. This allows you to change your mind later about the names and locations of your document files and notes files without having to manually update all the links.
org-noter-toggle-notes-window-location (M-T): Toggle between horizontal and vertical document/notes layout.
org-noter-start-from-dired (Suggested keybinding: M-s n): Start sessions directly from dired. Opens all marked files or the file at point if none are marked.

new (PDFs only with the pdftools package)

2D precise notes: (Ahmed Shariff) Location tooltip appears at start of selected text or point of click.
Multicolumn ordering of precise notes: With the COLUMN_EDGES property, you can specify the number of columns in a multicolumn document (or pages thereof). Precise notes are ordered vertically within columns. Use M-x org-noter-pdf-set-columns to interactively set COLUMN_EDGES for the current heading. The property is inheritable, so it can be set at the page, chapter/section, or document level. See docs/HOWTO.org for more details.
Highlighting of selected text: Default behavior (on/off) is user-customizable via org-noter-highlight-selected-text. Non-default behavior is activated with a C-u prefix to the note insertion command.
Customizable tooltip arrow colors: org-noter-arrow-foreground-color (default orange-red) and org-noter-arrow-foreground-color (default white) are both user customizable.

[TODO: make/link to screencast]

Usage

If you want to give it a try without much trouble:

Open an Org file where you want the notes to go.
Create a root heading to hold the notes.
Run M-x org-noter inside the Org file. On the first run, it will ask you for the path of the document and save it in a property. By default, it will also let you annotate an attached file (org-attach documentation).

This will open a new dedicated frame where you can use the keybindings described here.

More generally, there are two modes of operation. You may run M-x org-noter:

Inside a heading in an Org notes file: This will associate that heading with a document and open a session with it. This mode is the one described in the example above.
In a document: Run M-x org-noter when viewing a document (eg. PDF, epub…).
This will try to find the respective notes file automatically. It will search in all parent folders and some specific folders set by you. See org-noter-default-notes-file-names and org-noter-notes-search-path for more information.

There is, of course, more information in the docstrings of each command.

Customization

See docs/CUSTOMIZATIONS.org for examples of user & maintainer customizations to this package.

There are two kinds of customizations you may do:

Global settings, affecting every session
Document-specific settings, which override the global settings

The global settings are changed with either the customization interface from Emacs or directly in your init file. To find which settings are available, you may use the customization interface or you may just read org-noter.el.

The best way to set document-specific settings is by using the utility commands provided (list below). In order to use them, you need an open session. The commands may change the settings for that session only (not surviving restarts), or for every session with that document.

List of utility commands (check the docstrings to learn how to make the changes permanent, or revert to the default):

You may set a start location for this document, by using org-noter-set-start-location.
To automatically resume from where you left, use org-noter-set-auto-save-last-location.
With org-noter-set-notes-window-behavior, you may change when the notes window pops up.
With org-noter-set-notes-window-location, you may change where the notes window pops up.
org-noter-set-doc-split-fraction will ask you for the fraction of the frame that the document window occupies when split.
org-noter-set-hide-other will toggle whether or not it should hide headings not related to the executed action.
org-noter-set-closest-tipping-point will set the closest note tipping point. Also check the docstring of the variable org-noter-closest-tipping-point in order to better understand the tipping point.

Keybindings and commands

Key	Description	Where?
`i`	Insert note	Document buffer
`C-i, TAB`	Insert note, toggle no-questions	Document buffer
`M-i`	Insert precise note	Document buffer
`C-M-i`	Insert precise note, toggle no-questions	Document buffer
`q`	Kill session	Document buffer
`M-p`	Sync previous page/chapter	Document and notes buffer
`M-.`	Sync current page/chapter	Document and notes buffer
`M-n`	Sync next page/chapter	Document and notes buffer
`C-M-p`	Sync previous notes	Document and notes buffer
`C-M-.`	Sync selected notes	Document and notes buffer
`C-M-n`	Sync next notes	Document and notes buffer

You can use the usual keybindings to navigate the document (n, p, SPC, …).

There are two types of sync commands:

To sync a page/chapter, means it will find the [previous|current|next] page/chapter and show the corresponding notes for that page/chapter; as such, it will always pop up the notes buffer, if it does not exist. This type of command is in relation to the current page/chapter in the document.
To sync the notes, means it will find the [previous|current|next] notes and go to the corresponding location on the document. So, you need to have the notes window open, because this type of commands is in relation to the selected notes (ie, where the cursor is).

When using PDF Tools, the command org-noter-create-skeleton imports the PDF outline or annotations (or both!) as notes, and it may be used, for example, as a starting point.

You may also want to check the docstrings of the functions associated with the keybindings, because there is some extra functionality in some.

Changes to note insertion since version 1.4.1 (MELPA version 20191020.1212)

more consistent use of selected text in title or body
more consistent primary default title (short-selected-text)
more consistent secondary default title (“Notes for page <location>”)
avoids having different notes with the same heading
Previously, repeated TAB’s give multiple notes. Now, new notes in the same location with the same title are not made, but selected text is added to the note body. Precise notes are excepted from this rule.
long text-selections are enclosed in #+BEGIN_QUOTE…#+END_QUOTE
short text-selections are enclosed in “…” (LaTeX style) when they are not used as the title of the note.
short/long text-selections are differentiated by the custom variable org-noter-max-short-selected-text-length (default: 80 char)
Previously, long selections were those with more than 3 lines.

Original

	insert-note `i`	precise note `M-i`	no-questions `C-i, TAB`
title prompt?	Y	Y	N
default title 1	prior note by location	selected-text	N/A
default title 2	“Notes for page #”	“Notes for page # x y”	“Notes for page #”
new note	with new title	always	always
body	selected-text on existing note	selected-text (> 3 lines)	none

Refactored

	insert-note	precise note	insert, no-questions	precise, no-questions
title prompt?	Y	Y	N	N
default title 1	short-selected-text	short-selected-text	short-selected-text	short-selected-text
default title 2	“Notes for page #”	“Notes for page # x y”	“Notes for page #”	“Notes for page # x y”
new note	with new title	always	with new title	always
body	selected-text (not title)	selected-text (not title)	selected-text (not title)	selected-text (not title)
highlight selection	user setting/toggle	user setting/toggle	user setting/toggle	user setting/toggle

Acknowledgments

Sebastian Christ: Author of the interleave package, inspiration for org-noter
Gonçalo Santos: Author of org-noter
Ahmed Shariff: Contributor of 2-D precise notes
Charlie Gordon: Contributor of DJVU support and document-type modularization

ahmed-shariff / org-noter