skx / org-diary

Easily maintain a simple work-log / journal with the use of org-mode

org-diary

This package allows you to maintain a simple diary, or work-log, using the power of org-mode.

The package implements a derived mode of org-mode, so you can may use all the standard org-mode facilities you're used to.

This package was built after previously hosting a lot of emacs lisp inline within a Diary.org file, as visible in this demonstration repository:

• https://github.com/skx/org-worklog

Overview

This is designed for people who wish to maintain a single-file journal, be it for a work-log, or private entries. The journal will contain a new entry for every day based upon a standard template.

Every time you create a new entry the same template will be appended to the foot of your document, and there is some minimal facilities for jumping to today's entry and running customizations.

In short there is:

• The ability to insert a new per-day templated entry.
  • We assume you have some standard activities/actions you wish to complete every day.
• The ability to jump to today's entry.
  • Which is nothing more than a heading with today's date.

When exported any subsections that are empty are automatically removed.

Installation / Usage

Save the file org-diary.el to a directory upon your load-path, then require it:

(require 'org-diary)

After that visiting a file named Diary.org will automatically load the mode.

You'll need to create a template-entry which will be inserted whenever you run M-x org-diary-new-entry, see the example below for details. Within the file anything between the two markers * DD/MM/YYYY and * END will be taken to be the template.

You can see that in the example below.

Example

There is an example Diary.org file contained within this repository which demonstrates how things can be used.

Customizations

If you prefer to use a different date-format for your entries change the value of org-diary-date-format.

There are hooks available at various points:

• org-diary-mode-hook
  • Called when entering the mode.
• org-diary-after-new-entry-hook
  • Called after a new entry is inserted.
• org-diary-after-today-hook
  • Called after you jump to today's entry.

Perhaps you might wish to add a tag with the current week-number when entering a new entry? You could do that like so:

;; Add a new tag to all entries, after creating them.
(add-hook 'org-diary-after-new-entry-hook
          (lambda()
            (org-set-tags (format-time-string "%Y_week_%V"))))

Bugs?

Please report them as issues.