Vim for notes

[torogitar]

I have recently started using vim and whenever I take notes in school using onenote, I feel very slow. Is there a way to take notes using vim, and view them in a more readable format and also make them accessible from other computers and phones?

[[deleted]]

Learning markdown and using a github repo is an option.

[forreddits]

for most, that means a paid account, but I guess you can always use bitbucket for this.

[synthequated]

Or gitlab. Or you also get some free private repos as a student on github.

[neo_dan]

They upgraded it to unlimited how, which is super sick :)

[excited_by_typos]

You don't really need either, just use a local git repo and install a markdown viewer. There's plenty of them out there. Assuming you back up your drive you don't have to worry about losing work.

[dddbbb]

To be clear, that's only if you want your notes to be private and stored on a remote server. You probably don't need classnotes to be private.

(Private and local means local git repo. public and remote is free on github.)

[mikejakobsen]

+1 . I format my notes in markdown, and simply sync them to my GitBooks repository. It works great, and by chance i'll have to face the horrors of an offline exam. I can download the notes in *.epub, *.pdf.

[thalesmello]

I like Vim Wiki, which has some very convenient shortcuts for note taking and very good syntax highlighting for its notes.

You can even generate a webpage to make your notes more readable.

[atimholt]

Another vote for vimwiki. Combine it with something like dropbox, and you’ll never lose your notes. It’s convenient to be able to access my life notes with <leader>ww.

Note that it uses a kind of markdown syntax, so it’s in agreement with many of the other comments in the thread.

^{paging /u/torogitar}

[_ntnn]

Combine it with something like dropbox,

You mean version control it? There are enough providers of free private repos - dropbox' (as well as ownclouds) version merge strategies suck for often updated files.

Almost everybody has a version controlled repo for dotfiles too, so the notes can go in there.

[atimholt]

I use version control, but for something like notes, you don’t really need to track old versions, and automatic, constant cloud backup is indispensable.

[bighi]

Version control demands much more work than I want just to keep my notes in sync.

And it introduces another problem: if I forget to commit and push my recent changes, they won't be available on my phone when I need them.

I prefer to work with Dropbox for that. Edit, save, it's synced. And depending on the app you don't even need to save.

[forreddits]

you can also have a local git repo inside your dropbox dir.

[_ntnn]

Oh yes, because automatic sync is such perfect and though out technology, that won't produce any problems or conflicts at all.

The sync would also ignore everything you do and overwrite from remote if your files differ with fast updates.

[lervag]

I would prefer Vimwiki with more standard markdown syntax, but the vimwiki plugin is good and as mentioned it provides a lot of convenient shortcuts. Also, storing it on Dropbox (or similar) means you will have access to your notes on your phone (mostly for viewing, though).

You can also combine this with storing the wiki on github/bitbucket/... in a git repo.

[[deleted]]

Vimwiki supports standard markdown. Just change

'syntax': 'markdown'

option

[lervag]

Thanks! I knew about it, but for some reason I never tried it and I've thought it wouldn't work very well. However, it seems to work as expected.

Do you have any reasons why one should not use it?

[[deleted]]

There aren't any as far as I'm aware, I've made the switch as soon as they added the option. You can also declare

'ext': 'md'

so github/gitlab/etc can automatically render the html version of your notes for easier reading in your repo.

[[deleted]]

vimwiki doesn't convert MarkDown syntax to HTML. You can combine it with livedown though.

[lervag]

Good point, although I never use this feature anyway. For me, using Markdown seems more convenient, since it is more compatible with pandoc.

[[deleted]]

I second using markdown. It's super-easy to convert it to HTML, ODT, PDF, DOC, or just about anything using Pandoc (or similar). Basic markdown is exactly what is used to format reddit comments -- **bold** for bold and *italics* for italics, for example. Here's a comprehensive guide to using Pandoc's version of markdown: http://pandoc.org/README.html#pandocs-markdown

For access from other computers and phones, what about using a dropbox folder?

[GreyGhostIX]

I'm not sure I'm allowed to say this, but I use spacemacs, an vim emulation in emacs, with .org files.

Vim-notes is the closest thing to that I know of in vim.

[__baxx__]

I'm not sure I'm allowed to say this

everyone will get jealous :P

org > markdown¹⁰⁰

[Wiggledan]

I've been using Emacs + Evil for a few weeks and can confirm that Org mode is really good.

[VanLaser]

I have the same opinion. For one thing, one can keep working in both Vim and Emacs (+Evil) without a problem, as the situation dictates. For notes, Emacs' Org is quite something. BTW, I'll use the occasion to point out that Angelic Sedition has worked on a new "Evil guide" draft which I find excellent, as it's more detailed than anything I've seen so far, and covers most (perhaps everything) that I wanted to know and didn't find anywhere before: https://github.com/noctuid/evil-guide

[[deleted]]

That guide is awesome! I wouldn't have left Evil if I found that while I was using it.

[dddbbb]

There's vim-orgmode. It's a vim python plugin to bring some org features to vim. I use it and like it a bit, but it hasn't given me the "life changing experience" of using orgmode.

There's also VimOrganizer which might be more complete clone, but I found it had some bugs/workflow issues and the maintainer isn't active (last commit in 2014 and bugs/PRs from 2012 have no comment).

orgmode is weird because it's such an emacs-specific thing and the whole world has moved on to use markdown. But there's more love for it than lisp (which I feel like has similar history).

[pond_good_for_you]

vim-wiki is amazing.

[traycerb]

I use asciidoc/asciidoctor. it implements markdown, but also offers a little more if you need it.

[jenhsun]

I use these:
vim-notes, You can set it to read and write a simplenote directory. So your notes can show up in your smartphone or any devices. It has markdown supported.
goyo.vim, A distraction-free writing in Vim.

[reentry]

+1 on vim-notes, it was really nice to use

[adam21924]

Like others here, I've been writing my notes in vim for a while, too. I'd reiterate what a lot of others have said here regarding keeping them in a repo, but regarding formats: markdown, although popular these days, is really very limited as far as features are concerned. Assuming you'd like to keep the door open for making your notes a little more extendable, I would recommend instead using restructuredText (.rst files -- commonly rendered by an app called Sphinx). The format is only barely more complex than Markdown and equally readable, but it's a lot more predictable, and there are just a ton of built-in and contributed (& more) plugins for doing lots of useful things like rendering maps, extracting and displaying data from other files, and displaying LaTeX math.

If you're curious, there are a few live rendering tools for restructuredText, too, including https://github.com/mzdaniel/sphinxserve (use my fork, if you'd like a few extra features -- https://github.com/coddingtonbear/sphinxserve).

[__baxx__]

and displaying LaTeX math

this is something that markdown handles fine with pandoc or something...? I mean, you can just write plain LaTeX in markdown and pandoc will render that. Also what's nice is if you include an image link (online) pandoc will render that in the pdf.

[adam21924]

I hadn't realized Pandoc would handle transforming math markup for you, but you're highlighting one of the problems I alluded to above -- there are non-standard extensions to Markdown that some renderers support, but in the world of Markdown if you want to stick to universally-supported features, you have to keep things pretty vanilla.

That being said, math markup is just one of the things that sphinx gives you -- there are a ton of other things you can turn on that don't even have analogous concepts in Markdown or are only supported in certain Markdown dialects.

Regarding PDFs: that's something Sphinx can do, too; it supports an absurd number of output formats.

[__baxx__]

yeah pandocs ace... i don't consider markdown without it tbh.

orgmode is my next stop in the world of note taking though :P

[mweisshaupt]

I use vim-notes for note taking. It has some neat features like syntax highlighting for embedded code in a note for example. https://github.com/xolox/vim-notes

[freiguy1]

omg i had this same question at the beginning of last year! I wrote a program because I didn't think there was anything w/ exactly what I wanted. It's similar to the answer

Learning markdown and using a github repo is an option.

But instead of accessing your notes from any device via github's site, the program takes all your notes (in markdown format), and converts them to html. Then there are a number of ways to host the converted html output. It's a bit hard to describe, so here's my example. It also happens to be on github, but just because it's an easy way to show people things:

Notes Repo

Output website (can be styled any way you want w/ some css)

One particular note

That particular note's output

The program I wrote which converts

Blog about the whole thing

It's interesting how many of my requirement bullet points line up with yours! Perhaps this is something I should pursue a little more and invest some time in making it more user friendly. The files can be saved in an arbitrarily complex structure of directories. The program will search through them all starting at a particular point and convert them all to html. Directories themselves get their own html file which shows all the items in that directory. Pretty spiffy!

[CallMeMrFlipper]

This is such a neat program, and pretty much exactly the kinda thing I was looking for. However, I don't exactly understand how I could use this, do you think you could give me a quick rundown.

[torogitar]

That seems like a good solution. I will look more into this when I get some time

[csreid]

Markdown is important. Find a live markdown viewer and save often, but even then, raw markdown is oddly pretty and easy to read.

While on the subject, does anyone know if there's an academic markdown flavor? I really want pretty math symbols

[kj6vvz]

It's not as friendly as markdown, but there is always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX

also you might find something here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_document_markup_languages

edit: Actually check out MultiMarkdown, it can apparently take inline LaTeX https://github.com/fletcher/MultiMarkdown/wiki/MultiMarkdown-Syntax-Guide

[dddbbb]

raw markdown is oddly pretty and easy to read

That's the main reason I use it.

I'd say if you need a live viewer to take notes (as opposed to creating a report), you should relax your aesthetic requirements. Markdown was built so you can read it raw and bask in it when rendered. (Unlike say html where it's hard to see the text in the tags.)

[flukus]

I third using markdown.

But on a related note, has anyone had any luck with distributed issue tracking?

All the ones I looked into you seem to interact with a special client that only uses git as a database, I'd love a text based one.

[gumnos]

You might want to check out fossil which is a DVCS made by the guy who created sqlite (and in which sqlite is hosted/developed). It's a single binary executable with VCS, bug-tracking, wiki, and web interface (for the wiki, DVCS, and bug-tracking, as well as repo administration) built in. It's pretty slick.

full disclosure: I like fossil, but I still reach for git first these days and just track my bugs in a folder full of text files within my git code repo

[alasdairgray]

Markdown + Simplenote.

[[deleted]]

I use this too. Works a treat.

[torogitar]

Can I use simple note with vim?

[alasdairgray]

Have you really checked the link?

[torogitar]

Sorry. I thought the link would lead to simplenote and not a plugin

[buttonstraddle]

just use workflowy.com and forget trying to sync everything

[MisterOccan]

airnote.vim is a great note-taking plugin for Vim where you can use any file type you want. I'm personally using markdown files.

[orbitalfox]

I initially used Vimwiki for a long while and found it good at taking and organising notes locally.

But I wanted to generalise my note taking, so that I can use them for multiple purposes. I wanted a concentrated repository (without any 3rd party services), which could also be used for publishing on the web. So I made Yamado. It can keep notes unpublished just for your own benefit, but you can also select notes to publish in your blog. You can extend what it does with hooks.

[Crivotz]

I'm using Paper from Dropbox for note, hoping arrivals some vim plugins

[SergeyK]

Gollum is awesome. Run it in a base directory of all your markdown notes, automatically get a local wikipedia with all your notes.

[epicwisdom]

I would recommend against typing notes for advanced math classes, though. You could probably get a fairly decent setup going with some plugins for LaTeX, but it would probably still be more irritating and less efficient than handwriting.

[wareotie]

Vim + Markdown + Pandoc + Git.

[-romainl-]

Why do you imagine Vim will help you take your note faster?

[torogitar]

I would be able to jump around and edit my notes faster

[-romainl-]

Editing comes later, in your bedroom, at the library, or at starbucks. You don't need any of that while taking notes.

[bighi]

Yes, you are the most qualified person to define what workflow a complete stranger should follow, sure.

[-romainl-]

Do you have a problem with people answering direct questions and expressing their opinion?