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VimWiki: I write my notes in the terminal, like a monster


VimWiki is my preferred notetaking solution because it's intentionally minimal.

When I want to take notes, I want to take notes, not see a mind map or extra visualizations or photos to distract me. I'm old school! (Or just old.)

In today's video, I'll show you how to install VimWiki for yourself, as well as configure it to use Markdown (my preferred text formatting), and update the file path for VimWiki files so that it's easy to sync with third party solutions like Nextcloud Notes.

Significant links mentioned in the video:
👩🏻‍💻 My blog post which covers this topic: vkc.sh/vimwiki-101
👷 VimWiki's GitHub page: github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
☁️ Nextcloud, my preferred self-hosted file sync solution: nextcloud.com
📓 Nextcloud Notes on GitHub: github.com/nextcloud/notes-and…
🎈 Eleventy, my preferred SSG: 11ty.dev/
🦖 Wikipedia's page on how modes work as an interface concept (Vim being an example of a "modal editor"): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(us…

This video has no sponsors except for my channel's Patrons and Ko-Fi members.
🅿️ Patreon: patreon.com/VeronicaExplains
☕ Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains

Chapters:
0:00 I say "greetings" and tell you about VimWiki
1:33 Getting and installing VimWiki
3:46 Using VimWiki
6:51 Customizing VimWiki: switching it to Markdown
8:28 Changing the VimWiki directory (to sync with Nextcloud)
10:10 Navigating around in VimWiki
12:12 Conclusion: I think VimWiki is neat

#linux #vim #homelab

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

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in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Oooh I'll confess to having salivated a bit on this one. Had I known about this some time ago I might have adopted it. I went the Obsidian way and am slightly locked in due to the powerful plugins that I do make some use of - and there's the plus of being able to navigate and edit wiki-style from the app - not sure if NC Notes would work that well. Ironically I use the VIM mode on Obsidian 😀

I might set up vimwiki anyway to have a dual access - powerful plugins or fast loading time!

Unknown parent

in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Thanks, this was very useful. I currently have *tons* of notes in Notion, but I want to move them somewhere. I love vim, so this looks good.
Unknown parent

peertube - Link to source
Chriscos
yeah that would be cool.
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Excellent video.

I have a few question about your usage of a wiki and a journal.

First, about the sync of the wiki with the phone: Do you not fear the stealing of your phone will expose a lot of info ?
That the reason I do not sync my tasks and notes with my phone. I only capture some non sensitive info on the phone and take them back as soon as possible to my computer.

Second, do you have more example of how you use your journal ?
I tried to have a journal multiple times, but always end to not knowing what to write in it.

in reply to postroutine

I'm not exactly worried about my phone being stolen- not just because of device hardening, but because Nextcloud is flexible enough to let me pick and choose what syncs where and how. Besides, I don't put really sensitive stuff in VimWiki or Nextcloud. Offline and encrypted is the way to go.

As far as how I use the journal, I basically summarize what my plans for the day are at the beginning of the day, and then include pertinent details of interruptions that might occur. Some folks treat it like a "lab journal" with timestamps and a list of things they've accomplished during those times.

in reply to vkc via PeerTube

@vkc, VimWiki is great and this is a great introduction to it! I also use nb as a nice compliment to VimWiki, as it allows me to interact with my notes collection from the command line outside of Vim, I recommend checking it out.

github.com/xwmx/nb

in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Nice video! I'm currently using joplin for notes, which is nice but a bit too GUI-confined for my tastes. I'm considering switching tools, and restucturing my notes a bit more in a publish-everything-by-default digital garden thing, and it seems like nextcloud-synced markdown files edited with vim would be a nice ingredient for that.

Thanks!

in reply to vkc via PeerTube

I really like to use vimwiki but I use neovim, I switched awhile ago from vim to neovim. In the vimwiki github there's mentioned there could be neovim specific bugs that links to issues for various issues that neovim user encounter. I think I rather search for something similar that was made specifically for neovim.
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

This is really interesting, I already use Nextcloud Notes (a lot) but it's inconveniently slow on desktop so I might try this out.
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

I also tried using Logseq for similar purposes but the graph part stopped working for me ages ago and now it's mostly just a collection of notes as far as I'm using it...
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

I've been using org-mode in very much the same way. I just happened to go the Emacs route rather than vim and experienced the same brain-breaking you described.

Very cool that there's a vim way to do this as well.

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