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# Build a Zettelkasten with the Hyperbole Rolodex
Ramin Honary ("Rah-mean" (hard-H) "Ho-na-ree", he/him.
- Email: <mailto:ramin.honary@gmail.com>
- Homepage: <https://tilde.town/~ramin_hal9001/>
- Mastodon: <https://emacs.ch/@ramin_hal9001>
- GitHub: <https://github.com/RaminHAL9001>
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"Zettelkasten" is a methodology for marshaling your knowledge,
ideas, creativity, into a database of hyperlinked notes, each note
representing a single quantity of knowledge. The method was first
devised by a well-published social scientist named Niklas Luhmann.
Though he constructed his database with actual slips of paper in a
box with a notebook for indexing, naturally, modern software removes
the manual labor from the process.
In the world of Emacs packages, Org Mode is the most well-known
package that provides the tools necessary for building a Zettelkasten,
along with extensions such as "Org Roam" which add functionality that
manage links between Org Mode documents. But Org Mode is not the only
Emacs package to provide such tools.
In this talk, I demonstrate how to use an oft-overlooked package
called Hyperbole as an alternative to Org Roam for managing hyperlinks
and building a Zettelkasten. In particular I use the Hyperbole
"Rolodex" feature, called "HyRolo." It was originally designed for
tracking your personal relations, but it can be used to build a
Zettelkasten with almost no additional configuration or 3rd-party
packages. HyRolo is a purely textual database, and does not require
an external database software to index the notes. It also provides a
very rich set of "actions" so that notes not only link to each other,
but can also trigger Emacs to execute code as well.
# Presentation outline:
## Introduction
- Ramin Honary
- Software Engineer, App Developer (mostly Python and Haskell)
- Emacs user for about 4 years (since 2018)
## Key Takeaway
- The Hyperbole hyperlink markup language lets you create links that
execute arbitrary Emacs commands.
- To link entries, create a hyperlink that executes a **HyRolo**
search.
## Quick overview of the Zettelkasten methodology
- **Note:** most of what I say about the Zettelkasten method comes
from Sacha Fast of <https://zettelkasten.de>
- **Zettelkasten is:** a database of interconnected ideas
## Tools I use in day-to-day writing
- **Hyperbole:** for hyperlinking, search, project management
- **Embark:** arranging text, copy and paste
- **Org-Mode:** for markup
- **Dired:** for working with sets of files
- **Consult, Vertico, Orderless, Marginalia:** interactive search
- **Magit:** Git revision control of my plain-text database
## Quick overview of Hyperbole
- **Core functionality:** a markup language for hyperlinks
- Applications such as **HyRolo** and **Koutline** built on top of
this core functionality.
- **HyRolo** is the feature I use as my Zettelkasten.
## Configuration of Hyperbole using `use-package`
```emacs-lisp
(use-package hyperbole
:config
(setq hbmap:dir-user "~/.emacs.d/hyperb/")
(setq hyrolo-file-list '("~/.emacs.d/hyperb/ideas.org"))
(setq hyrolo-date-format "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"))
```
## The Hyperbole Menu-Driven User Interface
- Menus are a kind of modal user interface
- Enter menu with Hyperbole leader key `{C-h h ...}`
- Select menu items with key presses
- Works a little like `which-key`
## Getting started with **HyRolo**: Create a *zettel*
- Add entry: `{C-h h r a}` "*hyperbole rolodex add*"
- Prompts you for a title for the entry
- The Zettelkasten file (e.g. ~idea.org~) is opened
- Write the body of the *zettel*, save the file.
## Searching the *HyRolo* database
- Multiple search options: by **string**, by **regex**, by **word**.
- I use **string search** most often: `{C-h h r s}`
- String search provides logical `AND`, `OR`, `XOR`, `NOT`
- Executing a search opens the `*HyRolo*` buffer.
- Read-only mode buffer with useful single-key navigation.
## Searching the **HyRolo** database
- **`{o}` as in "overview":** hides all but the headings
- **`{a}` as in "all":** shows all information under each heading
- **`{t}` as in "top":** shows top-level entries
- **`{n}` and `{p}`:** next/previous result
- **`{h}` and `{s}`:** hide/show a search result subheading
- **`{C-u r}` as in "regex":** prompts for a new string search
- **`{e}` or `{M-RET}` :** jump to that entry for editing, although
using this command inserts a new timestamp, I just use `{C-/}`
to undo insertion of the timestamp.
## How is **HyRolo** a Zettelkasten?
- **Key take-away:** The Hyperbole hyperlink markup language lets
you execute *arbitrary Emacs commands.*
- To link Zettelkasten entries, create an hyperlinks that execute a
**HyRolo** search.
## How to create an explicit link
1. Highlight text to be linked
2. `{C-h h e c}` to create a link
3. Prompted for link text with highlighted region (press enter)
4. Prompted for action: `hyrolo-fgrep`
5. Prompted for search string: `hyperbole`
## How "explicit buttons" encode actions
- A **separate file** from the HyRolo flat-file database.
- By default, called `.hypb`, exists in the same directory as the
HyRolo flat-file database.
## Conclusion
1. A Zettelkasten is database of ideas linked together
2. The Hyperbole **HyRolo** can run search queries
3. The Hyperbole markdown creates links that execute queries
4. This results in a minimal but useful Zettelkasten.
# Discussion
## Notes
- My blog: <https://tilde.town/~ramin_hal9001>
## Questions and answers
- Q: Why is the time-stamp not implemented as an Org mode PROPERTIES
entry? (e,g, :CREATED:)
- A: Hyperbole pre-dates Org-Mode, although the maintainers have
made efforts to make Hyperbole compatible with Org-Mode as much
as possible. You could ask Bob Weiner directly, but it could
just be for backward compatibility, trying to keep the
formatting for current Hyperbole users. You could raise that as
an issue, they may be willing to include a config option
allowing you to specify the time-stamp format.
- Q: why Hyperbole/HyRolo over Org-Roam? (I don't use either, just
curious)
- A: HyRolo and Hyperbole require no other software beyond code
builtin to Emacs. For example, when I first built Org-Roam, it
did not work properly for me and I had to modify the build
process to get it set up. With Hyperbole, you install one
package and you can start working.
- A: ^this, and I find it to be a lighter-weight solution. I was
able to get it working without depending on SQLite or doing any
indexing. Hyperbole is also a more general solution that can be
applied to a wider range of use cases than just Zettelkasten.
- Q: How does this scale to very large data bases?
- A: It works very well with fairly large personal databases. No
one has ever complained about performance. Generally, people
are surprised how fast it is given that there is no separate
indexing in the background.
- A: I personally do not have a large database so I don't know
for sure. But it is basically as efficient as Grep is, and I
have used Grep on multiple-gigabyte files without noticing it
being too slow. Modern computers are fast enough that indexing
isn't required for reasonable performance on smaller databases.
- Q: The demo displayed how to search occurances of certain keywords
in a giant single-document text database. But what about other open
(or not open) Emacs buffers? Think of IRC chars, emails, etc.
- A: Set the hyrolo-file-list variaable to include any directory
of files you want to search.
- I mostly referred to non-file buffers.
- Searching through (for example) an IRC buffer is a
different command than searching through a directory of
files, and this makes sense for the "Rolodex" use
case, since typically your database will be a file, and
not an in-memory buffer. But you can create a hyperlink
button that triggers an ordinary "isearch"-like
command the same way you would execute other Emacs
commands.
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[[!taglink CategoryHyperbole]] [[!taglink CategoryZettelkasten]]
