Love the design. Lowest possible friction is important.
I personally a) dislike writing _anything_ on touch screens b) live in the terminal anyway. So I wrote a script called "n" that appends a timestamp to a text file, then: If there are command line arguments, it appends them to the file verbatim and exits. Else it opens vim, in edit mode just under the timestamp. For example:
# n 'Hello, world!' # Writes a quick timestamped note and exits.
# n # Adds timestamp, opens vim. For bigger notes.
Since the text file is on my NAS I can view it from all the devices I care about. Yes, I know it's not a system everyone would want (curlftpfs anyone?), but it works for me, and is guaranteed to remain readable for decades. It's just a text file on disk. I search it using the text editor.
Here's my scripts. I think I got the idea on HN somewhere, if it was you, feel free to set the record straight. Also I'm bad at shell scripts, so any suggestions welcome.
~/bin/n (add note):
#! /usr/bin/env bash
cd ~
echo >> notes.txt
echo -n '# ' >> notes.txt
date '+%a %d %b %Y %T %Z' | tr -d "\n" >> notes.txt
echo ' #' >> notes.txt
if [[ $# -ne 0 ]]; then
echo $@ >> notes.txt
tail notes.txt
else
vim "+normal Go" +startinsert notes.txt
fi
~/bin/nt (review notes):
#! /usr/bin/env bash
less +G ~/notes.txt
~/bin/ne (open vim at the last line for revisions):
#! /usr/bin/env bash
vim "+normal G" ~/notes.txt
I plan on setting up an old laptop with a proper full travel keyboard on my nightstand that boots straight to this, no graphical environment, nothing else.
I created my own, more complicated script called npad which automatically creates a note in the `~/Npad` directory when you run it. I created it because I kept on writing text files in random places and couldn't find them later.
Aha! Yes, I remember now, I must have seen jrnl here on HN. I certainly imitated its interface. Looking at the project again I'd recommend using jrnl instead of my one-off scripts, it's seen a lot of recent activity!
Now that my memory is jogged (amusing, for a journaling discussion), I opted for my solution because I wanted as few dependencies as possible for workflow reasons. Journaling is very personal, and I wanted the ability to quickly change the tool if it didn't suit me. Now that I better understand what I want, I may switch to jrnl. I also built a rudimentary task tracking system on top of my system as a separate tool, but that part really isn't worth sharing.
jrnl interop sounds useful, especially if bidirectional and automated (and for me personally, available on Android).
I personally a) dislike writing _anything_ on touch screens b) live in the terminal anyway. So I wrote a script called "n" that appends a timestamp to a text file, then: If there are command line arguments, it appends them to the file verbatim and exits. Else it opens vim, in edit mode just under the timestamp. For example:
Since the text file is on my NAS I can view it from all the devices I care about. Yes, I know it's not a system everyone would want (curlftpfs anyone?), but it works for me, and is guaranteed to remain readable for decades. It's just a text file on disk. I search it using the text editor.Here's my scripts. I think I got the idea on HN somewhere, if it was you, feel free to set the record straight. Also I'm bad at shell scripts, so any suggestions welcome.
~/bin/n (add note):
~/bin/nt (review notes): ~/bin/ne (open vim at the last line for revisions): I plan on setting up an old laptop with a proper full travel keyboard on my nightstand that boots straight to this, no graphical environment, nothing else.