nebkor / joenal

A tiny framework for microjournaling

About

joenal (formerly "jotlog") is a simple framework for microjournaling.

No really, what?

It's currently a collection of small Rust programs that interact with a sqlite3 database to support various Memex-related-or-adjacent functions, such as recording a small note, or retrieving such a note. The notes have tags, and I'm planning on adding parent/child relationships for note entries, to enable "how to take smart notes"-style personal knowledge management workflows. Eventually, there will be a standard for plugins that can create new tables, such as for a spaced repitition system.

Getting started

Honestly, you probably don't even wanna bother. But if you insist...

To create entries in your joenal database, there is a simple program called joenal-insert:

Joenal Insert
Create and insert an entry into the joenal database.

USAGE:
    joenal-insert [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]

FLAGS:
        --headless    Do not prompt for input.
    -h, --help        Prints help information
    -V, --version     Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -m, --message <MESSAGE>    Message fragment to prepend to entry.
    -t, --tag <TAGS>...        Add tag to entry; may be specified more than once for more than one tag.

It's not intended to necessarily be invoked directly, but rather wrapped via shell scripts or other programs. See the bin/joenal shell script for an example of an interactive wrapper script.

Semantically, each entry is a timestamp, a message, and a collection of tags. Tags may have spaces, since they're comma-separated on entry with this program. They may also be given one at a time on the command-line with repeated uses of the -t option. A message fragment may also be given as a string with the -m option, though it may be used only once. Both the message and the tags may be added to when joenal is invoked without --headless.

In terms of workflows, the joenal shellscript is meant to be used to dash a note off to yourself. There's a git post-commit hook in the "git-hooks" directory as an example of using the headless mode for automated journaling.

Installing and Using

Use cargo build --release to build the two binaries under src/bin; they will be in target/release/[joenal-insert|joenal-read|joenal-gui]. I recommend copying them to your ${HOME}/bin directory and changing their name to start with an underscore (the shell wrapper and git hook assume the main binaries are thus named).