Thank you for another great package! I really love it. The file naming scheme is so awesome. I've tried org-roam before as my note taking tool but the naming scheme drew me back. I was really considering learning elisp and writing my own package that is similar to org-roam but suits me better. But the denote package is just what I wanted! Thank you agian for all your hard work. I've learned tons of stuff from your emacs config and package documentation. And all your packages are so useful and great.
Finally a note taking app that doesn't require me to have an engineering degree. Thank you so much for your hard work In the coming days I will try to add an option to have more than one notes directory and the ability to add a new note to one of those other directories.
You are welcome! About the multiple directories part, it is possible to use a directory-local variable set to either 'local' or 'default-directory'. All Denote commands within that directory will assume it as the one that holds your notes. This section of the manual mentions it and shows how: protesilaos.com/emacs/denote#h:f34b172b-3440-446c-aec1-bf818d0aabfe Maybe we can implement a better solution, though this one should work too.
The concepts on this video seem to me fundamental to achieve a more efficient work with Emacs. I'm still reading the manual, which I find exemplary, but it is clear to me that this package will be a cornerstone in my workflow. Thank you very much for this gem, an example of simplicity.
Excellent work again Protesilaos. Some of the most experienced sysadmins are taking notes in plain text exactly because the raw, agnostic format is ideal for manipulation with any domain specific tools without conflicts, regardless of the OS. You don't care if you are on Nix, or Windows. It is also very easy to convert into anything else you want. Damn Emacs, I have used it in the past and it would be my weapon of choice if it wasn't so hard for me to configure it for coding, with LSP, treesitter and autocompletion ...
Thank you! I think portability is important. Even though I use Emacs full-time, I consider it irresponsible to tie my long-term storage to one program. As for your woes with LSP and related, I am afraid I cannot be of help: I don't use any of those as I only program in Elisp (and shell once in a while). Maybe some framework like Doom Emacs has these things sorted out?
You are welcome! And I am happy to have received the feedback I did from the community. It helped refine some important aspects of the package at this early stage.
Great timing! I saw denote in your Source Hut account and gave it a try just this morning. I've been looking for a simple, one-file-per-note system for a while. I've been using howm, which is good, but is very weird, does not feel like an Emacs package at all. I'm going to give denote a try over the next few weeks and see how I like it. Thanks Prot!
Excellent presentation and documentation as usual Prot, you're a juggernaut :) I am a current org-roam user, and I think I gain nothing from its DB, but currently it's not hurting me at all so I've not thought to change it. But, I just so happen to have started a new job recently, and I thought maybe I'll try some other note taking system for this, so I'll try this package out for this use case! It's a good design for the filename, and I appreciate the simplicity. --- I will say however, and this is nothing to do with your package perse, I personally am not sure I get that much value out of my notes. It's a hodgepodge mix of snippets, some record keeping (when was my last eye test?), and some summaries of information I learned, which I rarely go back to. I chase note taking paradigms and packages mostly because I /feel/ like it's a useful superpower that I could learn, but so far I've never managed to get use from it. I suspect the reviewing stage you alude to is the secret weapon here, though I wonder if that is more helpful for people in knowledge-creation spaces (like you with your philosophy) rather than people like me.
Thank you! Just to focus on your issue with notes: I used to feel the same way. This sense that I am missing that one "special thing" or "hidden secret" or "killer app" which will take my productivity to new heights. Here is a video from last year about "the second brain and mindfulness": protesilaos.com/codelog/2021-08-31-emacs-second-brain-mindfulness/. In practice, I wasn't getting much value out of the tools I was using because I was lacking the method. Like you, I had random snippets of the "this might be useful one day" type. Over time I accumulated so much without actually remembering any of it. What's the point of having all those searching and filtering tools that the computer provides if we still have no notion of the underlying stock of information? So I decided to take a step back and think critically about how I take notes and, most importantly, what is worth capturing and what isn't. [ What is true for note-taking it true for being mindful in life at-large. ] To me, records of all the minutia are worthless because even if I add them up the insights I gather from them are still devoid of added value. Like "today I took a walk from the north side of my village southwards and back". The more useful notes are those that you put some effort into and can actually teach you something. As your teacher in primary school would say "describe it in your own words". When you reflect on something you thought/read/experienced and use your own way to document your impression of it or reaction to it, you are focusing your mind and are learning something outright. Spend 10, 30, 60 minutes working on it. The quick-capture-and-forget-about-it approach is not adding to your knowledge. As you keep being deliberate, you deepen and/or broaden your understanding of the matter at hand. Here is a rule of thumb to quickly assess if something is worth committing time to: (1) can I remember it in 8 hours from now without a reminder?, (2) can I explain what I know about it at least as a first impression in, say, 300-500 words?, (3) is this something I see myself developing further? This is not a perfect test, but it already filters out whatever random piece of information you come across. Being more selective already makes you more focused. The rest is a matter of commitment. Practice makes perfect! Finally, regarding your question on the front matter: (i) it is a convenience to make it more human-readable, especially if you ever want to share your writings with others, (ii) it is helpful if you want to print the document, (iii) it is information that other programs can use, such as Org export, or a static site generator with Markdown+Yaml.
Wow, are you me? I'm in the same position as you! - A current org-roam user - I don't like the required database - I'm starting a new job! - Thinking to try another note taking system. Thank you for your comment.
org-roam is a sort of useless contradiction because the whole point of org is to have your data in the most universal of all the formats, plain text, so you can use it with other tools, if you bottle data in a database you are losing that. sql databases are useful when you can manipulate the database and make new reports, do you know SQL and does org-roam allow you to do so?
I would like if you make a video on how you learn/obtain knowledge? I work in cybersecurity and there is always new information, would love to know your learning process.
Sure! There shall be a video about it next week (unless something major happens). Though it will be mostly philosophy than technology, meaning that I will talk about the method.
You are welcome! I only do them now if they are relevant to some package I develop. Otherwise I don't have time for them: I spend it maintaining the Emacs packages I have and, as in this case, creating new packages.
24:30 What the difference b/w note taking and storing some useful things which might be needed later. Looks like denote is intended for store things that needs to be written later. Are there any tools you suggest for those things which I do not intend to write but just storing them like some useful commands which I want to retrieve later .
For simple reminders and stuff, I use Org mode with a basic capture template. Though Denote can work for that use-case as well. It is a matter of how you prefer to organise your data.
I think Dired is one of the best features of Emacs. Though it is not mutually exclusive with the completion frameworks. We just use whatever is more appropriate for the task at hand. Nice stuff!
This is fantastic, thanks so much for creating it and explaining it so well. I’m about to set it up now. One thought I had: it might be good to use a trailing _ after the last keyword. It may be a bit ugly, but it lets you do full keyword matches. So if I search for _test I will get files with keywords test / testing / testdriven but with trailing _ I can also do _test_ to match it exactly.
Today I cloned your repo because I did not want to wait. Probably a setting, that i did not enable, but within a new note, can you select some text so that this region becomes the title for a new note, next create it and have a link in the place of the first note? Splendid work Protesilaos! Arete
Thank you! What you describe is not available right now. We can, in principle, implement it though we need to consider various scenaria to make sure it always does the right thing and is consistent with what we have. Please report an issue on the mailing list or either of the mirrors on GitHub/GitLab and we will discuss the technicalities from there.
Very nice! I built a script that took a somewhat similar approach to integrate with neovim but when I moved onto emacs the same workflow didn't translate so well for some reason.. This brings back that same workflow which I missed. Thanks Prot.
Remarkably similar filenaming scheme here, too (and metadata header). Never bothered to encode it into a routine as there are too many entry points to files, e.g. some get created from script, some in programmes x, y or z. A question, and an observation if I may… Q. How do you manage last modified date (I've a "lastmod" field in the header)? O. tags i suffix with an 'x' to distinguish them from regular words. 'workx', 'techx' etc. Great stuff, as always!
I used to follow this practice for years before streamlining it. I was originally inspired by my Jekyll-powered blog where each post has a pattern of YYYY-MM-DD-TITLE.md. I kept refining it from there. To your questions: - Last modified: I use Git for my notes. If I make a change to a file, I record it. I can then see its entire history from there. Otherwise, I do not use a "last modified" header because that would still not tell me which parts were edited and which ones weren't. - The file-naming scheme I use has two distinct field separators which give us filtering keys for free: "-word" matches part of the title field, while "_word" is a keyword/tag. Thus, even with no use of regexp we still get an effective way to narrow the list.
There's probably a better place to ask this, but I'm not sure where it is. Why the duplication of tags? That is, why are they placed both in the file front matter _and_ in the name of the file?
You are welcome! There are no such user options at this stage. There are variables, such as 'denote-org-front-matter' which cover this use-case. The doc string of 'denote-org-front-matter' explains the details. The equivalent variables for the other supported file types are 'denote-toml-front-matter', 'denote-yaml-front-matter', and 'denote-text-front-matter'. Please check the official sources of Denote for the relevant communication channels, as I might miss something here.
Why the filetags(CRM) delimiter need to be comma instead of spaces since the filetags must be a single word? Is there any advantage to comma over space?
The comma is the default value. I just leave it as-is. EDIT: Also because the space is very useful for separating search terms of the 'orderless' package.
Prot, since the note unique ID is just the date and time up to seconds, doesn’t that create a real possibility of name collision if we call (denote) programmatically twice with the same title and keywords? It’s a more academic problem rather than real world problem, but should that be fixed? Perhaps as easily as getting date down to microseconds? I must say, though. This is a lot simpler than roam. Considering I don’t really use the SQLite db, I might as well convert my roam to denote :-) Would you accept some helpers to “import” roam notes into denote? (Mainly just wrapping denote rename) Best regards
Hi! Just saw your comment. We are already dealing with the duplication on the GitHub mirror. About the "import", check the latest commits to denote-dired.el. We now have bulk renaming for marked files in Dired. But yeah, I am fine if we can expand on this idea.
thankyou for this video i think it is very interesting for me to replace org-roam. Working with markdown files, when i tic on the links i created to other notes, it doesn't work, it opens a new note in blank?
Actionable buttons for Markdown and plain text are coming soon before version 0.1.0 is released (and the package becomes available). I now finalising some details and will test things further.
Hello Prot, Just a general suggestion, can you please change the presentation background to something a little dark. Too much white burns the eye. I've recently started watching your videos and it's really helping me learn a lot in my journey to understand Emacs. Thanks for all the knowledge you've been sharing with the emacs community.
Hello there! I have some videos with a dark background. Then I get the opposite suggestion: to use a light background because it works better during the day and/or in an open space, etc. Maybe it would help if you reduced the brightness of your monitor? Also keep another source of light in the room?
I see this issue a lot, and with static content like websites you can already switch between dark and light mode. I wonder if someday someone will come up with dark/light-switchable videos (either different video streams but much more likely have part of the frame be color-inversion-friendly) to resolve this! (Maybe this is over-engineered, however)
How about sorting notes by date of modification? If I visit a note let's say after a year and make some changes, I don't want it buried among other notes.
Sounds like a good job for Dired. Type 'C-u M-x dired-sort-toggle-or-edit' ('C-u s' by default) to edit the flags for 'ls'. Append '--sort=time' (without the quotes). If you need to reverse the sort, add the '-r' flag as well.
I don't know. I never used zetteldeft. I also did not claim that Denote is better than its alternatives. In general, I think that if something works perfectly for you, there is no reason to change it.
@@protesilaos True , I recommend before embarking on a project, check other ones, so you don't build something that exists from scratch. Even better, build on top of what is already there, to improve it. Efforts must be spared!
@@Jdonovanford Fair point and thanks for taking the time to write this! I agree and generally follow this guideline. With Denote specifically, I have been using it in various forms for years, even before I started using Emacs (mid-2019). As for the part about contributing to an existing package, it is correct except it only applies fully to accomplished programmers. Whereas I am learning to program by writing code such as this one. A relevant quote from Denote's manual where it addresses Frequently Asked Questions: Start quote The existence of PACKAGE is never a good reason for me not to conduct my own experiments for recreational, educational, or practical purposes. When the question arises of "why not contribute to PACKAGE instead?" the answer is that without me experimenting in the first place, I would lack the skills for such a task. Furthermore, contributing to another package does not guarantee I get what I want in terms of workflow. Whether you should use Denote or not is another matter altogether: choose whatever you want. End quote
he never said there's anything wrong with it, he just said i will use org when i need the extra functionality, otherwise i just use text. which is pretty much the same as using the right tool for the job
@Ernest M. van der Linden - There was a panellist recently on HBO's Real Time, who made a point of how divisive Twitter is. He then cited a tweet where someone posted that he had just woken had some pancakes because 'their so good.' Someone then replied, 'So whats wrong with waffles?' So Mr Ernest M. van der Linden what was wrong with black and white people living together? After all your forefathers invented the apartheid system, so here is you chance tell us all what is wrong with the normal system of living together, or do you like to divide people as you do with opinion.
@Matt Moore - You gotta point. @Ernest M. van der Linden' is just being a c**t. He is taking time out from watching kiddie porn and is bit confused. @Ernest M. van der Linden - DON'T START ON PROT!!!! Got it..instead read what @Ahmed Tarek said, he put it very well.
I recommend people also write their notes with "semantic linefeed / Semantic Line Breaks", that is every add a line break after each substantial unit of thought. This makes it easier to manage and works well with Unix tools (see "Unix for beginners" by Brian Kernighan which recommends this) and I find it especially useful for my notes. [comment written this way for illustrative purposes].
@Phaedrus mg Agreed! I have been using auto-fill-mode and M-x fill-paragraph (M-q by default) for a long time now. They too are good for diffs. Though semantic line breaks add an interesting element to plain text.
Am coming from Obsidian, to emacs. Your package + Time clocking abilities for org mode is exactly what i was looking for. Thanks so much!
You are welcome!
Thank you for another great package! I really love it. The file naming scheme is so awesome. I've tried org-roam before as my note taking tool but the naming scheme drew me back. I was really considering learning elisp and writing my own package that is similar to org-roam but suits me better. But the denote package is just what I wanted! Thank you agian for all your hard work. I've learned tons of stuff from your emacs config and package documentation. And all your packages are so useful and great.
You are welcome! I am happy to share what I learn and help others that way. It is part of the spirit of libre software to spread the knowledge.
Your comments about how one should approach note-taking with mindfulness and deliberation are filled with wisdom and insight. Thank you!
You are welcome!
Your philosophy in software just clicks with me. Thank you.
You are welcome!
The simplicity of this is inspired.
Thanks!
Finally a note taking app that doesn't require me to have an engineering degree.
Thank you so much for your hard work
In the coming days I will try to add an option to have more than one notes directory and the ability to add a new note to one of those other directories.
You are welcome! About the multiple directories part, it is possible to use a directory-local variable set to either 'local' or 'default-directory'. All Denote commands within that directory will assume it as the one that holds your notes. This section of the manual mentions it and shows how: protesilaos.com/emacs/denote#h:f34b172b-3440-446c-aec1-bf818d0aabfe
Maybe we can implement a better solution, though this one should work too.
@@protesilaos I will test this solution first before I try and make another. Thanks.
Nicely thought out, you included only those features that are needed and make sense; all wheat, no chaff.
Thanks!
The concepts on this video seem to me fundamental to achieve a more efficient work with Emacs.
I'm still reading the manual, which I find exemplary, but it is clear to me that this package will be a cornerstone in my workflow.
Thank you very much for this gem, an example of simplicity.
You are welcome!
Excellent work again Protesilaos. Some of the most experienced sysadmins
are taking notes in plain text exactly because the raw, agnostic format is
ideal for manipulation with any domain specific tools without
conflicts, regardless of the OS. You don't care if you are on Nix, or Windows.
It is also very easy to convert into anything else you want. Damn Emacs, I have used it
in the past and it would be my weapon of choice if it wasn't so hard for me to configure
it for coding, with LSP, treesitter and autocompletion ...
Thank you! I think portability is important. Even though I use Emacs full-time, I consider it irresponsible to tie my long-term storage to one program.
As for your woes with LSP and related, I am afraid I cannot be of help: I don't use any of those as I only program in Elisp (and shell once in a while). Maybe some framework like Doom Emacs has these things sorted out?
thanks @Prot for creating/sharing this wonderful extension
You are welcome! And I am happy to have received the feedback I did from the community. It helped refine some important aspects of the package at this early stage.
I often see myself over-engineering things, this kind of efficient simplicity is very appreciated :D
Thank you!
Great timing! I saw denote in your Source Hut account and gave it a try just this morning. I've been looking for a simple, one-file-per-note system for a while. I've been using howm, which is good, but is very weird, does not feel like an Emacs package at all. I'm going to give denote a try over the next few weeks and see how I like it. Thanks Prot!
You are welcome! If you try denote, please share any feedback you may have.
I was not familiar with howm. Will read more about it.
Fantastic presentation. I never quite got into roam, but was always tempted to try it. This might be what I was looking for.
Thank you! Experiment with different packages and see what works for you.
Excellent presentation and documentation as usual Prot, you're a juggernaut :)
I am a current org-roam user, and I think I gain nothing from its DB, but currently it's not hurting me at all so I've not thought to change it.
But, I just so happen to have started a new job recently, and I thought maybe I'll try some other note taking system for this, so I'll try this package out for this use case!
It's a good design for the filename, and I appreciate the simplicity.
---
I will say however, and this is nothing to do with your package perse, I personally am not sure I get that much value out of my notes.
It's a hodgepodge mix of snippets, some record keeping (when was my last eye test?), and some summaries of information I learned, which I rarely go back to.
I chase note taking paradigms and packages mostly because I /feel/ like it's a useful superpower that I could learn, but so far I've never managed to get use from it.
I suspect the reviewing stage you alude to is the secret weapon here, though I wonder if that is more helpful for people in knowledge-creation spaces (like you with your philosophy) rather than people like me.
I do have one query, what inspired the use of front matter, if seemingly all of the information is contained within the filename?
Thank you! Just to focus on your issue with notes: I used to feel the same way. This sense that I am missing that one "special thing" or "hidden secret" or "killer app" which will take my productivity to new heights. Here is a video from last year about "the second brain and mindfulness": protesilaos.com/codelog/2021-08-31-emacs-second-brain-mindfulness/.
In practice, I wasn't getting much value out of the tools I was using because I was lacking the method. Like you, I had random snippets of the "this might be useful one day" type. Over time I accumulated so much without actually remembering any of it. What's the point of having all those searching and filtering tools that the computer provides if we still have no notion of the underlying stock of information? So I decided to take a step back and think critically about how I take notes and, most importantly, what is worth capturing and what isn't.
[ What is true for note-taking it true for being mindful in life at-large. ]
To me, records of all the minutia are worthless because even if I add them up the insights I gather from them are still devoid of added value. Like "today I took a walk from the north side of my village southwards and back".
The more useful notes are those that you put some effort into and can actually teach you something. As your teacher in primary school would say "describe it in your own words". When you reflect on something you thought/read/experienced and use your own way to document your impression of it or reaction to it, you are focusing your mind and are learning something outright. Spend 10, 30, 60 minutes working on it. The quick-capture-and-forget-about-it approach is not adding to your knowledge. As you keep being deliberate, you deepen and/or broaden your understanding of the matter at hand.
Here is a rule of thumb to quickly assess if something is worth committing time to: (1) can I remember it in 8 hours from now without a reminder?, (2) can I explain what I know about it at least as a first impression in, say, 300-500 words?, (3) is this something I see myself developing further?
This is not a perfect test, but it already filters out whatever random piece of information you come across. Being more selective already makes you more focused. The rest is a matter of commitment. Practice makes perfect!
Finally, regarding your question on the front matter: (i) it is a convenience to make it more human-readable, especially if you ever want to share your writings with others, (ii) it is helpful if you want to print the document, (iii) it is information that other programs can use, such as Org export, or a static site generator with Markdown+Yaml.
Wow, are you me? I'm in the same position as you!
- A current org-roam user
- I don't like the required database
- I'm starting a new job!
- Thinking to try another note taking system.
Thank you for your comment.
org-roam is a sort of useless contradiction because the whole point of org is to have your data in the most universal of all the formats, plain text, so you can use it with other tools, if you bottle data in a database you are losing that.
sql databases are useful when you can manipulate the database and make new reports, do you know SQL and does org-roam allow you to do so?
I would like if you make a video on how you learn/obtain knowledge? I work in cybersecurity and there is always new information, would love to know your learning process.
Sure! There shall be a video about it next week (unless something major happens). Though it will be mostly philosophy than technology, meaning that I will talk about the method.
@@protesilaos Thanks for the quick response! Sure it's much better to talk about philosophy than learning a particular tool.
By the way Prot, did you read the "Smart Notes" book on Zettelkasten? If not, I recommend it for some interesting ideas.
@Stefan Kangas I haven't. Will look it up.
Ωραίο package μεγάλε, πολύ καλή ιδέα και παρολαυτά απλό!
Σ'ευχαριστώ!
Thank you for making more videos about Emacs.
You are welcome! I only do them now if they are relevant to some package I develop. Otherwise I don't have time for them: I spend it maintaining the Emacs packages I have and, as in this case, creating new packages.
A really cool package, similar to org-roam but feels lighter to me
They cover the same niche. org-roam has enjoyed more development, has a massive community, and should "just work" for what it sets out to do.
24:30 What the difference b/w note taking and storing some useful things which might be needed later. Looks like denote is intended for store things that needs to be written later. Are there any tools you suggest for those things which I do not intend to write but just storing them like some useful commands which I want to retrieve later .
For simple reminders and stuff, I use Org mode with a basic capture template. Though Denote can work for that use-case as well. It is a matter of how you prefer to organise your data.
Who needs helm/ivy/vertico or whatever, if you can just use dired. I swear you're one of the few who presents Dired as being so useful.
I think Dired is one of the best features of Emacs. Though it is not mutually exclusive with the completion frameworks. We just use whatever is more appropriate for the task at hand. Nice stuff!
@@protesilaos I haven't really felt motivated to use dired until I saw some of your videos. Nice stuff, indeed!
This is fantastic, thanks so much for creating it and explaining it so well. I’m about to set it up now. One thought I had: it might be good to use a trailing _ after the last keyword. It may be a bit ugly, but it lets you do full keyword matches. So if I search for _test I will get files with keywords test / testing / testdriven but with trailing _ I can also do _test_ to match it exactly.
This package is awesome !! That is god damn great package.
Thank you!
Today I cloned your repo because I did not want to wait. Probably a setting, that i did not enable, but within a new note, can you select some text so that this region becomes the title for a new note, next create it and have a link in the place of the first note?
Splendid work Protesilaos! Arete
Thank you! What you describe is not available right now. We can, in principle, implement it though we need to consider various scenaria to make sure it always does the right thing and is consistent with what we have. Please report an issue on the mailing list or either of the mirrors on GitHub/GitLab and we will discuss the technicalities from there.
Very neat, I'm going to give this a try. Thank you!
You are welcome!
Very nice! I built a script that took a somewhat similar approach to integrate with neovim but when I moved onto emacs the same workflow didn't translate so well for some reason.. This brings back that same workflow which I missed. Thanks Prot.
You are welcome! This reminds me of the days when I would manually do the parts that Denote now streamlines...
My God, this is *awesome* !
Thank you!
Thank you for a great package
You are welcome!
Remarkably similar filenaming scheme here, too (and metadata header). Never bothered to encode it into a routine as there are too many entry points to files, e.g. some get created from script, some in programmes x, y or z.
A question, and an observation if I may…
Q. How do you manage last modified date (I've a "lastmod" field in the header)?
O. tags i suffix with an 'x' to distinguish them from regular words. 'workx', 'techx' etc.
Great stuff, as always!
I used to follow this practice for years before streamlining it. I was originally inspired by my Jekyll-powered blog where each post has a pattern of YYYY-MM-DD-TITLE.md. I kept refining it from there.
To your questions:
- Last modified: I use Git for my notes. If I make a change to a file, I record it. I can then see its entire history from there. Otherwise, I do not use a "last modified" header because that would still not tell me which parts were edited and which ones weren't.
- The file-naming scheme I use has two distinct field separators which give us filtering keys for free: "-word" matches part of the title field, while "_word" is a keyword/tag. Thus, even with no use of regexp we still get an effective way to narrow the list.
There's probably a better place to ask this, but I'm not sure where it is.
Why the duplication of tags? That is, why are they placed both in the file front matter _and_ in the name of the file?
The text in the file is not needed by Denote. It is for other programs to use. For example, Org sets the tags for each heading.
Very interesting. If you change the note title, are the link titles also changed in other files that link to the changed one?
No the link titles are not updated in that case. Though the link should still work.
Really helpful many thanks for this!
You are welcome!
What is putting the names of keystrokes and commands into the modelines of your presentations? Very cool.
It is the 'keycast' package.
Thankyou again, a quick question, how can I change the frontmatter ? I'd like to take off the date for instance
You are welcome! There are no such user options at this stage. There are variables, such as 'denote-org-front-matter' which cover this use-case. The doc string of 'denote-org-front-matter' explains the details. The equivalent variables for the other supported file types are 'denote-toml-front-matter', 'denote-yaml-front-matter', and 'denote-text-front-matter'. Please check the official sources of Denote for the relevant communication channels, as I might miss something here.
I usually use deft
Why the filetags(CRM) delimiter need to be comma instead of spaces since the filetags must be a single word? Is there any advantage to comma over space?
The comma is the default value. I just leave it as-is.
EDIT: Also because the space is very useful for separating search terms of the 'orderless' package.
Prot, since the note unique ID is just the date and time up to seconds, doesn’t that create a real possibility of name collision if we call (denote) programmatically twice with the same title and keywords?
It’s a more academic problem rather than real world problem, but should that be fixed? Perhaps as easily as getting date down to microseconds?
I must say, though. This is a lot simpler than roam. Considering I don’t really use the SQLite db, I might as well convert my roam to denote :-)
Would you accept some helpers to “import” roam notes into denote? (Mainly just wrapping denote rename)
Best regards
Hi! Just saw your comment. We are already dealing with the duplication on the GitHub mirror. About the "import", check the latest commits to denote-dired.el. We now have bulk renaming for marked files in Dired. But yeah, I am fine if we can expand on this idea.
thankyou for this video i think it is very interesting for me to replace org-roam. Working with markdown files, when i tic on the links i created to other notes, it doesn't work, it opens a new note in blank?
Actionable buttons for Markdown and plain text are coming soon before version 0.1.0 is released (and the package becomes available). I now finalising some details and will test things further.
Hello Prot, Just a general suggestion, can you please change the presentation background to something a little dark. Too much white burns the eye.
I've recently started watching your videos and it's really helping me learn a lot in my journey to understand Emacs. Thanks for all the knowledge you've been sharing with the emacs community.
Hello there! I have some videos with a dark background. Then I get the opposite suggestion: to use a light background because it works better during the day and/or in an open space, etc. Maybe it would help if you reduced the brightness of your monitor? Also keep another source of light in the room?
I see this issue a lot, and with static content like websites you can already switch between dark and light mode. I wonder if someday someone will come up with dark/light-switchable videos (either different video streams but much more likely have part of the frame be color-inversion-friendly) to resolve this! (Maybe this is over-engineered, however)
What happens if you create more than 1 note in the same second?
The identifier will be incremented by 1 until there is a unique one.
How about sorting notes by date of modification? If I visit a note let's say after a year and make some changes, I don't want it buried among other notes.
Sounds like a good job for Dired. Type 'C-u M-x dired-sort-toggle-or-edit' ('C-u s' by default) to edit the flags for 'ls'. Append '--sort=time' (without the quotes). If you need to reverse the sort, add the '-r' flag as well.
Awesome stuff!
Thank you!
very impressive
Thanks!
Is this Metanote now?
Prot, does denote work on emacs 27?
No, it only works Emacs 28 or higher. Porting it to Emacs 27 requires a lot of testing (and compatibility code) that I cannot do right now.
Why both "date" and "identifier" fields exist when both have the same information? Is there any advantage to this duplicate information?
For the convenience of copy-pasting and using grep.
Did you have a look into rec files, it seems like a nice format for tasks etc?
I have heard about recutils, but never used them. Will give them a try some day.
How is this better than zettedeft? :)
I don't know. I never used zetteldeft. I also did not claim that Denote is better than its alternatives. In general, I think that if something works perfectly for you, there is no reason to change it.
@@protesilaos True , I recommend before embarking on a project, check other ones, so you don't build something that exists from scratch. Even better, build on top of what is already there, to improve it. Efforts must be spared!
@@Jdonovanford Fair point and thanks for taking the time to write this! I agree and generally follow this guideline. With Denote specifically, I have been using it in various forms for years, even before I started using Emacs (mid-2019).
As for the part about contributing to an existing package, it is correct except it only applies fully to accomplished programmers. Whereas I am learning to program by writing code such as this one. A relevant quote from Denote's manual where it addresses Frequently Asked Questions:
Start quote
The existence of PACKAGE is never a good reason for me not to conduct my own experiments for recreational, educational, or practical purposes. When the question arises of "why not contribute to PACKAGE instead?" the answer is that without me experimenting in the first place, I would lack the skills for such a task. Furthermore, contributing to another package does not guarantee I get what I want in terms of workflow.
Whether you should use Denote or not is another matter altogether: choose whatever you want.
End quote
@@protesilaos Fair enough, I agree completely.
Nice webcam aspect ratio
I still haven't found the one I prefer the most, but this one may be it. My problem is with the hardware: it adds too much sharpness to the picture.
👍👍
Pretty simple solution. However I'm using now org-roam..
That's okay!
Sorry, but what’s wrong with orgmode?
he never said there's anything wrong with it, he just said i will use org when i need the extra functionality, otherwise i just use text. which is pretty much the same as using the right tool for the job
I'm not sure you've convinced me you're genuinely sorry.
@Ernest M. van der Linden - There was a panellist recently on HBO's Real Time, who made a point of how divisive Twitter is. He then cited a tweet where someone posted that he had just woken had some pancakes because 'their so good.' Someone then replied, 'So whats wrong with waffles?' So Mr Ernest M. van der Linden what was wrong with black and white people living together? After all your forefathers invented the apartheid system, so here is you chance tell us all what is wrong with the normal system of living together, or do you like to divide people as you do with opinion.
@Matt Moore - You gotta point. @Ernest M. van der Linden' is just being a c**t. He is taking time out from watching kiddie porn and is bit confused. @Ernest M. van der Linden - DON'T START ON PROT!!!! Got it..instead read what @Ahmed Tarek said, he put it very well.
I recommend people also write their notes with "semantic linefeed / Semantic Line Breaks", that is every add a line break after each substantial unit of thought.
This makes it easier to manage and works well with Unix tools
(see "Unix for beginners" by Brian Kernighan which recommends this)
and I find it especially useful for my notes.
[comment written this way for illustrative purposes].
I like it!
@@protesilaos This is also excellent for diffs with git
@Phaedrus mg Agreed! I have been using auto-fill-mode and M-x fill-paragraph (M-q by default) for a long time now. They too are good for diffs. Though semantic line breaks add an interesting element to plain text.
Is the package name in anyway related to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Denoting ?
No. It's just a play on "note" and the ordinary word "denote".