Can anyone come up with a better name for Sublimeless_ZK?
As Sublimeless_ZK is maturing, I think it can do with a better, maybe more descriptive (as in, possibly, Markdown Zettelkasten) name. New users might not get the whole SublimeMore/Less business.
Does anyone have a good idea? Do you need incentives? Does anyone have a good idea for an incentive?
What about being prominently named in the about dialog: "Named by ..."
Maybe, if the name is cool enough, the then-not-sublimeless_zk-anymore might even make it into the tools section --- that would be awesome!
I decided to work for a few days entirely in SublimelessZK (sorry, I don't have any name alternatives in mind... but I'll keep thinking about it and let you know if I come up with anything) to see what issues arose organically during my researching and writing processes. (I am writing a PhD dissertation, so all day I am either writing or thinking about writing...)
I'm sure some of these will be simple to fix, while others might not be "fixable" at all. Maybe consider this just a record of my experiences over the last few days.
Anyway, here's what I've come up with:
Tags don't register if the tag starts at the beginning of a line. Also, if you create a tag at the start of a line, then call on "insert section numbers," the program crashes.
If there is no top level heading (single #), then the "remove section numbers" function does not remove section numbers from second and third level headings.
cmd+[dash, or minus] zooms out (making the text smaller), but there is no way to zoom in (make the text bigger again) except by closing and re-opening the note. (I don't see a real need for a zoom-in/zoom-out feature, in any case...)
cmd+delete deletes the entire line, not just the text preceding the cursor
Automatic indentation doesn't quite behave the way I expect. New lines auto-indent to the same level as the indentation of the line above, even when several non-indented lines have been inserted after an indented paragraph. (Does this make sense? Maybe I should make a gif.)
fuzzy searches are word-order (character-order?) sensitive; "kirkland letter" and "letter kirkland" do not return the same results.
I find the "search results" function in SublimeZK more useful than the SublimelessZK "find in files" function. This is especially true on my small laptop screen, since search results in SublimeZK open up in a new note, so I don't have to accommodate a side panel. (I often have my Zettelkasten occupy one half of my screen, with a pdf or safari or textedit occupying the other half. On a laptop, screen economy becomes really important. Perhaps it would be possible to have the side panel push into the existing window, the way the side bar in Sublime Text 3 operates, like a drawer? Maybe that's wishful thinking...)
Also, it is very useful that the SublimeZK "search results" include relevant excerpts from the notes in which the search term(s) appear, it features the ability to click on the results to open the note, and it gives the number of instances of the term found and the number of notes searched.
Selected text does not register to the MacOS system as text, so I cannot access the system dictionary directly (by highlighting and ctrl-clicking) or text-based services.
Would it be possible allow the program to be used in MacOS split view? (see note 7)
Hope that's not too much at once...
Also, since I haven't done so before, I should send my immense thanks to you, @rene, for both the SublimeZKs, More and Less. They've helped me streamline my research, note-taking, and writing processes over the last few months incalculably. So major cheers to you for that.
And, as an aside, I tried to introduce someone to the ZK method and all the wonders of SublimeZK, but the SublimeText learning curve proved a bit too steep at the time --- so I'm eager for SublimelessZK (or whatever it will be called) to emerge from pre-Beta and make that ST techno hurdle irrelevant.
@argonsnorts said:
.4. cmd+delete deletes the entire line, not just the text preceding the cursor
Just a quick one, since I am on a train: the Above is actually what you requested a few days ago.
Thanks for giving such detailed feedback, I'm sure we can get most of your suggested improvements done
Can you provide more feedback to 5, 6 and 9?
Also: it seems you don't use external search results in sublime_zk? Line context is done when defaulting to sublimetext's find in files method.
Regarding 6: you need to provide the # symbol with your tags! It's likely that the plugin cuts off the first character of your search terms or other funny things happening if you omit them. Can't check at the moment so I could be wrong...
@argonsnorts said:
.1. Tags don't register if the tag starts at the beginning of a line. Also, if you create a tag at the start of a line, then call on "insert section numbers," the program crashes.
That is intentional. It should force you to not make ambiguous things that look like headings but are not headings. I use <!-- tags: #tag1 #tag2 -->, used to do tags = #tag1 #tag2.
.2. If there is no top level heading (single #), then the "remove section numbers" function does not remove section numbers from second and third level headings.
Will look into this
.3. cmd+[dash, or minus] zooms out (making the text smaller), but there is no way to zoom in (make the text bigger again) except by closing and re-opening the note. (I don't see a real need for a zoom-in/zoom-out feature, in any case...)
Funny, that seems to come per default with Scintilla. I like it, so I'll try to get [cmd] + [+] (and maybe [cmd] + [=] for the lazy ones) to work.
.4. cmd+delete deletes the entire line, not just the text preceding the cursor
You requested exactly that (deleting the entire line) here, so I changed it from deleting the left word to deleting the entire line.
.5. Automatic indentation doesn't quite behave the way I expect. New lines auto-indent to the same level as the indentation of the line above, even when several non-indented lines have been inserted after an indented paragraph. (Does this make sense? Maybe I should make a gif.)
I do not observe that behaviour. Maybe you are confusing the wrapping line indent with the auto-indent? Sorry the screenshot is so large
.6. fuzzy searches are word-order (character-order?) sensitive; "kirkland letter" and "letter kirkland" do not return the same results.
Need more details. Aaaaah, you are not talking about the tag search? Yeah, the find in files searches for the entire text you input. Am I getting you right now? So you search for "kirkland letter" (including the space) the first time and for an entirely different string "letter (space) kirkland" the second time.
Maybe we should change to search for each word...? Is probably more intuitive
.7. I find the "search results" function in SublimeZK more useful than the SublimelessZK "find in files" function. This is especially true on my small laptop screen, since search results in SublimeZK open up in a new note, so I don't have to accommodate a side panel. (I often have my Zettelkasten occupy one half of my screen, with a pdf or safari or textedit occupying the other half. On a laptop, screen economy becomes really important. Perhaps it would be possible to have the side panel push into the existing window, the way the side bar in Sublime Text 3 operates, like a drawer? Maybe that's wishful thinking...)
You know you can show and hide the search results with [cmd] + [shift] + [K]? Isn't that drawer-like?
.8. Also, it is very useful that the SublimeZK "search results" include relevant excerpts from the notes in which the search term(s) appear, it features the ability to click on the results to open the note, and it gives the number of instances of the term found and the number of notes searched.
The persistent search results usually live in their own pane, see Zettelkasten mode. So I assume you are not using that. What you describe is reverting back to default if external search is not on, maybe because ag is not found. This is what I don't recommend but since you seem to like it: why not? Currently I have not plans to mimic this kind of sublimetext behaviour. I find it too noisy. Maybe when there's nothing else to do... As an option. But it would likely be different: Just adding context lines and maybe counts to the existing search results
.9. Selected text does not register to the MacOS system as text, so I cannot access the system dictionary directly (by highlighting and ctrl-clicking) or text-based services.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. This is probably mac specific stuff that I simply don't use, I guess.
Hope that's not too much at once...
Never.
Also, since I haven't done so before, I should send my immense thanks to you, @rene, for both the SublimeZKs, More and Less. They've helped me streamline my research, note-taking, and writing processes over the last few months incalculably. So major cheers to you for that.
Thanks for that. Good to hear
And, as an aside, I tried to introduce someone to the ZK method and all the wonders of SublimeZK, but the SublimeText learning curve proved a bit too steep at the time --- so I'm eager for SublimelessZK (or whatever it will be called) to emerge from pre-Beta and make that ST techno hurdle irrelevant.
@argonsnorts said:
.7. I find the "search results" function in SublimeZK more useful than the SublimelessZK "find in files" function. This is especially true on my small laptop screen, since search results in SublimeZK open up in a new note, so I don't have to accommodate a side panel. (I often have my Zettelkasten occupy one half of my screen, with a pdf or safari or textedit occupying the other half. On a laptop, screen economy becomes really important. Perhaps it would be possible to have the side panel push into the existing window, the way the side bar in Sublime Text 3 operates, like a drawer? Maybe that's wishful thinking...)
You know you can show and hide the search results with [cmd] + [shift] + [K]? Isn't that drawer-like?
@argonsnorts said:
.1. Tags don't register if the tag starts at the beginning of a line. Also, if you create a tag at the start of a line, then call on "insert section numbers," the program crashes.
I cannot reproduce. Are you running the latest version? Which is 0.5?
@rene said:
You requested exactly that (deleting the entire line) here, so I changed it from deleting the left word to deleting the entire line.
Oops! You're totally right... in retrospect I should have worded it more carefully. I was looking to have the command delete everything to the left of the cursor. Is that possible?
.5. Automatic indentation doesn't quite behave the way I expect. New lines auto-indent to the same level as the indentation of the line above, even when several non-indented lines have been inserted after an indented paragraph. (Does this make sense? Maybe I should make a gif.)
I do not observe that behaviour. Maybe you are confusing the wrapping line indent with the auto-indent? Sorry the screenshot is so large
Here is how auto-indent works for me in SublimelessZK:
It continues indenting after every return, even after I move the cursor all the way back to the right. For comparison, this is how auto-indent works in SublimeZK:
.6. fuzzy searches are word-order (character-order?) sensitive; "kirkland letter" and "letter kirkland" do not return the same results.
Need more details. Aaaaah, you are not talking about the tag search? Yeah, the find in files searches for the entire text you input. Am I getting you right now? So you search for "kirkland letter" (including the space) the first time and for an entirely different string "letter (space) kirkland" the second time.
Maybe we should change to search for each word...? Is probably more intuitive
I'm referring to the "open note" fuzzy search, but the same applies to the "insert citation" search. Here's an example from the "open note" search:
.7. I find the "search results" function in SublimeZK more useful than the SublimelessZK "find in files" function. This is especially true on my small laptop screen, since search results in SublimeZK open up in a new note, so I don't have to accommodate a side panel. (I often have my Zettelkasten occupy one half of my screen, with a pdf or safari or textedit occupying the other half. On a laptop, screen economy becomes really important. Perhaps it would be possible to have the side panel push into the existing window, the way the side bar in Sublime Text 3 operates, like a drawer? Maybe that's wishful thinking...)
You know you can show and hide the search results with [cmd] + [shift] + [K]? Isn't that drawer-like?
In SublimelessZK, keeping the side panel open results in the program taking up most of my screen space, and showing and hiding it requires resizing the window each time, as follows:
My typical set up, depicted above---half-screen for the zettelkasten and half for whatever I'm reading or writing---worked well in SublimeZK, since I didn't have to bother with resizing any windows when I used the search.
.8. Also, it is very useful that the SublimeZK "search results" include relevant excerpts from the notes in which the search term(s) appear, it features the ability to click on the results to open the note, and it gives the number of instances of the term found and the number of notes searched.
The persistent search results usually live in their own pane, see Zettelkasten mode. So I assume you are not using that. What you describe is reverting back to default if external search is not on, maybe because ag is not found. This is what I don't recommend but since you seem to like it: why not? Currently I have not plans to mimic this kind of sublimetext behaviour. I find it too noisy. Maybe when there's nothing else to do... As an option. But it would likely be different: Just adding context lines and maybe counts to the existing search results
The sublime text behavior is certainly incredibly noisy, you're right. But for me, the context lines make it worth sifting through the noise. Something less noisy with context lines would be great, somewhere down the line.
.9. Selected text does not register to the MacOS system as text, so I cannot access the system dictionary directly (by highlighting and ctrl-clicking) or text-based services.
There's a handy built-in dictionary in MacOS that you can access in most text environments. I have noooo idea how it works or how it is implemented. I just benefit from its magic when I can.
Hopefully some of that is clearer. (So many gifs... )
@rene said:
You requested exactly that (deleting the entire line) here, so I changed it from deleting the left word to deleting the entire line.
Oops! You're totally right... in retrospect I should have worded it more carefully. I was looking to have the command delete everything to the left of the cursor. Is that possible?
Oh, I see. That should be possible!
.5. Automatic indentation doesn't quite behave the way I expect. New lines auto-indent to the same level as the indentation of the line above, even when several non-indented lines have been inserted after an indented paragraph. (Does this make sense? Maybe I should make a gif.)
[...]
Here is how auto-indent works for me in SublimelessZK:
[...]
It continues indenting after every return, even after I move the cursor all the way back to the right. For comparison, this is how auto-indent works in SublimeZK:
Yes, that makes perfect sense to me: Auto-indent indents to the indentation level of the last text line. When you insert blank lines, they contain no text. Not even a single space. Once text is inserted (even a space), indentation will align from there on with that space or text.
I can check what other options are easily doable. If push comes to shove: Just press ENTER n times and then un-indent and start writing (yes, leaving empty lines with spaces) for now.
.6. fuzzy searches are word-order (character-order?) sensitive; "kirkland letter" and "letter kirkland" do not return the same results.
[...]
Now I got you; yes, they are! They are even so in SublimeText: It's a character matching algorithm for narrowing down a search: Choose items that contain the first letter, followed somewhere (with anything in between) by the 2nd letter, ...
Example: "hello world" matches "hd" because it contains an "h", followed by anything and a "d".
You will notice similar effects in SublimeText, maybe the algorithms are not 100% indentical though. For instance, judging the quality of the match: (1 - average distance between matching characters in percent) * number of matching characters? So "hold" is a better match for "hd" than "hello world"? Maybe SublimeText sorts a bit differently, but it is obvious that "kirkland letter" produces sth entirely different to "letter kirkland".
.7. I find the "search results" function in SublimeZK more useful than the SublimelessZK "find in files" function. This is especially true on my small laptop screen, since search results in SublimeZK open up in a new note, so I don't have to accommodate a side panel. (I often have my Zettelkasten occupy one half of my screen, with a pdf or safari or textedit occupying the other half. On a laptop, screen economy becomes really important. Perhaps it would be possible to have the side panel push into the existing window, the way the side bar in Sublime Text 3 operates, like a drawer? Maybe that's wishful thinking...)
You know you can show and hide the search results with [cmd] + [shift] + [K]? Isn't that drawer-like?
In SublimelessZK, keeping the side panel open results in the program taking up most of my screen space, and showing and hiding it requires resizing the window each time, as follows:
My typical set up, depicted above---half-screen for the zettelkasten and half for whatever I'm reading or writing---worked well in SublimeZK, since I didn't have to bother with resizing any windows when I used the search.
Ah, OK, I see. The reason this is happening is actually not entirely the search view's fault. It's that, by default, I try to ensure the note editor always is at least 60 or 80 (forgot) characters wide. So the searches can only steal so much from it. On a big screen, the panel can steal as much as it wants; on a small screen, it would compromise the, say, 80 character limit. I can change that. Maybe remove the limit altogether.
.8. Also, it is very useful that the SublimeZK "search results" include relevant excerpts from the notes in which the search term(s) appear, it features the ability to click on the results to open the note, and it gives the number of instances of the term found and the number of notes searched.
>
The persistent search results usually live in their own pane, see Zettelkasten mode. So I assume you are not using that. What you describe is reverting back to default if external search is not on, maybe because ag is not found. This is what I don't recommend but since you seem to like it: why not? Currently I have not plans to mimic this kind of sublimetext behaviour. I find it too noisy. Maybe when there's nothing else to do... As an option. But it would likely be different: Just adding context lines and maybe counts to the existing search results
The sublime text behavior is certainly incredibly noisy, you're right. But for me, the context lines make it worth sifting through the noise. Something less noisy with context lines would be great, somewhere down the line.
Well, I consider the context lines noise, too. But OK, it's somewhere on the todo list.
.9. Selected text does not register to the MacOS system as text, so I cannot access the system dictionary directly (by highlighting and ctrl-clicking) or text-based services.
There's a handy built-in dictionary in MacOS that you can access in most text environments. I have noooo idea how it works or how it is implemented. I just benefit from its magic when I can.
Oh, interesting. What do you have to do to make it pop up? I have no idea if this is something that can be fixed easily.
Hopefully some of that is clearer. (So many gifs... )
Special thanks to @argonsnorts who has provided so much valuable feedback!
External Commands
You can run external commands, for instance, to create a PDF or HTML from your current note; there are several ways to invoke an external command:
Use the Tool Menu > Run External Command...
Use the command palette: "Run External Command..."
Press [ctrl/cmd] + [shift] + [X]
Use the command palette and enter >
All external commands are integrated into the command palette
They are prefixed with the > symbol
Pre-configured are example commands for creating and opening PDF files from notes:
PDF [no-bibfile] (pandoc) : Uses pandoc (and pdflatex) to convert a note to PDF
PDF (pandoc) : Uses pandoc (and pdflatex) to convert a note to PDF, including citations and references
if you don't have a .bib file or if you cite sources not contained in your .bib file, this will not work
The following animation shows this in action, using the command palette to select the command PDF [no-bibfile] (pandoc):
Writing your own external commands
Let's do this by example. The following is the snippet for PDF conversion that you just saw above:
// convert to PDF via pandoc
"PDF [no-bibfile] (pandoc)" : {
"run": [
"pandoc", "{note_path}{note_name}{note_ext}",
"-f", "markdown",
"--output={tempfile}.pdf",
"--toc", // create a table of contents
"--smart",
"--normalize",
"--highlight-style=tango"
],
"on_finish": {
"open": "{tempfile}.pdf",
"reload_note": false,
"open_new_note": false
},
"on_error": {
"show_error": true
}
},
You can edit this with the external commands editor, which you can open with the "Edit external commands" action from the command palette or the Tools menu.
Each command has a name and consists of 3 sections:
"run" : here comes a list of the program name, followed by optional arguments
"on_finish"
"open": lets you auto-open a result file
"reload_note": if true, reloads the current note, assuming your command has modified it
"open_new_note": if true, opens the new note that the external command has created
"on_error": if "show_error" is true, which it should always be, then an error message will be shown if the command terminates with a non-zero exit code (the universal convention for error conditions).
Using variables
But how to tell the name of the result file to open or the note ID of a new note that should be created by the external command?
Here come the variables! Use them inside the "run" and the "open" sections:
variable
description
{note_path}
path to the note
{note_name}
filename of the note without extension!
{note_ext}
extension of the note file
{bib}
full path to .bib file if present, else None
{tempfile}
full path to a temporary file you can write to
{new_note_id}
a timestamp based note id if you need to create a new note
Note: Based on the above, to pass the complete filename of the current note to your external command, use: {note_path}{note_name}{note_ext}.
@argonsnorts said:
Everything looks great! Especially the window layout.
The "insert citation" function is crashing the program after I load my .bib file, however.
I also got the same result with a significantly smaller .bib file.
Any thoughts?
uh, maybe i introduced a bug. can't check right now but will do so in a few hours. i suppose, the bib stuff worked with 0.5...? anything else thats changed? maybe try disabling the utf8 conversion of the bib file for now?
@argonsnorts said:
Everything looks great! Especially the window layout.
The "insert citation" function is crashing the program after I load my .bib file, however.
I also got the same result with a significantly smaller .bib file.
Any thoughts?
uh, maybe i introduced a bug. can't check right now but will do so in a few hours. i suppose, the bib stuff worked with 0.5...? anything else thats changed? maybe try disabling the utf8 conversion of the bib file for now?
btw does it hang or crash (terminate)? loading the bib file with unicode conversion can take really long, giving the impression the app has stopped working
@rene said:
btw does it hang or crash (terminate)? loading the bib file with unicode conversion can take really long, giving the impression the app has stopped working
No, it just crashes. And yes, everything worked fine in 0.5.
When I start 0.6 and call up "insert citation," the fuzzy search window opens, but it is empty, showing no citation info-- even though the path to the .bib file is listed in the settings:
After I reload the .bib file (with UTF8 conversion off), calling up "insert citation," either with the keyboard shortcut or through the menu, causes a crash.
@rene said:
btw does it hang or crash (terminate)? loading the bib file with unicode conversion can take really long, giving the impression the app has stopped working
No, it just crashes. And yes, everything worked fine in 0.5.
When I start 0.6 and call up "insert citation," the fuzzy search window opens, but it is empty, showing no citation info-- even though the path to the .bib file is listed in the settings:
After I reload the .bib file (with UTF8 conversion off), calling up "insert citation," either with the keyboard shortcut or through the menu, causes a crash.
thats good news! it means, i should be able to reproduce it or at least can check what changed since 0.5
Thanks for the awesome program. I like the ideas and you seem like a very skilled developer judging by the speed of development and the functions added However since I've used Mac OS all my live everything which is out of the ordinary is a bit of a pain. I must say that I'm quite a nitpicker, except for some things being different with sublimeless_zk there's nothing wrong with the app
Things being out of the ordinary are obviously expected when it's a cross platform app. However I'll try to find some of those things which seem weird to me, maybe they can be fixed.
One of the small things which stood out for me was the naming scheme for the sublimeless_zk.rc. Usually when placing a .rc file or likewise in the homefolder it is prefaced by a dot that way it's not visible in the list of default folders and easily recognisable as a _dot_file.
Anyways a new name, possibly "Effortlessly Zettelkasten" that's the thing which I thought of when I read sublimeless for some reason. It seems like you try to make the process as "Effortlessly" as possible. If you like this name, I would be fine with not having my name mentioned since it's not really important to me.
First, I'll say that I really like being able to simply click a link in Sublimeless and have the note open up. I went back to Sublime_ZK for a bit and found that even the very minor hassle of opt+double-clicking on links was too much... I just wasn't having it. So, Sublimeless 4 Life.
Anyway, a few questions/requests, if it's not too much:
Would it be possible to have an option to list all unreferenced (or, orphaned) notes? (That is, all notes that are not referenced by any other note.)
A brief rationale for this feature: since individual notes get their value in a Zettelkasten by virtue of their place in a network of notes, this capacity would allow for some good Zettelkasten clean-up and maintenance. (Get those unreferenced notes linked into the network!)
Perhaps there could even be an option to list all notes referenced N-number of times? This feature would reveal which notes have become important (referenced more often) and which notes might currently be less important (referenced only one or two times). It might just be interesting to see, for overall diagnostic reasons.
Could we have a shortcut for the "Rename Note" function? (Sadly cmd+R and shift+cmd+R are taken... Maybe opt+cmd+R?)
For the "Show referencing notes" function, it would be useful to see the title at the top of the search results. (As shown below.) Also, as the screenshot reveals, the "Show referencing notes" function lists the note itself, which seems redundant/unnecessary, even if it is true. Seems that this might factor into figuring out the "find unreferenced notes" feature requested above.
As for names, I was thinking about Luhmann/Lumens/Luminous. Maybe Luminous_ZK? I don't know, I'll keep thinking...
@Santema said:
...
One of the small things which stood out for me was the naming scheme for the sublimeless_zk.rc. Usually when placing a .rc file or likewise in the homefolder it is prefaced by a dot that way it's not visible in the list of default folders and easily recognisable as a _dot_file.
...
Anyways a new name, possibly "Effortlessly Zettelkasten" that's the thing which I thought of when I read sublimeless for some reason. It seems like you try to make the process as "Effortlessly" as possible. If you like this name, I would be fine with not having my name mentioned since it's not really important to me.
Thanks for your thoughts. I had mine, too . I deliberately went against the dotfile convention, because I find it bad if a program changes something on your disk, isn't upfront about it, and then even tries to hide it. In addition, hiding the folder makes it more difficult to explain how to "just copy this file to your themes folder", or things like that. A novice user on Linux, for instance, or any other OS that hides dot files or hidden files (what would be the point of hidden files if they weren't hidden by default), would have trouble finding it.
So, yes, sl_zk creates this directory, along with settings and theme files, and doesn't tell you before it's doing it. I would find such behaviour (asking) annoying. But at least it doesn't try to hide it after the fact. That's a very subjective opinion, I know, but it's the way I tick.
Comments
@argonsnorts BTW: Excellent! I am impressed by what bugs you find
sublimeless_zk-pre-0.5 is here
New Features -- and lots of fixes
Show / hide status bar and side panel:
Cycle tabs in both directions via ctrl/cmd + shift + [ (left) and ctrl/cmd + shift + ] (right)
BIB file:
editorfield if present andauthoris missingSettings, menu, and status for editor:
See the README for intstructions.
Special kudos to @argonsnorts who brought up almost all the now-fixed bugs, and improvements
No release without animated GIF, so here comes ..... the command palette
This bit from the README deserves some extra attention, as it is quite a change:
.bibfile is loaded the first time you insert a citation.bibfile are being converted to unicode so umlauts and special characters can be displayed in the fuzzy paneluinstead ofü, set the setting"convert_bibtex_to_unicode"tofalse..bibfile, use the menu Tools > Reload BIB file or press ctrl/cmd + shift + BUnfortunately, not (yet?) -- we need more sublime parody
Love it. For now yes, I'm with SublimeMore. When you catch up let us know, thanks!
Can anyone come up with a better name for Sublimeless_ZK?
As Sublimeless_ZK is maturing, I think it can do with a better, maybe more descriptive (as in, possibly, Markdown Zettelkasten) name. New users might not get the whole SublimeMore/Less business.
Does anyone have a good idea? Do you need incentives? Does anyone have a good idea for an incentive?
What about being prominently named in the about dialog: "Named by ..."
Maybe, if the name is cool enough, the then-not-sublimeless_zk-anymore might even make it into the tools section --- that would be awesome!
I decided to work for a few days entirely in SublimelessZK (sorry, I don't have any name alternatives in mind... but I'll keep thinking about it and let you know if I come up with anything) to see what issues arose organically during my researching and writing processes. (I am writing a PhD dissertation, so all day I am either writing or thinking about writing...)
I'm sure some of these will be simple to fix, while others might not be "fixable" at all. Maybe consider this just a record of my experiences over the last few days.
Anyway, here's what I've come up with:
Tags don't register if the tag starts at the beginning of a line. Also, if you create a tag at the start of a line, then call on "insert section numbers," the program crashes.
If there is no top level heading (single #), then the "remove section numbers" function does not remove section numbers from second and third level headings.
cmd+[dash, or minus] zooms out (making the text smaller), but there is no way to zoom in (make the text bigger again) except by closing and re-opening the note. (I don't see a real need for a zoom-in/zoom-out feature, in any case...)
cmd+delete deletes the entire line, not just the text preceding the cursor
Automatic indentation doesn't quite behave the way I expect. New lines auto-indent to the same level as the indentation of the line above, even when several non-indented lines have been inserted after an indented paragraph. (Does this make sense? Maybe I should make a gif.)
fuzzy searches are word-order (character-order?) sensitive; "kirkland letter" and "letter kirkland" do not return the same results.
I find the "search results" function in SublimeZK more useful than the SublimelessZK "find in files" function. This is especially true on my small laptop screen, since search results in SublimeZK open up in a new note, so I don't have to accommodate a side panel. (I often have my Zettelkasten occupy one half of my screen, with a pdf or safari or textedit occupying the other half. On a laptop, screen economy becomes really important. Perhaps it would be possible to have the side panel push into the existing window, the way the side bar in Sublime Text 3 operates, like a drawer? Maybe that's wishful thinking...)
Also, it is very useful that the SublimeZK "search results" include relevant excerpts from the notes in which the search term(s) appear, it features the ability to click on the results to open the note, and it gives the number of instances of the term found and the number of notes searched.
Selected text does not register to the MacOS system as text, so I cannot access the system dictionary directly (by highlighting and ctrl-clicking) or text-based services.
Would it be possible allow the program to be used in MacOS split view? (see note 7)
Hope that's not too much at once...
Also, since I haven't done so before, I should send my immense thanks to you, @rene, for both the SublimeZKs, More and Less. They've helped me streamline my research, note-taking, and writing processes over the last few months incalculably. So major cheers to you for that.
And, as an aside, I tried to introduce someone to the ZK method and all the wonders of SublimeZK, but the SublimeText learning curve proved a bit too steep at the time --- so I'm eager for SublimelessZK (or whatever it will be called) to emerge from pre-Beta and make that ST techno hurdle irrelevant.
But for now, it's back to work...
Scratch that one. Turns out, split view does work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just a quick one, since I am on a train: the Above is actually what you requested a few days ago.
Thanks for giving such detailed feedback, I'm sure we can get most of your suggested improvements done
Can you provide more feedback to 5, 6 and 9?
Also: it seems you don't use external search results in sublime_zk? Line context is done when defaulting to sublimetext's find in files method.
Regarding 6: you need to provide the # symbol with your tags! It's likely that the plugin cuts off the first character of your search terms or other funny things happening if you omit them. Can't check at the moment so I could be wrong...
That is intentional. It should force you to not make ambiguous things that look like headings but are not headings. I use
<!-- tags: #tag1 #tag2 -->, used to dotags = #tag1 #tag2.Will look into this
Funny, that seems to come per default with Scintilla. I like it, so I'll try to get
[cmd] + [+](and maybe[cmd] + [=]for the lazy ones) to work.You requested exactly that (deleting the entire line) here, so I changed it from deleting the left word to deleting the entire line.
I do not observe that behaviour. Maybe you are confusing the wrapping line indent with the auto-indent? Sorry the screenshot is so large
Need more details. Aaaaah, you are not talking about the tag search? Yeah, the find in files searches for the entire text you input. Am I getting you right now? So you search for "kirkland letter" (including the space) the first time and for an entirely different string "letter (space) kirkland" the second time.
Maybe we should change to search for each word...? Is probably more intuitive
You know you can show and hide the search results with
[cmd] + [shift] + [K]? Isn't that drawer-like?The persistent search results usually live in their own pane, see Zettelkasten mode. So I assume you are not using that. What you describe is reverting back to default if external search is not on, maybe because
Currently I have not plans to mimic this kind of sublimetext behaviour. I find it too noisy. Maybe when there's nothing else to do... As an option. But it would likely be different: Just adding context lines and maybe counts to the existing search results
agis not found. This is what I don't recommend but since you seem to like it: why not?I have no idea what you're talking about here. This is probably mac specific stuff that I simply don't use, I guess.
Never.
That's the plan
Yeah!
I cannot reproduce. Are you running the latest version? Which is 0.5?
coming soon ...
External commands:
that can convert your notes
that can create new notes
sorry the end is a bit cut off...
Oops! You're totally right... in retrospect I should have worded it more carefully.
I was looking to have the command delete everything to the left of the cursor. Is that possible?
Here is how auto-indent works for me in SublimelessZK:
It continues indenting after every return, even after I move the cursor all the way back to the right. For comparison, this is how auto-indent works in SublimeZK:
I'm referring to the "open note" fuzzy search, but the same applies to the "insert citation" search. Here's an example from the "open note" search:
In SublimelessZK, keeping the side panel open results in the program taking up most of my screen space, and showing and hiding it requires resizing the window each time, as follows:
My typical set up, depicted above---half-screen for the zettelkasten and half for whatever I'm reading or writing---worked well in SublimeZK, since I didn't have to bother with resizing any windows when I used the search.
The sublime text behavior is certainly incredibly noisy, you're right. But for me, the context lines make it worth sifting through the noise. Something less noisy with context lines would be great, somewhere down the line.
There's a handy built-in dictionary in MacOS that you can access in most text environments. I have noooo idea how it works or how it is implemented. I just benefit from its magic when I can.
Hopefully some of that is clearer. (So many gifs...
)
Oh, I see. That should be possible!
Yes, that makes perfect sense to me: Auto-indent indents to the indentation level of the last text line. When you insert blank lines, they contain no text. Not even a single space. Once text is inserted (even a space), indentation will align from there on with that space or text.
I can check what other options are easily doable. If push comes to shove: Just press ENTER n times and then un-indent and start writing (yes, leaving empty lines with spaces) for now.
Now I got you; yes, they are! They are even so in SublimeText: It's a character matching algorithm for narrowing down a search: Choose items that contain the first letter, followed somewhere (with anything in between) by the 2nd letter, ...
Example: "hello world" matches "hd" because it contains an "h", followed by anything and a "d".
You will notice similar effects in SublimeText, maybe the algorithms are not 100% indentical though. For instance, judging the quality of the match: (1 - average distance between matching characters in percent) * number of matching characters? So "hold" is a better match for "hd" than "hello world"? Maybe SublimeText sorts a bit differently, but it is obvious that "kirkland letter" produces sth entirely different to "letter kirkland".
Ah, OK, I see. The reason this is happening is actually not entirely the search view's fault. It's that, by default, I try to ensure the note editor always is at least 60 or 80 (forgot) characters wide. So the searches can only steal so much from it. On a big screen, the panel can steal as much as it wants; on a small screen, it would compromise the, say, 80 character limit. I can change that. Maybe remove the limit altogether.
Well, I consider the context lines noise, too. But OK, it's somewhere on the todo list.
Oh, interesting. What do you have to do to make it pop up? I have no idea if this is something that can be fixed easily.
Yes, the GIFs help enormously!!!
@argonsnorts here is what I've fixed so far, that will make it into 0.6, together with the external commands:
More sane window layout, especially for small screens
Auto-indent only looks at previous line, not further up
[ctrl/cmd] + [+/=]and[ctrl/cmd] + [-][cmd/ctrl] + [backspace]deletes line left from cursor[Edit]
@rene, all sounds good. thanks for the updates!
Just released - Sublimeless_ZK-pre-0.6
New Features
More sane window layout, especially for small screens
Themes updated
C:\Users\your.username\sublimeless_zk.rc\themes/Users/your.username/sublimeless_zk.rc/themes/home/your.username/sublimeless_zk.rc/themesExternal Commands:
Fixes
more robust insert/remove section numbers
[cmd/ctrl] + [backspace]deletes line left from cursor[ctrl/cmd] + [+/=]and[ctrl/cmd] + [-]See the README for intstructions.
Special thanks to @argonsnorts who has provided so much valuable feedback!
External Commands
You can run external commands, for instance, to create a PDF or HTML from your current note; there are several ways to invoke an external command:
[ctrl/cmd] + [shift] + [X]>>symbolPre-configured are example commands for creating and opening PDF files from notes:
.bibfile or if you cite sources not contained in your.bibfile, this will not workThe following animation shows this in action, using the command palette to select the command
PDF [no-bibfile] (pandoc):Writing your own external commands
Let's do this by example. The following is the snippet for PDF conversion that you just saw above:
// convert to PDF via pandoc "PDF [no-bibfile] (pandoc)" : { "run": [ "pandoc", "{note_path}{note_name}{note_ext}", "-f", "markdown", "--output={tempfile}.pdf", "--toc", // create a table of contents "--smart", "--normalize", "--highlight-style=tango" ], "on_finish": { "open": "{tempfile}.pdf", "reload_note": false, "open_new_note": false }, "on_error": { "show_error": true } },You can edit this with the external commands editor, which you can open with the "Edit external commands" action from the command palette or the Tools menu.
Each command has a name and consists of 3 sections:
"run": here comes a list of the program name, followed by optional arguments"on_finish""open": lets you auto-open a result file"reload_note": iftrue, reloads the current note, assuming your command has modified it"open_new_note": iftrue, opens the new note that the external command has created"on_error": if"show_error"istrue, which it should always be, then an error message will be shown if the command terminates with a non-zero exit code (the universal convention for error conditions).Using variables
But how to tell the name of the result file to open or the note ID of a new note that should be created by the external command?
Here come the variables! Use them inside the
"run"and the"open"sections:{note_path}{note_name}{note_ext}{bib}{tempfile}{new_note_id}Note: Based on the above, to pass the complete filename of the current note to your external command, use:
{note_path}{note_name}{note_ext}.Happy zetteling!
Everything looks great! Especially the window layout.
The "insert citation" function is crashing the program after I load my .bib file, however.
I also got the same result with a significantly smaller .bib file.
Any thoughts?
uh, maybe i introduced a bug. can't check right now but will do so in a few hours. i suppose, the bib stuff worked with 0.5...? anything else thats changed? maybe try disabling the utf8 conversion of the bib file for now?
btw does it hang or crash (terminate)? loading the bib file with unicode conversion can take really long, giving the impression the app has stopped working
No, it just crashes. And yes, everything worked fine in 0.5.
When I start 0.6 and call up "insert citation," the fuzzy search window opens, but it is empty, showing no citation info-- even though the path to the .bib file is listed in the settings:
After I reload the .bib file (with UTF8 conversion off), calling up "insert citation," either with the keyboard shortcut or through the menu, causes a crash.
thats good news! it means, i should be able to reproduce it or at least can check what changed since 0.5
It was a silly bug; I tried to improve sth that didn't need improvement and the change was so small it "didn't need any checking".
I have updated the released files. It works now. Thanks for pointing this out so quickly!
Up and running! Thanks for the quick fix.
Opened too many notes...?
Want to switch back...?
Maybe to a specific heading ...?
Coming up: GOTO!
New feature in 0.7 --- coming soon ...
Hey Rene,
Thanks for the awesome program. I like the ideas and you seem like a very skilled developer judging by the speed of development and the functions added
However since I've used Mac OS all my live everything which is out of the ordinary is a bit of a pain. I must say that I'm quite a nitpicker, except for some things being different with sublimeless_zk there's nothing wrong with the app 
Things being out of the ordinary are obviously expected when it's a cross platform app. However I'll try to find some of those things which seem weird to me, maybe they can be fixed.
One of the small things which stood out for me was the naming scheme for the sublimeless_zk.rc. Usually when placing a .rc file or likewise in the homefolder it is prefaced by a dot that way it's not visible in the list of default folders and easily recognisable as a _dot_file.
Anyways a new name, possibly "Effortlessly Zettelkasten" that's the thing which I thought of when I read sublimeless for some reason. It seems like you try to make the process as "Effortlessly" as possible. If you like this name, I would be fine with not having my name mentioned since it's not really important to me.
Greetings, Sander Santema.
First, I'll say that I really like being able to simply click a link in Sublimeless and have the note open up. I went back to Sublime_ZK for a bit and found that even the very minor hassle of opt+double-clicking on links was too much... I just wasn't having it. So, Sublimeless 4 Life.
Anyway, a few questions/requests, if it's not too much:
Would it be possible to have an option to list all unreferenced (or, orphaned) notes? (That is, all notes that are not referenced by any other note.)
A brief rationale for this feature: since individual notes get their value in a Zettelkasten by virtue of their place in a network of notes, this capacity would allow for some good Zettelkasten clean-up and maintenance. (Get those unreferenced notes linked into the network!)
Perhaps there could even be an option to list all notes referenced N-number of times? This feature would reveal which notes have become important (referenced more often) and which notes might currently be less important (referenced only one or two times). It might just be interesting to see, for overall diagnostic reasons.
Could we have a shortcut for the "Rename Note" function? (Sadly cmd+R and shift+cmd+R are taken... Maybe opt+cmd+R?)
For the "Show referencing notes" function, it would be useful to see the title at the top of the search results. (As shown below.) Also, as the screenshot reveals, the "Show referencing notes" function lists the note itself, which seems redundant/unnecessary, even if it is true. Seems that this might factor into figuring out the "find unreferenced notes" feature requested above.
As for names, I was thinking about Luhmann/Lumens/Luminous. Maybe Luminous_ZK? I don't know, I'll keep thinking...
Thanks for your thoughts. I had mine, too
. I deliberately went against the dotfile convention, because I find it bad if a program changes something on your disk, isn't upfront about it, and then even tries to hide it. In addition, hiding the folder makes it more difficult to explain how to "just copy this file to your themes folder", or things like that. A novice user on Linux, for instance, or any other OS that hides dot files or hidden files (what would be the point of hidden files if they weren't hidden by default), would have trouble finding it.
So, yes, sl_zk creates this directory, along with settings and theme files, and doesn't tell you before it's doing it. I would find such behaviour (asking) annoying. But at least it doesn't try to hide it after the fact. That's a very subjective opinion, I know, but it's the way I tick.