Emacs Freex minor mode
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Emacs Freex minor mode
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What is Emacs Freex mode?
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How do I get Freex mode?
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Latest updates
Emacs Freex mode is a minor mode for organizing and editing a
massively-hyperlinked database of your notes and ideas. It's
a personal wiki on steroids.
Freex is released under the GPL. Freex is still in beta mode
- that is, it still has various bugs and pitfalls. However,
it is usable - indeed, we use it ourselves for all our
note-taking every day. Email
greg@remove-this.gregdetre.co.uk or
persed@no-spam-thankyou.princeton.edu with suggestions or
criticisms.
What is Emacs Freex mode?
If you learn best by doing, then you might want to skip to
the quickstart or intro tutorial to start with.
Freex mode is a minor mode designed to help you deal with
all of your notes and ideas. It has features and ideals in
common with Emacs Muse, Howm, linkd, org, and probably a
flotilla of other modes that we don't even know about.
Freex mode has 3 major infrastructural features that
separate it from other offerings:
- Makes extensive use of Pymacs to access python
libraries. This is both a boon and a bane. It adds a
major dependency, but dramatically extends the scope of
what can be achieved within Emacs lisp.
- Stores all of the metadata for your notes in a sqlite
database. The user can query this database transparently
from within Emacs, through Pymacs.
- Extends Emacs' built-in overlays functionality, allowing
you to embed all kinds of information (e.g. files,
database queries) within other files, all visible and
editable in the same buffer.
As a result, Freex mode has a variety of handy features for
taking notes:
- Automatically creates hyperlinks as you type to any
'nuggets' (i.e. files) in your database of that name.
- Any nugget can be 'tagged' as a member of another nugget
(del.icio.us-style). This sounds weird, but it becomes
intuitive very quickly. Simply put, a nugget can belong
to multiple categories. Those categories don't have any
special ontological status - they're just other nuggets.
- Any nugget can embed one or more nuggets (which can
embed other nuggets), like china dolls. You can edit
embedded nuggets, and they will be saved as you'd
expect. A nugget can be embedded in multiple places.
- Freex is a minor mode, so you can run it in conjunction
with (e.g.) Emacs Muse mode, to benefit from Muse's
sophisticated publishing abilities. Unfortunately, Freex
doesn't always play as nicely with other modes, so your
mileage may vary.
- Powerful querying syntax, that allows you to easily
create queries like 'list all the nuggets that belong to
both 'emacs' and 'python', and contain the term
"sql"'. The really cool part is that you get
instantaneous tab-completion, so Freex will list all the
nuggets matching your query so far, as well as
suggesting further categories to whittle down your
search.
How do I get Freex mode?
See the downloading and installation instructions.
Latest updates
22nd October, 2007
Added quickstart.
19th September 2007
Added basic installation instructions and intro tutorial.
16th September 2007
We've just uploaded the first release version, v 0.3.1
(tarball).
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