Add :NoteFromSelectedText command (suggested by Lukas Muehlethaler)

README.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@
 The notes.vim plug-in for the [Vim text editor] [vim] makes it easy to manage your notes in Vim:
 
  * **Starting a new note:** Execute the `:Note` command to create a new buffer and load the appropriate file type and syntax
+   * You can also start a new note with the selected text as title using the `:NoteFromSelectedText` command
  * **Saving notes:** Just use Vim's [:write] [write] and [:update] [update] commands, you don't need to provide a filename because it will be set based on the title (first line) of your note (you also don't need to worry about special characters, they'll be escaped)
  * **Editing existing notes:** Execute `:Note anything` to edit a note containing `anything` in its title (if no notes are found a new one is created with its title set to `anything`)
  * **Deleting notes:** The `:DeleteNote` command enables you to delete the current note

autoload/xolox/notes.vim

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 " Vim auto-load script
 " Author: Peter Odding <peter@peterodding.com>
-" Last Change: June 4, 2011
+" Last Change: June 7, 2011
 " URL: http://peterodding.com/code/vim/notes/
 
 " Note: This file is encoded in UTF-8 including a byte order mark so
@@ -51,6 +51,25 @@ function! xolox#notes#edit(bang, title) abort " {{{1
   call xolox#misc#timer#stop('%s: Started new note in %s.', s:script, starttime)
 endfunction
 
+function! xolox#notes#from_selection(bang) " {{{1
+  " TODO This will always open a new buffer in the current window which I
+  " don't consider very friendly (because the user loses his/her context),
+  " but choosing to always split the window doesn't seem right either...
+  call xolox#notes#edit(a:bang, s:get_visual_selection())
+endfunction
+
+function! s:get_visual_selection()
+  " Why is this not a built-in Vim script function?! See also the question at
+  " http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1533565 but note that none of the code
+  " posted there worked for me so I wrote this function.
+  let [lnum1, col1] = getpos("'<")[1:2]
+  let [lnum2, col2] = getpos("'>")[1:2]
+  let lines = getline(lnum1, lnum2)
+  let lines[-1] = lines[-1][: col2 - 2]
+  let lines[0] = lines[0][col1 - 1:]
+  return join(lines, ' ')
+endfunction
+
 function! xolox#notes#edit_shadow() " {{{1
   " People using latin1 don't like the UTF-8 curly quotes and bullets used in
   " the predefined notes because there are no equivalent characters in latin1,

doc/notes.txt

@@ -6,6 +6,9 @@ notes in Vim:
  - Starting a new note: Execute the ':Note' command to create a new buffer and
    load the appropriate file type and syntax
 
+ - You can also start a new note with the selected text as title using the
+   ':NoteFromSelectedText' command
+
  - Saving notes: Just use Vim's |:write| and |:update| commands, you don't need to
    provide a filename because it will be set based on the title (first line)
    of your note (you also don't need to worry about special characters,

misc/notes/shadow/Note taking commands

@@ -18,6 +18,14 @@ created with its title set to the text you passed to :Note. This command will
 fail when changes have been made to the current buffer, unless you use :Note!
 which discards any changes.
 
+To start a new note and use the currently selected text as the title for the
+note you can use the :NoteFromSelectedText command. The name of this command
+isn’t very well suited to daily use, however the idea is that users will define
+their own mapping to invoke this command. For example:
+  {{{vim
+  " Map \ns in visual mode to start new note with selected text as title.
+  vmap <Leader>ns :NoteFromSelectedText<CR>
+  }}}
 # :DeleteNote deletes the current note
 
 The :DeleteNote command deletes the current note, destroys the buffer and

plugin/notes.vim

@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
 " Vim plug-in
 " Author: Peter Odding <peter@peterodding.com>
-" Last Change: June 4, 2011
+" Last Change: June 7, 2011
 " URL: http://peterodding.com/code/vim/notes/
 " License: MIT
-" Version: 0.8.8
+" Version: 0.8.9
 
 " Support for automatic update using the GLVS plug-in.
 " GetLatestVimScripts: 3375 1 :AutoInstall: notes.zip
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ endif
 
 " User commands to create, delete and search notes.
 command! -bar -bang -nargs=? -complete=customlist,xolox#notes#complete Note call xolox#notes#edit(<q-bang>, <q-args>)
+command! -bar -bang -range NoteFromSelectedText call xolox#notes#from_selection(<q-bang>)
 command! -bar -bang DeleteNote call xolox#notes#delete(<q-bang>)
 command! -bar -bang -nargs=? SearchNotes call xolox#notes#search(<q-bang>, <q-args>)
 command! -bar -bang RelatedNotes call xolox#notes#related(<q-bang>)