Ask HN: How do you organize your text files? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you organize your text files?

15 pointsasimjalis12 comments

I write all my notes in text files in Vim. How do you organize them into folders so that you can find them later? It is difficult to come up with an a priori categorization. Ideas?

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Why not come up with some in-file indexing system (i.e. define a Keywords or Topic section using a unique text pattern) and then configure ctags so that it can scan a given file for that information.

You could then just run ctags from inside Vim to give you a full index.

Is this what you have in mind? https://github.com/Jonovono/C

Evernote. With tags and notebooks.

But, I hate it. I would love to switch to something else. Maybe just plain text notes in a directory stucture indeed.

I just have a Notes directory in my home folder. I'll have a java.txt file, a linux.txt file, a css.txt file, etc. Then I just do a grep for what I'm looking for. I've wasted too many hours trying various categorization schemes, never being happy with any of them. Now I just grep all the files and don't worry about it. If I grep for "ssh", I might get results in my linux.txt file and my ssh.txt file. No big deal, I just grep all the files, and let go of the harsh stress of trying to categorize everything absolutely correctly.

same here - I used to spend hours upon hours organizing and organizing. every new file I would add would mean a new category. each new category gave me new ideas for new systems. flat directory and grep here as well.

(I originally used Vim, but then I switched to Emacs + Evil.)

I started out organizing my ideas in a single hierarchically organized text file (I call it ideas.org because I use org-mode) based on the categories of my ideas, and as each category grows, I place it into its own text file, replacing its former place in my ideas.org file with a link to the new file (this is where it sure would be nice to have Ted Nelson-style transclusion). As each category grows subcategories, I place those into their own files too.

I have a sublime project that I store all my notes in with everything organized into subdirectories. I use git to keep track of changes I make to my notes.

Ctrl-P let's me search via file names, Find all within the project directory lets me flip through the entirety of my notes. Works fantastically. I'm sure with CTags or some such plugin you could get really serious with this, but this suits my needs perfectly fine and is simplistic yet powerful.

TrunkNotes - personal wiki - brilliant. Has great dynamic functionality, markdown, supports Lua and even though iOS based, has wifi access from desktop browser. Use for notes, tasks, etc. http://www.appsonthemove.com/trunk.htm

I use pystash (trystash.com) with tags. It's like an evernote but for command line.

nvalt in a single directory on Dropbox. Some other junk in Evernote.

Keepnote is worth checking out, if you're on Windows or Linux, but it runs like crap on OS X.

Vimwiki works like a charm.

Keepnote.

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