Tip #482: Use VIM as an organizer of Memos, bookmarks, todo, etc.

created:		June 5, 2003 18:55		complexity:		intermediate
author:		hypertext organizer		as of Vim:		5.7

No one has perfect memory. I know this when I saw clever person often key in notes in his computer.
He uses a number of small files with ".txt" extension and "grep" through them. To me this is not good
because you still need to give a different name to different things and as time goes by, you will useup
common words and starts "name1", "name2", ... to enumerate.

Have you ever thought of having one single Memo at hand that can put things down as normal
editor, still very easy to search and navigate through? HTML would be perfect for hypertext
navigation, but it is not as perfect for writting notes. Who knows what <H3> means level 3 headings
when i just want to use to highlight my text, ... A lot inconvenience.

I use VIM! For many years it helps me remember almost everything and still enjoy it. Let me share
the experience with you. Of course I expect you be a VIMMER as me first.

VIM as an organizing tool? The help system of VIM is so well organized that we can think
of reusing the same for our everyday purpose. For example, here is my own Memo (abridged):
<<cut here>>
*memo.txt*      My Memo   - extending my poor memories                |guide|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*subjects*                                                                                     *toc*
|cmd|  command tips    |def|   definitions        
|dev|   developments     |ed|    editors              |friends|  friends
|lang|  languages          |misc|    others
|private|  personal info   |sys|   system  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commands                                                               *cmd*
*General
        http://www.cslab.vt.edu/manuals
         ......
|doskey|    DOS key utility
        <F8>: expand history
|man|        Unix manual
                man foo
                nroff -man foo.1 | less
                nroff -man foo.1 | a2ps -m
|unix|
    http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/linuxcommand.org/
|winhelp|
.....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Development                                                        *develop*            *dev*
...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
vim:tw=78:fo=tcq2:isk=!-~,^*,^\|,^\":ts=8:ft=help:norl:
<<cut here>>
Some explainations:
1) The last line instructs VIM with a number of editing settings. The most
important one here is "ft=help", which says file-type is "help"! So the VIM
will highlight thing for us.
2) You can use *foo* to indicate an anchor to the "help" system of VIM.
If you press Ctrl + ] on a word "foo", the cursor will jump to the first *foo*.
You can also see |foo| as a way to highlight it as implicit keywords.
3) This is not magic. The mechanism behind is the tag system. VIM needs
to have the following tag file to go to where you want it to go:
===================================
%userprofile%   memo.txt   /*%userprofile%*
.htaccess   meo.txt   /*.htaccess*
access  memo.txt   /*access*
access.conf memo.txt   /*access.conf*
addressbook memo.txt   /*addressbook*
anchor_keyword  memo.txt   /*anchor_keyword*
apache  memo.txt   /*apache*
as  index.txt   /*as*
at  index.txt   /*at*
awk index.txt   /*awk*
===================================
Each line defines a tag, the first element is the keyword,
the second is the file where the tag belongs (yes, you can use
multiple files as long as you know what they are), and the last
element is the command which as VIM to perform at the keyword (you
can as well do something wield here, but that's your own business).
4) But that's tedious! How to write these tags? God save you and thanks
VIM, you can find this utility to do it:
    cc doctags.c -o doctags
    doctags memo.txt | sort -f | awk -f cases.awk >tags
    uniq -d -2 tags
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<cut here>> doctags.c

/* vim:set ts=4 sw=4:
* this program makes a tags file for vim_ref.txt
*
* Usage: doctags vim_ref.txt vim_win.txt ... >tags
*
* A tag in this context is an identifier between stars, e.g. *c_files*
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#define LINELEN 200

int
main(argc, argv)
int argc;
char **argv;
{
char line[LINELEN];
char *p1, *p2;
char *p;
FILE *fd;

if (argc <= 1)
{
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: doctags docfile ... >tags\n");
exit(1);
}
printf("help-tags\ttags\t1\n");
while (--argc > 0)
{
++argv;
fd = fopen(argv[0], "r");
if (fd == NULL)
{
fprintf(stderr, "Unable to open %s for reading\n", argv[0]);
continue;
}
while (fgets(line, LINELEN, fd) != NULL)
{
p1 = strchr(line, '*'); /* find first '*' */
while (p1 != NULL)
{
p2 = strchr(p1 + 1, '*'); /* find second '*' */
if (p2 != NULL && p2 > p1 + 1) /* skip "*" and "**" */
{
for (p = p1 + 1; p < p2; ++p)
if (*p == ' ' || *p == '\t' || *p == '|')
break;
/*
* Only accept a *tag* when it consists of valid
* characters and is followed by a white character or
* end-of-line.
*/
if (p == p2 && (p1 == line || p1[-1] != '-') &&
(strchr(" \t\n\r", p[1]) != NULL || p[1] == '\0'))
{
*p2 = '\0';
++p1;
printf("%s\t%s\t/*", p1, argv[0]);
while (*p1)
{
/* insert backslash before '\' and '/' */
if (*p1 == '\' || *p1 == '/')
putchar('\');
putchar(*p1);
++p1;
}
printf("*\n");
p2 = strchr(p2 + 1, '*'); /* find next '*' */
}
}
p1 = p2;
}
}
fclose(fd);
}
return 0;
}
<<cut here>> cases.awk
{
print tolower($1) "\t" $2 "\t" tolower($3);
}
<<cut here>>

That's it. Good luck VIMMER.

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