How to take notes/to-do list in terminal itself? Vim or spacemacs or something else?

#discuss #vim #emacs #watercooler

When you come across a issue and solve and try to document it for future or even make a to do list of in terminal ? what do you use? I have been trying spacemacs but having trouble getting used to the point where I can use it in my everyday routine.Im a vim (not a hardcore vim user) but my most work does revolve working in terminal so wanted to make my documentation /schedule in terminal rather than opening a new app.
Can vim be used for this?

Oldest comments (8)

Martin Jablečník • Oct 31 '21

Yes I also work in terminal on everyday basis and using Vim for make todoes is a very simple and fast way ;-)

Shweta Kadam • Oct 31 '21

Do you use any vim plugins to make todoes or anything as such?

Martin Jablečník • Oct 31 '21

No I am not using any plugin.
I only create in plain text something like this:

- [ ] test todo1
- [ ] test todo2
- [x] test todo3
- [ ] test todo4
- [x] test todo5

and with 'R' key I replace blank space by 'x' between brackets.

Heiker • Oct 31 '21

I don't have the habit of taking notes but I'm aware of some vim plugins made for that.

vim-wiki
neorg (requires neovim)

Shweta Kadam • Nov 2 '21

I will be sure to check these out! I was trying to learn spacemacs but the key bindings are not that intuitive to me.

Andrew McIntosh • Nov 1 '21

I've used todo.txt in the past. It's a simple text-based todo app with a command line tool: github.com/todotxt/todo.txt-cli/re...

Peter Benjamin (they/them) • Nov 22 '21 • Edited

Can vim be used for this?

Short answer: yes, there are a couple of ways you could accomplish this depending on the experience you want to have and trade-offs you're willing to make.

Long answer:

Minimal Approach

I use the official GitHub CLI gh for this and keep track of my notes/to-dos in a private gist.

For example, you could maintain both notes & to-do's in 1 gist, like:

$ echo '# NOTES' > /tmp/NOTES.md # you won't need these files after initial creation as future edits will be immediately written to GH Gists
$ echo '# TODOS' > /tmp/TODOS.md # you won't need these files after initial creation as future edits will be immediately written to GH Gists

$ gh gist create /tmp/NOTES.md /tmp/TODOS.md --desc "My notes & todos"
- Creating gist with multiple files
✓ Created gist NOTES.md
https://gist.github.com/123abc456def

Then to edit them later:

$ gh gist edit 123abc456def
# You will be prompted to select between NOTES.md or TODOS.md
# Then your $EDITOR will be launched

# Alternatively, you can pre-select the file you want to edit:
$ gh gist edit 123abc456def -f NOTES.md

# You can also add new files to existing gists later:
$ echo '# TEST' > /tmp/TEST.md
$ gh gist edit 123abc456def --add /tmp/TEST.md

With this basic gh familiarity, you can write some bash shell scripts to simplify managing notes & to-do's, like:

# Interactive Notes & To-Dos
$ echo 'int() { gh gist edit 123abc456def ; }' >> ~/.profile

# Note only
$ echo 'note() { gh gist edit 123abc456def -f NOTES.md ; }' >> ~/.profile

# To-Do only
$ echo 'todo() { gh gist edit 123abc456def -f TODOS.md ; }' >> ~/.profile

$ source ~/.profile

$ int
$ note
$ todo

You can also write a simple Vim command to manage notes/to-dos from within Vim, like:

:command! INT execute '!gh gist edit 123abc456def'
:INT

This minimal approach resembles the unix philosophy where you use specialized tools that are good at one thing and stitch them together to accomplish something productive, extensive, and re-usable. The beauty of it shines when you realize the following:

Notes are instantly sync'ed and accessible from other machines/devices (thanks to GitHub).
You can use nano, vim, neovim, emacs, spacemacs, visual studio code, intellij, or butterflies, by setting the export EDITOR="..." environment variable.
Unlimited extensibility. For example, if you use alfred (aka macOS Spotlight on steroids), then you can create a shortcut for this so you can call it from anywhere. If you use tmux, you can create keybindings to call it from anywhere, e.g. bind-key C-t split-window 'gh gist edit 123abc456def' to launch it with <prefix> + <Ctrl-T>. If you use VSCode, you can do the same with a Custom Task or a Gist vscode plugin. And so on...
If you are an iOS/iPadOS user, you can access and manage all your notes/to-dos via Working Copy app. I'm certain android has a number of git clients that you can use as well.

Bonus: I use this method for blog posts. I start by dumping thoughts/outlines in markdown file, then use gh gist create /path/to/file.md, continue to work on it over days/weeks/months until it is done, then publish it to GitHub Pages and/or to dev.to.

Vim Plugin Approach

There are a number of vim plugins for note-taking. I personally have used vimwiki in the past, but there are more options, like vim-dotoo.

This reddit post from 6 years ago might be relevant.

The benefit of this approach is that note editing and management is a lot more integrated with Vim (e.g. keybindings to speed up common operations) at the cost of being re-usable via shell scripts or if you use a different editor later.