A simple way of taking notes with absolute minimum structure. Everything is a list, even the list items are lists.
I log a lot of things in the following format:
- is a dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum gravida porta dapibus.
- delves into the euismod rhoncus elit, quis tempor nulla luctus.
- offers a ultricies consectetur ipsum sit amet, condimentum aliquet mi.
- Further magna sed, consequat ac nibh. Donec ut mauris eget.
- discusses another vehicula velit ac, feugiat ultricies nisi.
- explores tincidunt lobortis purus, nec efficitur elit vulputate.
- analyzes the consequat ac, rhoncus nec eros. Nulla facilisi.
- Examination of vestibulum ullamcorper dolor, vel vehicula dui ullamcorper.
- focuses on: a venenatis magna. Mauris fermentum, magna id mollis.
- examines various cursus, posuere at semper ut, posuere in ipsum.
- investigates a tempor justo, id ullamcorper magna finibus.
- evaluates:
- discusses lorem ipsum
- Further gravida lectus, sed efficitur ligula venenatis vitae.
- offers a ultricies consectetur:
- Further magna sed, consequat ac nibh. Donec ut mauris eget.
- analyzes the consequat ac, rhoncus nec eros. Nulla facilisi.
- offers quam. Praesent sit amet velit nec diam.
- presents: ipsum. Sed vitae ligula eget libero congue.
- Additional vehicula justo, quis tristique metus aliquam eget.
- discusses a lorem ipsum, non vehicula nisl lacinia.
- Comparative consequat quam, et porttitor ipsum vehicula nec.
- offers a pellentesque aliquam:
- explores a vestibulum condimentum nisi, in condimentum magna gravida.
- investigates the luctus metus, vitae commodo nulla molestie.
- In-depth fermentum eros, eget condimentum arcu commodo vitae.
- evaluates the viverra lorem, sed tempor orci varius.
- examines another tempor. Sed accumsan tellus eu nisl faucibus.
- addresses an nisi. Donec ultricies mauris eu justo fermentum.
- discusses a lorem ipsum, non vehicula nisl lacinia.
- analyzes the aliquet. Curabitur vel sagittis felis.
- explores eleifend. Sed ac ipsum eget metus.
- Examination of lorem ipsum, id tempus purus hendrerit.
- provides: a semper, eget consequat odio. Nam tristique nunc ac consequat.
- delves into the suscipit semper, et sodales libero sollicitudin vitae.
- offers quam. Praesent sit amet velit nec diam.
- presents ipsum. Sed vitae ligula eget libero congue.
- Additional vehicula justo, quis tristique metus aliquam eget.
- Comparative consequat quam, et porttitor ipsum vehicula nec.
This has several benefits:
- Mainly it reduces the overhead of structure for when I'm taking notes. I don't need to think about whether this is a title, heading 1, section, subsection, list, etc. I can freely write down the flow of my thoughts.
- It also is very flexible. By simple indentation I can put a whole section under another item or move things around.
- If I'm using a text editor that folds text, I can easily fold/unfold sections at various levels.
- When a topic gets too big, or if I need a new document around a certain topic, I can just copy that part to a new file and adjust the indentation.
- It is highly portable, i.e. this is a raw text file that I can easily turn it into a markdown, or into other rich formatted texts.
- It is cross platform. Any platform can read/edit a text file.
- I can algorithmically manipulate/analyze it, which is the goal of this repo.
The python code is going to be able to read a text file like above and provide some functionality:
- create a tree data structure that represents the structure of the text.
- handle empty lines, empty items, items with different types:
regular
items start with nothing, or with-
.todo
items start with[]
or[x]
or[?]
and have "done" status which isTrue
,False
, orNull
.- I'm not quite sure about the syntaxing here. Maybe I can be a bit more flexible to allow compatibility, but then that adds more structure. I think keeping things simple is better.
- understand whether an item is a "title" or a "text", or maybe a combination of both. here are some examples:
- example: - the above item is a title, and below it are a few items regarding it. - and this is just a text item, there is not much else you would expect to see - another example: but this is a combination, first there is a title of a few words, then a colon, then a longer sentence. There might still be some items below it or not
- prints the cleaned up version of the file to the text file.
- prints only a node and its children
- prints the children to a certain depth
- convert
- to markdown
- to latex
- to pdf
- to html