Tp-Note: save and edit your clipboard content as a note file

Document a downloaded file:

Download the file i3-extensions.zip:

wget "http://blog.getreu.net/_downloads/i3-extensions.zip"

Document from where you downloaded the file:

echo  "[download](<http://blog.getreu.net/_downloads/i3-extensions.zip>)" | tpnote i3-extensions.zip

This creates the file i3-extensions.zip--URL.md with the following content:

---
title:      i3-extensions.zip
subtitle:   URL
author:     getreu
date:       2020-09-03
lang:       en-GB
---

[i3-extensions.zip](<i3-extensions.zip>)

[download](<http://blog.getreu.net/_downloads/i3-extensions.zip>)

Download a webpage, convert it to Markdown and insert the result into a Tp-Note file. The note’s title is the name of the first hyperlink found in the webpage.

Install pandoc and curl:

sudo apt install pandoc curl

Download and convert:

curl 'https://blog.getreu.net' | pandoc -f html -t markdown_strict | tpnote

Download a webpage while preserving its metadata:

Same as above, but the following preserves the webpage’s metadata, e.g. title, author, date… :

curl 'https://blog.getreu.net' | pandoc --standalone -f html -t markdown_strict+yaml_metadata_block | tpnote

creates the note file 20200910-Jens\ Getreu\'s\ blog.md with the webpage’s content.

Generate a note for a given content with YAML header:

echo -e "---\ntitle: Todo\nfile_ext: mdtxt\n---\n\nnothing" | tpnote

creates the file 20200910-Todo.mdtxt with the content:

---
title:      Todo
subtitle:   ''
author:     getreu
date:       2020-09-13
lang:       en-GB

file_ext:   mdtxt
---

nothing

Reformat the header of a note file:

mv "20200921-My Note.md" "20200921-My Note-(1).md"
cat "20200921-My Note-(1).md" | tpnote --batch

creates the file 20200921-My Note.md with a rearranged header and the same body.

FILE=$(tpnote --batch); vi "$FILE"; tpnote --batch "$FILE"

Create a new note overwriting the template’s default for subtitle:

cd dev
echo -e "---\nsubtitle: Draft\n---\n# Draft" | tpnote

creates the note file 20200925-dev--Draft.md with the content:

---
title:      dev
subtitle:   Draft
author:     Getreu
date:       2020-09-25
lang:       en-GB
---

# Draft

Synchronize filenames and headers of all note files in the current directory:

find . -type f -name "*.md" -exec tpnote --batch {} \; >/dev/null

Generate an HTML rendition of an existing note file in the same directory:

tpnote --export='./my_notes' './my_notes/20210209-debug--Note.md'

or, equivalent but shorter:

tpnote --export= './my_notes/20210209-debug--Note.md'

or, even shorter:

tpnote -x '' './my_notes/20210209-debug--Note.md'

Generate a PDF rendition of an existing note file :

Install the wkhtmltopdf-tool:

sudo apt install wkhtmltopdf

Generate the PDF rendition of the existing note 20210122-my--Note.md:

tpnote -x - '20210122-my--Note.md' | wkhtmltopdf - '20210209-debug--Note.md.pdf'

View and follow hyperlinks in a note file:

When no graphical environment is available, Tp-Note disables the viewer feature with its internal HTTP server. As a workaround, use Tp-Note’s HTML export flag and pipe the result into a text based web browser.

Install the text based web browser lynx:

sudo apt install lynx

Convert the existing note 20210122-my_note.md into HTML and open the rendition with lynx:

tpnote -x - '20210122-my_note.md' | lynx --stdin

Note, the above also works in case Tp-Note was compiled with --no-default-features which is recommended for headless systems.

Your preferred text editor is not Notepad? Change it!^[4]

Note taking with Tp-Note is more fun with a good markup (Markdown) text editor, although any Unicode text editor will do (even Notepad >= Windows 10-update 1903). Tp-Note is preconfigured to work with:

Please refer to Tp-Note’s man-page to learn how to register your text editor with Tp-Note’s configuration file.

You prefer working in a desktop environment instead of working on a shell?

Read the following section Optional integration with your file manager to learn how to configure your file manager’s context menu to launch Tp-Note.

Do you write your notes in multiple languages?

Tp-Note integrates complex linguistic heuristics to determine in what natural language a new note is authored and stores the result in the lang: header variable of the new note.

This process can be configured in various ways. The most important is to provide Tp-Note with a list of language candidates you write your notes. C.f. the variable tmpl.filter.get_lang in Tp-Note’s configuration file.

You may also want to indicate the default region codes of your preferred languages. C.f. the variable tmpl.filter.map_lang in Tp-Note’s configuration file.

Please refer to customization section in Tp-Note’s man-page to learn how to configure Tp-Note’s natural language processing.

Is your preferred web browser is not Firefox? Change it!^[5]

After opening the text editor, Tp-Note internally renders the note file and opens a web browser to display the note’s content. Which web browser on your system will be launched, depends on which of them Tp-Note finds first by searching through a configurable list of well known web browsers.

Figure 31. Tp-Note with open text editor (left) and viewer (right)

Please refer to Tp-Note’s man-page to learn how change which web browser Tp-Note launches as note viewer.

which of Tp-Note’s internal markup renderer is used and

the HTML template, that defines the visual appearance (colours, fonts etc.) of the rendition.

Your preferred markup language is not Markdown, but ReStructuredText, Asciidoc, T2t, Textile, Wiki* or Mediawiki? Change it!

Tp-Note’s core function is a template system and as such it is markup language agnostic. The default templates largely abstain from markup specific code, which makes it easy to switch the default new note’s markup language. Please refer to Tp-Note’s man-page to learn how to change its templates in the configuration file.

In addition, Tp-Note comes with a build in note viewer which is optional and independent from its core functionality. When Tp-Note opens a note file, it detects the markup language through the note file extension and launches the associated builtin markup renderer. The whole process can be customized in Tp-Note’s configuration file. Please refer to Tp-Note’s man-page for details.