Greg Detre - index

Emacs Freex minor mode

What is Emacs Freex mode?
How do I get Freex mode?
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).

Home - Tutorials - Downloads - Docs