Note 🐪

Note is a hierarchical based note taking application.

Installation

Package Managers

A package for ArchLinux is available on the AUR.

The Anatomy of a Note

A note is a simple markdown document that contains zero or more instances of structured data encoded as YAML or JSON. Notes can optionally contain front-matter at the head of each file, which is YAML or JSON enclosed by a pair of ---.

---
title: This is a Note
tags: [ocaml, programming]
---

# Hello World!

Today will be a nice day.

Configuration

The behavior of note can be configured with yaml file stored in ~/.config/note/config.yaml and configure itself per the XDG Base Directory specification. You can view the resolved configuration by running note config:

state_dir: /home/kevin/.local/share/note
lock_file: /home/kevin/.local/share/note.lock
editor: nvim
on_modification: note_commit.sh

Structured Data

Notes that contain code blocks with structured data as well as front-matter are automatically parsed and exposed via the command API.

Example

note create -stdin <<EOF

# Musical Styles

```yaml
- style: Bomba
  influenced:
  - style: Plena
  - style: Reggaetón
    influenced:
    - style: Bachatón
```
EOF

# Now let's inspect the code block with jq
note cat -encoding json "Musical Styles" | jq .data[0]
[
  {
    "style": "Bomba",
    "influenced": [
      {
        "style": "Plena"
      },
      {
        "style": "Reggaetón",
        "influenced": [
          {
            "style": "Bachatón"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
]

The State Directory

Each note is stored as a flat file inside the state_dir with a slug that corresponds to the date (YYYYMMDD) on which it was created. If multiple notes are created on one day, an index will be appended to the file.

$ tree .
.
├── manifest.json
├── note-20211123-0.md
├── note-20211123-1.md
├── note-20211123-2.md
├── note-20211123-3.md
├── note-20211123-4.md
├── note-20211123-5.md
├── note-20211123-6.md
├── note-20211123-7.md
├── note-20211123-8.md
└── note-20211123-9.md

Persisting Notes with Git

If the on_modification configuration option is set it will be called each time a note is modified. This feature can be used to automatically commit your notes to a git repository with a script such as below:

#!/bin/bash
# This is an example script that can be used in conjunction with the
# on_modification config option to commit every note change to a git
# repository. You'll need to place it somewhere on your $PATH. This
# script assumes that your state_dir is also a git repository.
set -e

STATE_DIR="$(note config -get state_dir)"

pushd "$STATE_DIR"
git add --all
git commit -m 'automated commit'
popd

Web UI

Notes are stored in a format that is compatible with the static website generator Hugo and thus you can point your state_dir to a Hugo content directory and get a web based interface for all of your notes.

kevinschoon / note