donno 0.12.2

A simple note-taking CLI application

Donno

A simple note-take CLI application.

Features

• Easy note management: add, update, list, remove note;
• Organize notes in hierarchical notebooks;
• Full featured formating support: you can add rich texts (markdown), mathematical formula (mathjax, LaTeX), images, attachments, ... All will be rendered and displayed lively in your browser through pandoc;
• Powerful and fast full-text search. Get all information at your fingers;
• Safe and secure: all notes are saved in plain texts (markdown). You own your data. You can view and update your notes without any specific applications but a text editor when necessary. All notes store in private git repository;
• Live in console: git style APIs. No need to learn a new GUI app. Get your notes anytime, anywhere: Linux, macOS, Windows (through WSL), Android (by Termux), SSH, ...

Install

pip install donno

Usage

don add        # create a new note
don list       # list notes in all notebooks
don list-notebooks    # list existing notebooks in alphabet order
don search nim thunder    # search notes contains "nim" and "thunder"
don edit 3     # edit note #3 in note list or searching results
don delete 3   # delete note #3 in note list or searching results
don backup     # backup notes to remote repository
don restore    # restore notes from remote repository
don preview 3  # preview note #3 in console editor
don pv 3       # preview note #3 in browser
don ads -b Tech -n nim -t config -c compile  # search notes in notebook Tech, which has "nim" in its title, "config" in tags and "compile" in contents
don ads -r "[nim|thunder]"  # search notes contains "nim" or "thunder"
don publish    # publish notes to blog

Note:

• Most long commands have aliases (abbreviation) for convenience. For example, a for add, l for list, s for search. Get alias with -h option.
• pv command depends on pandoc and a browser.

Add attachments in a note

You can add attachments in your notes. They could be image files, which are added by ![<image-file-name>](), or other files, which are added by [<attachment-file-name>]() (without exclamation mark ahead, like common markdown links).

The attachment file specified in the link must exist in the folder you add the note (the folder you run don a), or "attachment file not exists" error will be raised.

Under the hood

When you save a note and quit the editor, donno will scan all [<filename>]() pattern in the note. If the s exist in the current folder, donno do the following things:

1. Generate a for each attachment;
2. Copy each file to /resources folder (get the path of with don conf get repo) with their s;
3. Update the link in the note from [<filename>]() to [<filename>](<internal-name>)

The is composed of 5 parts:

1. Prefix resources/, for all attachments are saved in this folder in
3. att
4. Order number
5. File extension of original file

For example, if you add the following attachments in the note with filename note201118140711.md:

![myimage.png]()
[mydoc.pdf]()

They will be updated to:

![myimage.png](resources/note201118140711att1.png)
[mydoc.pdf](resources/note201118140711att2.pdf)

If the attachment file doesn't exist in the current folder, donno will give a warning:

File myimage.png does not exist in the current folder.
You can run `don e ...` at the folder where myimage.png exists.

Configuration

File path: ~/.config/donno/config.json

Configuration Items

General

• app_home: root folder of donno data files. Default: ~/.donno
• repo: folder to save all note files and resource files. Default: $app_home/repo
• editor: which application to use to create/update note. Default: nvim
• viewer: which application to use to view notes in console. Default: nvim -R
• default_notebook: default notebook name for a new note. Default: /Diary
• logging level: debug or info(default)
• editor_envs: environment variables of the editor. For example, env XDG_CONFIG_HOME is used by neovim to load config/plugins to parse markdown files. Default: ~/.config

Blog

• url: blog url
• publish_cmd: command to publish notes to blog

Manage Configurations

don conf get                # list all current configurations
don conf get edtior         # get which editor to use
don conf set editor nvim    # set the editor, make sure you've installed it
don conf set default_notebook /Diary/2020

# set nested attribute:
don conf set editor_envs.XDG_CONFIG_HOME $HOME/Documents/sources/vimrcs/text

# restore default values of configurations:
don conf restore

Update and uninstall

pip install --upgrade donno
pip uninstall donno

Import & Export between Other Note-taking Apps

Supported import formats:

• Joplin

Supported export formats:

• JSON
• markdown

Examples:

Import notes from Joplin:

jop export --format json jopdb
don imports jopdb --source-type joplin

Export notes as JSON files and save into folder donno_export:

don exports --type json

List parameters with don export -h and don import -h.

Some notes

Install in virtual environment

For those who don't want install apps in global environment, install it in a virtual environment:

mkdir ~/apps/donno
cd ~/apps/donno
python -m venv env
. env/bin/activate
pip install donno

cat << EOF >> ~/.zshrc
function dn() {
  source $HOME/apps/donno/env/bin/activate
  don $@
  deactivate
}
EOF

Now the command is dn instead of don.

Roadmap

In developing

Synchronize notes between hosts (based on VCS, such as git)

On schedule

1. Import/Export from/to other open source note-taking apps, such as Joplin

2. Advanced search function: search by title, tag, notebook and content

3. Search with regular expression

4. Basic publishing module: publish to blog, such as github.io

5. Advanced publishing function: publish specific note, or notes in specific notebook

Completed

1. Basic note-taking functions: add, delete, list, search, view, update notes

2. Configuration module: see Configuration;

3. Preview: render markdown notes to HTML and previewed in browser

4. Support adding attachments into notes, especially images

5. Add logging system, distinguish application (for end user) and debugging (for developer) logs

6. Notebook management: list notebooks, list notes in specified notebook