157 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown
157 lines
6.7 KiB
Markdown
# Notes 
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A zero dependency POSIX compliant shell script that makes it really simple to
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manage your text notes.
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Instead of trying to impose a whole bunch of rules and syntax requirements,
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this tool does its best to get out of your way.
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It tries to do everything possible so that if you're working in a terminal, you
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can save whatever text you want into a file. This could come from typing a
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sentence out, pasting something from your clipboard or saving the output of a
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program.
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## Demo Video
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[](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/organize-your-text-based-notes-from-the-command-line-with-this-script)
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#### Updates to the notes script since this video
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- `v0.2.0` scopes the notes files [per month instead of per
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day](https://github.com/nickjj/notes/commit/4693109f27dc15da6626e3afbba53730810df026).
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This differs from what's in the video at the 4:00 mark.
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- `v0.1.0` matches exactly what's in this video.
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## Design Goals and Philosophy
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I've been keeping track of my notes in plain text files since 2001. I always
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felt like when it comes to jotting down notes it was always best to do
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everything possible to keep friction low.
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That means not worrying about specific file types, formatting, tagging,
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check boxes, syntax rules and a bunch of other things that delay you from
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getting something out of your head and into a document.
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### Text is amazing for notes because:
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- You can use `grep` and friends to search through it later
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- Even with notes dating back from 2001, I'm only using 1.5mb of disk space
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- It's really easy to back up and sync to other devices using Drop Box or similar tools
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Since it's unstructured text you can use this tool for whatever type of note
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taking you want. You can keep track of general thoughts, create a diary or make
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plan files similar to what John Carmack did [for a number of
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years](https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive).
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I personally use it as a scattered brain dump. Even with things being very
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unstructured (and even untagged) I can usually `grep` out anything I want
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within a few seconds.
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### Your notes are organized by auto-dated files
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Let's say it's December 25th, 2019. If you were to run `notes hello world` it
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would create a `2019-12.txt` file in your `NOTES_DIRECTORY` (this is
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something you can configure). It would then append `hello world` to the end of
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the file.
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If you run `notes something else` on the next day it will still append to the
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same file and continue appending to that file until the next months hits. For
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example, on January 1st 2020 any `notes` commands will append to a
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`2020-01.txt` file.
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There's other things you can do such as piping input to it, or running the
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script without any arguments to open the file in your configured `EDITOR` but
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let's first go over installing it before we get to that.
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### What is this script not good for?
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Depending on how you work, it's probably not ideal for grouping up a bunch of
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extended thoughts about a specific topic.
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For example, if you were planning to write a book and you spent 3 months
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gathering info about what you're writing about then you would end up with a
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bunch of isolated date formatted files that was mixed in with everything else.
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In those cases, I recommend you make a new script called `book` which basically
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does what this script does except it always dumps everything to 1 specific file
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of your choosing which isn't dated. That's what I do to help plan my
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[video courses](https://nickjanetakis.com/courses/).
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## Installation
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Copy / paste the line below, or if you don't like this pattern of installing
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scripts then feel free to run things manually.
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### 1 liner to get `notes` downloaded to `/usr/local/bin`:
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```sh
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sudo curl \
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-L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nickjj/notes/master/notes \
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-o /usr/local/bin/notes && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/notes
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```
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You can also choose to replace `master` with a specific [release
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tag](https://github.com/nickjj/notes/tags) if you want to grab a specific
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version.
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There's no fancy `git clone` instructions because you may end up modifying at
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least 1 line of the script. Plus since the script is so simple, this repo is
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likely not going to change and if it does you will be able to `diff` it without
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any issues.
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### Configuration
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By default it will use `${HOME}/notes` as your notes directory and if that
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directory doesn't exist beforehand, this script will allow you to create it
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with a `y/n` prompt when you first run the program.
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You can also customize your notes path in 1 of 2 ways:
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1. Put `export NOTES_DIRECTORY="/tmp/foo"` in your `~/.profile` or equivalent
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file (`/tmp/foo` would be your notes path)
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2. Directly edit the `notes` script and replace `${HOME}/notes` with `/tmp/foo`
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in the `NOTES_DIRECTORY` variable
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Also, if you want this script to open your notes in your code editor you'll
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want to make sure you have your `EDITOR` defined in your `~/.profile` too. This
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is a Unix standard. For example, mine looks like `export EDITOR="vim"`.
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*If you change your `~/.profile`, don't forget to log out / login.*
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## Usage Examples
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There's 3 ways of using this script:
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- `notes something you want to jot down`
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- Appends whatever arguments you add as text into the dated file
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- `xclip -o | notes`
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- Pipes and appends anything (in this case your clipboard's contents) into the dated file
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- `notes`
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- Opens the dated file in your configured `EDITOR`
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That's really all there is to it. With the above 3 ways of adding notes you'll
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find yourself adding all sorts of different types of notes with very little
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friction. I encourage you to check out [just how short the source
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code](https://github.com/nickjj/notes/blob/master/notes) is.
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If you wanted to go all out, you could even create custom key binds in your
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code editor that would take the selected text and append it to your notes by
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running one of the above commands. Since everything is text you have a lot of
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flexibility!
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Also, you have the power of the command line at your finger tips to manipulate
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these files however you see fit. For example you can run `cat 2019-*.txt >
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2019.txt` to create a yearly file.
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## About the Author
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I'm a self taught developer and have been freelancing for the last ~20 years.
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You can read about everything I've learned along the way on my site at
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[https://nickjanetakis.com](https://nickjanetakis.com/). There's hundreds of
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[blog posts](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/) and a couple of [video
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courses](https://nickjanetakis.com/courses/) on web development and deployment
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topics. I also have a [podcast](https://runninginproduction.com) where I talk
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to folks about running web apps in production.
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