zettel2 [name desperately in need of a change]

A set of lightweight Emacs functionalities augmenting the org-mode note-taking and note management experience in a non-invasive manner.

A successor to zettel-mode but different enough to warrant being a separate project.

zettel2 focuses on providing a consistent naming scheme, links resistant to file renaming and a graph showing the relationship between the notes. All this while avoiding putting artificial restrains such as limiting its use to a single directory.

FEATURES

zettel2 strives to be modular and not impose unnecessary functionality upon the user. It contains the following modules:

• zettel2 contains the base commands and the functions to work with the note IDs.
• zettel2-mode provides a mode with a keymap exposing most of the zettel2 functionality.
• zettel2-link provides a custom org-mode link type (its format being zettel:ID) that behaves roughly like the file: links but contain only the note ID allowing to freely rename the file without breaking the link. The link is additionally decorated to make it clear it's an internal link between two notes and not to an external resource.
• zettel2-graph visualizes the relationship between notes using GraphViz. Tracks both the special zettel: links and the standard file: links.

GOALS

COMPATIBILITY & FLEXIBILITY

This system needs to work with any vanilla org-mode file, no special metadata needed. zettel2 shouldn't be bound to any specific directory, its functionality shouldn't assume anything about where the files are being kept or how many distinct sets of notes we own.

The only hard requirements concern the filename, not the file contents. Namely I've borrowed the excellent naming scheme from Denote by Protesilaos Stavrou et al. Please refer to its documentation for the details.

Due to how non-invasive it is, zettel2 composes very well with various other packages, for example:

• denote-dired-mode can be used to decorate the dired note listings
• deft can be used to search and browse the notes

Some functionalities assume a flat directory structure, i.e. all the notes in a given set exist in the same directory. Subdirectories won't break anything per se, though the zettel: links cannot be used between directories (they always look for a given note ID in the same directory) and the reference graph may be incomplete (only the current directory is searched for links between the notes).

RESILIENCE TO MODIFICATION

The note integrity must be preserved through almost any possible operation. As it stands, the only harmful operation is changing/removal of the note ID (file creation timestamp) from the filename as it's used for all the linking.

This is achieved first and foremost by not duplicating any information that doesn't absolutely need to be duplicated.

The filename contains:

• the note ID
• the machine-readable note title
• tags

The file contents contain:

• the human-readable note title
• the IDs of the linked notes (inside the links)
• optionally: the note ID; this one is actually duplicated from the filename but they are immutable anyway and it could be handy in case of data recovery or for compatibility with the vanilla org-mode

The file contents specifically don't contain:

• the full file names of the linked notes (would break in case of a rename or retag)
• the note tags (would be duplicated with the filename and could become inconsistent with it)

KEYMAP

zettel2-mode exposes the following keymap (on top of the regular org-mode one):

• C-c C-n (zettel2-create-note) prompts for a title and tags for a new note and creates it according to the naming convention.
• C-c C-M-r (zettel2-graph) calculate and display the graph of relationships between notes.
• C-c C-r (zettel2-backrefs) show the notes linking to the current note using grep.
• M-n (org-next-link)
• M-p (org-previous-link)

INSTALLATION

To install zettel2 mode using straight.el, use the following code:

(use-package zettel2
  :straight (:host github :repo "vifon/zettel2"
             :files (:defaults "graph.pl"))
  :after org
  :hook (org-mode . zettel2-enable)
  :init (defun zettel2-enable ()
          (when (and buffer-file-name
                     (or (string-match-p "/\\.deft/[^/]+\\.org\\'" buffer-file-name)
                         (string-match-p "/zettels?/[^/]+\\.org\\'" buffer-file-name)))
            (zettel2-minor-mode)))
  :config (progn
            (require 'zettel2-link)
            (setq zettel2-graph-format "png")))

This specific configuration associates zettel2-minor-mode with all the *.org files inside any directory named .deft, zettel or zettels. It also activates the custom link type and sets the dependency graph format to "png". This is just an example (that the author happens to use) and it's perfectly fine to customize it.

Another way would be to put the following into a .dir-locals.el file which would enable zettel2-minor-mode whenever org-mode is enabled in this directory.

((org-mode . ((eval . (zettel2-minor-mode)))))

Installation with package.el wasn't tested.