Wasn’t expecting this result out of my comment. Happy that it gave you something more to look into!
I guess that kinda dates me. I hope they’re still there, somehow! There was a time in which I could’ve backed them up but I don’t know if I did that or not.
I use folders, don’t use tags but have a “master file” that indexes all the files.
Also my md files are pretty big because I use them as notebooks with indexes of their own at the top.
As far as I know yes, tags are not standard in the md format so you’ll lose them if you move files from one app to the other.
Well I still have a container full of 3.5 floppies with some stuff on them from school and also an old zip drive somewhere. I also remember messing with 5 inch floppies in my early childhood. We’ll just say we have aged like fine wine!
Is the index something you do manually or is there a script/code that you can use to have it automatically index files? I also didn’t see anything on the website I previously linked showing that there is a built in indexing feature in markdown, so do you also manually create the table of contents/indexes in your individual documents?
If I may derail the discussion a bit, how is it that your floppies have not had molds yet? All of my disk died within 10 years (I live in a warm humid weather). I hestitate to ask that you check them because opening up the disk for visual inspection may introduce the same molds into an otherwise intact disk.
Woa I never realized that could happen to floppies. Curiosity would get the better of me if they weren’t stored in a moving box at the moment. I’ve always had them in a climate controlled area so I’m not sure if my situation would be the same. Hopefully I’ll remember to check when I get around to unpacking everything.
Absolutely! The simpler times are mostly filled with good memories (no pun intended).
I do it manually. But I could realistically cook up a batch that does that. Don’t know how long would take me but it could be done. Thanks for the inspiration!
Yes. When I add a new section I’d like to be able to jump to I add it manually to the table of contents. It’s waay easier than other editors so I don’t mind doing it at all.
That’s weird. I have 10+ old floppy disks and they didn’t develop any mold. I’m not in a warm humid weather 365 days a year, but I live close to the sea so it gets humid.
I’d try to kill it off with clorox on a test floppy to see if it gets moldy again. I bet the container is the culprit. Or the labels that soaked some kind of fungi.
It supports markdown (default) or org mode format file saving, but the client gives you a more structured / easy to navigate interface that shows you the formatted version while being editable. It is pretty flexible and powerful, with things like templates and page links/embeds which is only touching the surface.
You basically give it a folder and based on the pages you create it saves everything in the plaintext formats in that directory (in some structure). It’s open source and privacy focused, apparently!
I used to have a gigantic org mode file for tracking various personal/work todos which was fine, but have since switched and found it very nice to use! The folder is on my server so I don’t have to manage file copying and it runs fast.
OneNote is better feature wise but it is so much more creepier because of telemetry and since it isnt open source, we dont really know what is going on behind the scenes.
I wanted an “extended information” output for my directory listings (ls on Linux), so I used dot files, where the info is in a .filename.ext for the related filename.ext combined with a scripted shell command ls ; als ; dls
eg usage, dual use content specifically for command line ls and gui file manager mouse over: ls - “standard listing” als - alternate (header) description, with “standard listing” dls - descriptive paragraph often with (functional) related shell code examples, ls -1 + description (or contents) “listing”
Anyway, the idea could easily be adapted to a Markdown format mentioned above (or one of the other text file format based options from the OP mentioned video).
I use dot files because they are hidden from normal file listings, but if you dont know they are there and you were to copy a file, you would lose the extended information associated with that file, so using a different file extension like filename.ext.notes would be the most descriptive way to use my idea.
The problem with most note taking options, is that they often dont allow you to use an extension of your choice (here .notes). With vim-wiki you might be able to use .notes.md so that you know what it is and it cand be rendered properly with the appropriate front end application. To a certain degree that naming technique may also work with Obsidian (I cant remember the details of the video atm).
Part of the reason for posting this is that it keeps “plain text files” as the note/info format, which means standard filesytem commands will work easiy (like grep, head, etc) on top of any note/info manager you may choose
NOTE: If you want to produce a printed version, and you are comfortable with a Markdown style format, then I highly recomend using ASCIIDoc format (.adoc) which is a format that is specifically designed to be exported to other formats including PDF, latex or some other printable (book) format. For example GitHub and GitLab will both render .adoc similar to how they render .md files viewed online
You could easily adapt the above “neovim + vimwiki” walktrough, and combine it with AsciiDoctor to produce printable documents (instead of using the mentioned pandoc), which also functions as a scriptable document compiler as well as GUI entry and management front end.
In the above mentioned walkthrough post second video, even just moving the title = to the line abovepdf = will produce more usable output from head filename.ext or head -c 40 filename.ext. With .adoc format the title is the first line and unique (see their docs) so it can be more easily grep "^# " or head -n 1 filename`
Please note that what is presented there is compatible with .adoc (AsciiDoc format) which allows for MarkDown-isms
Yea, which is a bit upsetting because out of all the note taking apps I’ve ever tried, for some reason I jived with onenote the most. However, it being closed source and proprietary makes it unacceptable for me personally
You sir, are very smart/savvy/techie lol. I think I understand what you are saying as a concept, but I’m pretty sure that your solution would be too much for me. It sounds intuitive, again if I’m understanding the concept correctly, but also sounds a bit too… binary (?) for the way I think. Thank you for the knowledge though!
Thank you all for reply and offering your time and help! I have come to a conclusion/process for “Knowledge Management” and have posted the details in the post linked below. Hopefully linking posts together to show when they have been superseded/replaced is ok. I apologize if it isn’t! Thank you again!
