
Ask HN: How do you manage your personal documents and E-mail (Archiving, etc) - dennisb
I searched for a &quot;personal dms&quot; to archive my documents and mails structured and digitalised. I tried several open source solutions but they don&#x27;t fit my needs. How do you manage your documents?<p>Background:<p>I&#x27;m thinking about building a simple web-based document management system for personal needs as open-source solution. The current requirements:<p>- Custom columns (string, date, tags, numbers)
- Custom libraries with different (multiple content types)
- Content types (composition of columns assignable to a library) e.g. invoice, receipt, etc.
- Inbox library for uncategorized documents which are not routed to the library 
- Forward a mail to the inbox (mail gets converted to PDF)
- Converting images to PDF (receipt for example)
- Maybe PDF&#x2F;A conversation (OCR with tesseract)<p>Technology stack is:
Go and Vue and probably Postgres (I will run it on my Synology using docker)<p>Do you have any feedback or ideas regarding:
- A cool name? 
- Functional aspects
- Technical aspects
- Or further ideas?<p>Thanks
======
a3n
I use the Catalog feature of my own "miki": Makefile Wiki.
[https://github.com/a3n/miki#catalog](https://github.com/a3n/miki#catalog)

I also try not to get too "taggy" and organized. If I have something new, I
just dump it into the top directory of my catalog, and eventually move it down
to its own dir and do the minimal op to connect it into the catalog. No DBMS,
just the file system.

When I run make on the (personal) wiki, one of the things it does is generate
a sitemap, with links to everything, including the catalog part of the wiki.
It also creates a catalog-specific json file, which I view directly from
Firefox; the addon JsonView makes the json file fields clickable.
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/jsonview](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/jsonview)

Not at all advocating that you use Miki. Just an observation that its
motivation is simplicity, to the point that no software was written, I just
use what Linux already has, and the filesystem.

The reason for the simplicity motivation is that I've found, over the years,
that the more complete a system I've used to try to "get organized," the
sooner it will be abandoned. What I've devolved to is this: the "system" will
be more usable, and more likely to be used, the less of that system there is.

Of course it's loads of fun to write one of these things, and that's more than
enough reason to do it, so go ahead! But you might keep simplicity in mind,
start from an attitude of minimalism with just enough added on, and when it's
good enough, stop.

I guess all bets are off if you want an OSS project that other people are
going to use and work on. In that case, "Release the Features!" :)

However:

> ... "designing the system so that the manual will be as short as possible
> minimizes learning effort."

The above quoted in "Expert C Programming, Deep C Secrets," by Peter Van der
Linden. I used my catalog to find it. :)

~~~
dennisb
Thanks for your response:

I'm doing something like you with miki today, but at the end of the day I have
to admit that this "easy management" is more work for me than the system I
need because I'm wasting time finding a specific receipt or invoice.

I think your right with the minimalistic approach, I'm lazy and I will not use
it if I have to do a lot to store a document.

I'm not quite sure if such a system is useful for the open world too but open-
source it will show :P

~~~
a3n
> I'm not quite sure if such a system is useful for the open world

If it's useful to you, it's worth doing.

------
dennisb
I'm still struggling with the mail Archiving...

First approach: forward mail to a mail address by the archive - Maybe hard to
parse out the FW and get the original mail?

Second approach: give the archive IMAP access to connect to your mailbox and
parse a folder e.g. "personal archive"

Then download the mails and attachments, convert the mail to PDF and preserve
the attachments.

Any thoughts?

------
siscia
I was thinking about doing something similar just the other day.

I would pick SQLite and not PG, simpler to get it running and simpler to
operate.

~~~
dennisb
Do you have some further ideas fur such a system?

~~~
siscia
My idea was slightly different. I want to create a general data store with
hooks.

So that you can generate a table, links tables together and have custom hooks.
(stuff like send me an email on this date.)

Then serve an html interface, so for each table you will have a form to
complete.

Finally I wanted to write anything on SQL so that you can simply take the file
and move so your data with you.

It is not simple but not even too difficult... It requires time.

The one I want to create is not quite your ideas but it is a super set of
it...

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ParameterOne
I use a hard drive.....with folders.

------
ghuntley
Office 365 SharePoint. Seriously. It's great and just works.

~~~
dennisb
I'm working as a software developer with a main focus on Ms and sharepoint. I
know this beast but the original dms features of sharepoint get replaced in
O365. O365 is moving to fast to use it for the next several years. Don't get
me wrong, that's just for me as a customer.

