Vimwiki | Hacker News Reader

Vimwiki

code.google.com

76 pointssimonreed16 comments

I might have found this interesting if it used Markdown as its base syntax, since I prefer my content to be somewhat portable from one system to another. I like to avoid being locked into a particular piece of software, and Vimwiki's custom syntax would seem to make that kind of portability more challenging than if it used Markdown, Textile, or some other somewhat-standard syntax as its base syntax.

In the help document there are references to being able to change they syntax to Markdown. I haven't investigated them but give it a look.

:h vimwiki-option-syntax

(default, markdown, media)

It can only convert vimwiki syntax to HTML, but I don't really need that.

Shameless plug: This sounds similar to my own werc project: http://werc.cat-v.org which uses the file system to store plain markdown files which you can edit in whatever editor you like.

I use vimwiki in combination with Dropbox and some symlinks to keep my text-only wiki portable. Useful for tech snippets and notes when I don't want to fire up a browser...

... speaking of which: Some commenters suggest various browser-based wikis. My favourite is the JavaScript-only tiddlywiki:

http://tiddlywiki.com/

It's got bunches of plugins and compatible variants (I use the mGSD variant for GTD), so it's way more than just a wiki.

I keep this in my Dropbox too, and can work on it with any browser, Windows or Linux, with or without git or any other HTTP server, online or offline.

Although I like vim for programming and config file editing, I is not the perfect solution for me for note-taking. I like more markup and a GUI with some functionality. The perfect solution for me is Tomboy[0]. It is included in many Linux distributions and there is an installer for Mac OS and Windows. I love the SSH synchronization mechanism that keeps my notes secure on a virtual hosted server and up to date across my computers.

[0] http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/

I wonder if there is a phone out there that just boots into a minimal android software stack with a Vim interface to the typical phone features, calling, texting, notes, etc. Touchscreen with a physical keyboard would make this the ultimate hacker tool.

Could you expand on that? How would this work?

Perhaps a more elegant personal wiki solution is Github's own gollum[1]. It supports markdown as well as a number of other formats.

[1] https://github.com/github/gollum/

Vimwiki + github is a great combination. So far the best "personal wiki" solution to me - and I tried many.

Have you tried Wikidot[1]? Personally I've found it to be far superior to any other wiki platform I've tried.

[1] http://wikidot.com

can you explain your flow?

Uhm, pretty "ghetto": git init in your ~/vimwiki directory and then it's git push/pull all the way.

I guess you could automate that if you really wanted. Another idea would be to put your vimwiki folder into your Dropbox.

As vimwiki files are plain text you can really do almost anything to them.

My .vim dir and .vimrc file are symlinks into Dropbox. Dropbox versioning is good-enough for stuff like that.

I like vimwiki + Dropbox. You get the added benefit of being able to make notes on the run with an app like Writeroom that syncs to Dropbox.

In the past I used Soywiki, which, like Vimwiki, is a wiki inside Vim. While I love Vim, it was too inefficient to have to ssh into a box, cd into ~/wiki, and launch Vim just to read or edit an entry -- especially on my phone.

The solution I've found is called Gitit, which stores entries as plaintext in Git like Vimwiki and Soywiki, but adds several additional features on top of that:

- powered by Pandoc, which means you can write entries in Markdown/LaTeX/reStructuredText/Literate Haskell, and export them in almost any format, including PDF, HTML, LaTeX, Markdown, ePub, and ODT.

- a customizable web interface. I used Bootstrap to make the wiki look great everywhere. Couple that with the speech-to-text features in Android 4.0+ and storing your knowledge becomes effortless anywhere.

- a Haskell plugin system. You can write plugins with access to the Pandoc AST, allowing you to do things like archive all outbound URLs or enable [Interwiki](!Wikipedia) links.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com