Note Taking Simplified

Overview

nts is pure python and will run on any platform that supports python >= 3.7.3.

Notes are recorded in plain text files with the extension ".txt" that are located anywhere below the nts data directory. These note files have a simple format:

• The first line of the note file must contain a note title line.

• All note title lines must begin with a "+" in the first column followed by a space and then the title of the note.

• Tags, if given, must be comma separated and enclosed in parentheses after the note title.

• The note body begins on the next line and continues until another note title line or the end of the file is reached.

• Lines that begin with one or more white space characters and then "+" are treated as part of the note body and not as the beginning of a new note.

• White space in the note body is preserved but whitespace between notes is ignored.

Suppose, e.g., that the nts data directory contains a single file

~/nts/data/parent/child/grandchild.txt

with this content:

---------------- grandchild.txt begins ---------------
+ note a (red, green)
    The body of note a goes here

+ note b (blue, green)
    The body of note b here

+ note c (red, blue)
    And the body of note c here
---------------- grandchild.txt ends -----------------

nts provides two main views of this data.

• Path View:

    └── parent 1
        └── child 2
            └── grandchild.txt 3
                    + note a (red, green) 3-1
                    + note b (blue, green) 3-2
                    + note c (red, blue) 3-3
  

• Tag View:

    ├── blue 1
    │       + note b (blue, green) 1-1
    │       + note c (red, blue) 1-2
    ├── green 2
    │       + note a (red, green) 2-1
    │       + note b (blue, green) 2-2
    └── red 3
            + note a (red, green) 3-1
            + note c (red, blue) 3-2
  

Both views are outlines with branches that end with note title lines. In path view, the nodes along the branches correspond to directory or file names and there can be many of these in each branch. In tag view, on the other hand, the nodes correspond to tag names and there can only be one of these in each branch.

The numeric identifiers appended to the lines in both views are provided by nts. These are single numbers for the nodes in the outline branches that have children and hyphenated numbers for the leaves, e.g., the "3" appended to the "grandchild.txt" node in the path view and the "2-1" appended to "+ note a (red, green)" in the tag view. The first of the two numbers in the leaf identifier is the indentifier of the parent node. These identifiers are used in various ways that are explained below.

Usage

nts provides two ways of interacting with the data.

• Command mode

  Commands are entered at the terminal prompt. E.g., enter

    $ nts -o p
  

  to display the path view in the terminal window. The output can also be piped in the standard way, e.g.,

    $ nts -o p | less
  

• Session mode

  Use the -s argument to begin session mode:

    $ nts -s
  

  This begins a session in which data is loaded into memory and remains available for subsequent interaction. In this mode, nts assumes command of the terminal window and provides its own > command prompt. Then, e.g., entering p at the prompt

    > p
  

  would display the path view. Session mode adds several features not available in command mode. E.g., when there are more lines to display than will fit in the terminal window, the lines are divided into pages with up and down cursor keys used to change pages.

Command Summary

1. In session mode, this is a toggle that switches the display back and forth between the active and the help displays.
2. Suppress showing notes in the outline. In session mode this toggles the display of notes off and on.
3. Suppress showing nodes in the outline, i.e., display only the notes. In session mode this toggles the display of the nodes off and on.
4. Limit the diplay of nodes in the outline to the integer MAX levels. Use MAX = 0 to display all levels.
5. Highlight displayed lines that contain a match for the case-insensitive regular expression REGEX. Enter an empty REGEX to clear highlighting.
6. Display complete notes that contain a match in the title, tags or body for the case-insensitive regular expression REGEX.
7. If IDENT is the 2-number identifier for a note, then display the contents of that note. Else if IDENT is the identifier for a ".txt" file, then display the contents of that file. Otherwise limit the display to that part of the outline which starts from the corresponding node.
8. In session mode, switch back and forth between the most recent path or tag display and the most recent display of a file or note.
9. If IDENT corresponds to either a note or a ".txt" file, then open that file for editing and, in the case of a note, scroll to the beginning line of the note.
10. If IDENT corresponds to either a note or a ".txt" file, then open that file for appending a new note. Otherwise, if IDENT corresponds to a directory, then prompt for the name of a child to add to that node. If the name entered ends with ".txt", a new note file will be created and opened for editing. Otherwise, a new subdirectory will be added to the node directory using the name provided. Use "0" as the IDENT to add to the root (data) node.

Configuration

Before you start nts for the first time, think about where you would like to keep your personal data files and any log files that nts will create. This will be your nts home directory. The data files will be stored in and below the subdirectory "data" in this home directory.

1. The default is to use whatever directory you're in when you start nts as the nts home directory either if it is empty (unused so far) or if it contains subdirectories called "data" and "logs" (not empty and already in use for nts). To use this option just change to this directory before starting nts.

2. Alternatively, if the current working directory doesn't satisfy the requirments but there is an environmental variable, NTSHOME, that contains the path to an existing directory, then nts will use this as its home directory. To use this option, first create the directory and then set the enivonmental variable by, e.g., appending the following to your "~/.bash_profile":

    export NTSHOME='complete path to the nts home directory'
   

3. Finally, if neither of the previous alternatives are satisfied, then nts will use "~/nts" as its home directory, creating this directory if necessary.

In the latter two cases both the nts "data" and "logs" directories will be created if necessary. If "data" needs to be created, the user will additionally be offered the opportunity to populate it with the data for the grandchild.txt example discussed above.

Installation

For use in a virtual environment

The steps for OS/X or linux are illustrated below. For details see python-virtual-environments-a-primer.

Open a terminal and begin by creating a new directory/folder for the virtual environment, say nts-pypi, in your home directory:

$ mkdir ~/nts-pypi
$ cd ~/nts-pypi

Now continue by creating the virtual environment (python >= 3.7.3 is required for nts):

$ python3 -m venv env

After a few seconds you will have an ./env directory. Now activate the virtual environment:

$ source env/bin/activate

The prompt will now change to something containing (env) to indicate that the virtual environment is active. Updating pip is now recommended:

(env) $ pip install -U pip

Note that this invokes ./env/bin/pip. Once this is finished, use pip to install nts:

(env) $ pip install -U nts-dgraham

This will install nts and all its requirements in

./env/lib/python3.x/sitepackages

and will also install an executable called nts in ./env/bin.You can then start nts using

(env) nts ARGS

using ARGS enumerated in the Command Summary section above.

For use system wide

If your system allows you to run sudo and you want general access system wide, then you could instead install nts using

$ sudo -H python3.x -m pip install -U nts-dgraham

replacing the 3.x with the verion of python you want to use, e.g., 3.7. This would put nts in your path (in the bin directory for python3.7).

Notes:

• This same command would be used to update nts to the latest version.

• You may or may not need the '-H' argument for sudo. Here is the relevant section from the sudo man page:

  -H, --set-home Request that the security policy set the HOME environment variable to the home directory specified by the target user's password database entry. Depending on the policy, this may be the default behavior.

• Invoking pip through python in this way forces the use of the pip that belongs to python3.7.

You can then open a terminal and start nts using

$ nts ARGS

using ARGS enumerated in the Command Summary section above.

License

Copyright (c) 2010-2022 Daniel Graham daniel.graham@duke.edu. All rights reserved. Further information about nts is available at github and in the nts discussion group at groups.io.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See GNU General Public License for more details.