Rbnotes

Rbnotes is a simple utility to write a note in the single repository.

This document provides the basic information to use rbnotes. You may find more useful information in Wiki pages.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rbnotes'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install rbnotes

General syntax is:

rbnotes [global_opts] [command] [command_opts] [args]

• "-c CONF_FILE", "--conf"
  • specifies a configuration file

• import
  • imports existing files
• list
  • lists notes in the repository with their timestamps and subject
• search
  • search a word (or words) in the repository
• show
  • shows the content of a note
• add
  • adds a new note to the repository using an external editor
• update
  • update the content of the specified note using an external editor
• delete
  • deletes the specified note form the repository

The rbnotes command reads the configuration file during its startup. This section describes the specification of the configuration file.

Searches the configuration file in the following order:

1. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/rbnotes/config.yml
2. $HOME/.config/rbnotes/config.yml

None of them is found, then the default configuration is used.

The global option "-c CONF_FILE" will override the location.

The format of the configuration file must be written in YAML.

The configuration of rbnotes is represented as a Hash object in the program code. So, each line of the configuration YAML looks like:

name: value

Name must be written as Ruby's symbol, such :repository_type. On the other hand, value will be written in 2 types. Some are Ruby's symbols, the others are strings surrounded with double/single quotations.

A real example:

---
:run_mode: :production
:repository_type: :file_system
:repository_name: "notes"
:repository_base: "~"
:pager: "bat -l md"
:editor: "/usr/local/bin/emacsclient"

The content is identical to conf/config.yml.

• :production (default)
• :development
• :test

The run-mode affects to behavior of rbnotes, such logging information, the location of the repository, ..., etc.

• :file_system (default)

This value depends on classes those derived from Textrepo::Repository of textrepo. Currently (textrepo 0.4.x), Textrepo::FileSystemRepository is the only one class usable for rbnotes.

User can set an arbitrary string as this value. However, the value will be used as a part of the repository location in the file system. Some characters in the string may cause a problem.

In addition to this, the run-mode affects the actual value when it is used in the program.

This value is used as a base directory of the repository. That is, the values constructs the root path of the repository with the :repository_name value. It would be:

:repository_base/:repository_name

The value is recommended to be an absolute path in the production time, since relative path will be expanded with the current working directory. However, in the development and testing time, the relative path may be useful. See conf/config_deve.yml or conf/config_test.yml.

The short-hand notation of the home directory ("~") is usable.

• :template : specify a template file for add command
• :pager : specify a pager program
• :editor : specify a editor program
• :searcher: specify a program to perform search
• :searcher_options: specify options to pass to the searcher program

Be careful to set :searcher and :searcher_options. The searcher program must be expected to behave equivalent to grep with -inRE. At least, its output must be the same format and it must runs recursively to a directory.

If your favorite searcher is one of the followings, see the default options which textrepo sets for those searchers. In most cases, you don't have to set :searcher_options for them.

Those searcher names are used in macOS (with Homebrew). Any other OS might use different names.

• grep and egrep -> BSD grep (macOS default)
• ggrep and gegrep -> GNU grep
• rg -> BurntSushi/ripgrep
• ugrep -> Genivia/ugrep

If the name is different, :searcher_options should be set with the same value. For example, if you system use the name gnugrep as GNU grep, and you want to use it as the searcher (that is, set gnugrep to :searcher), you should set :searcher_options value with ["-i", "-n", "-R", "-E"].

Add command always searches a template file in the default directory. The default directory is,

• $XDG_CONIFG_HOME/rbnotes/templates (if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is defined)

or

• $HOME/.config/rbnotes/templates

If a file which named as default.md is found in the above directory, it will use as a template file to generate the initial content of a new note.

When a command line option or a setting of the configuration file is specified to use a template file, add command will read it instead of the default template file.

Command line option of add to specify a template file is:

> rbntoes add -f /somewhere/template.md

See the above section about the configuration file setting to specify a template file.

Though a template file can be written any format of text (markdown, HTML, plain text, or ...), add command will process the content using ERB. So, using ERB syntax, you can mix Ruby code in a template file.

Here is a very simple and short example to use ERB syntax:

## <%= Time.now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d") %>

It just insert a date string like "2021-04-29" at the top of a new note which generates by add command.

All mandatory variables have their default values. Here is the list of them:

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/mnbi/rbnotes.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.