Note taking featuring Neovim, pictures and screenshots
The project is not actively maintained. I did not figure out how to embed visuals in an elegant way. But that was summer 2016, the API and architecture might have changed since then. And I switched to Emacs anyway - it does support pictures.
What I have in mind is an alternative to Evernote, but functioning in its own way. An alternative with different values, if you will. Well, here is what Viy looks like now:
- It has an awesome editor - thanks to Neovim, specifically tailored for a project like this.
- It embeds media (now: pictures, future: audio, possibly video) within text.
- It allows taking screenshots.
- The code was written with portability in mind
Here are some thought on what Viy could look like in the future:
- It could be a collaboration environment: people share notes. How could this be more useful than, say, e-mail? Well first of all, it is meant to be more comfortable. But picture this: you have someone editing a shared note and someone commenting on this note and yet another someone replying to the first two someones. All through the same system, without any hussle.
- It could be a bug-tracking system.
- It could have a back-up system with sync across different devices.
There is a single folder where you keep all your textual and visual notes. This folder is called "library". The screenshots you take go to that library/images folder. When you fire up the program, you have an easy way to access those screenshots, manually added images and plain old notes.
Images are kept inside folder called "library/images". On each program's start-up, these images are autoloaded by the program, which prevents lag when encountering one in a text file. Now, how do you embed an image into a text file? You put a tag which looks as follows:
<|ImageName.png|image size|image fragment|>
So, an actual tag could look like this:
<|NiceComment.png|4|0|>
Then, you put your cursor on the tag and expand it by :call PicExpand() or using a mapping like one offered in the "Neovim settings" section. The tag expands to the following:
<|PinkFloyd.png|4|0|>
<|PinkFloyd.png|4|1|>
<|PinkFloyd.png|4|2|>
<|PinkFloyd.png|4|3|>
The program, upon encountering one of such tags, replaces it with a picture fragment.
Tags for all images can be viewed in library/images/ImageList.txt
The navigator is opened by default when the program starts. Only the files inside the library are scanned and so only they may be viewed in the navigator. Also, you can search library by pressing . To prevent Navigator to show up on program's launch, remove the following line from build_windows/gui_bridge.py:
self._ui.switch_to_navigator()
To take a screenshot, press F5. Select the necessary area and press Enter. The screenshot will be saved at library/images and a tag will be added to library/images/ImageList.txt from where you can copy it.
neosfml.vim should be put into autoload directory or sourced from init.vim Here is what you could include in init.vim:
"RPC for GUI
"Switch to built-in navigator
nmap <Leader>n :call rpcrequest(g:NeoSFMLGUIChannelID, "switchToNavigator")<CR>
"Insert a picture tag
nmap <Leader>pi i<\|Picture.png\|10\|0\|>
"Expand a picture tag under cursor
nmap <Leader>pe :call neosfml#PicExpand()<Return>
"Find and expand all folded picture tags
nmap <Leader>pa :call neosfml#PicExpandAll()<Return>
- F5 Take screenshot
- F11 Fullscreen
- Install NeoSFML (follow the first four steps if you don't want NeoSFML itself)
- Download https://github.com/grigorievich/Viy/releases/tag/0.6 and run it
Similar to NeoSFML, but also need to include Lua 5.1
