## Time-stamp: <2017-01-02 20:22:41 vk> ## This file is best viewed with GNU Emacs Org-mode: http://orgmode.org/
Done, if you find any errors do not hesitate to contact us.
Files with an filename that consists of an ISO 8601 time stamp like
2011-02-14T14.35.42_img_0815.jpg or 2011-02-14 slide GTD tools.jpg
contains a direct reference to a certain day (or time).
/home/user/Memacs/bin/memacs_filenametimestamps.py -f "/home/user/Documents" -o "/home/user/orgmode/memacs/filenametimestamps.org_archive"
The resulting filenametimestamps.org_archive file looks like following:
* Memacs for file name time stamp :Memacs:filedatestamps: ** <2010-03-12 Fri> [[/home/armin/Documents/scan/Graz/Strom%20-%20Gas/2010-03-12.pdf][2010-03-12.pdf]] :PROPERTIES: :ID: 5b6e980e83fe22e1d149b837b1bcb2560aadace3 :END: ** <2010-03-12 Fri> [[/home/armin/misc/2010-03-10T09.55 Foobar.pdf][2010-03-10T09.55 Foobar.pdf]] :PROPERTIES: :ID: 3456e980e83fe22e1d149b837b1bcb2560aadbcc :END:
After the general heading, a (long) list of second level headings is generated. For each file containing an ISO time-stamp, a heading is created. It consists of the heading including the absolute path to the file and an unique ID property.
This module is probably the most valuable Memacs module of all. You can refer to any (time-stamped) file within your Org-mode. You don’t have to care, which folder you put the file in! Files can be moved from one location to another. As long as both locations are indexed by this Memacs module, links to files don’t get broken.
This is a normal hard-coded link to a file with an absolute path:
[[/home/armin/misc/2010-03-10 Foo bar baz.pdf]]
Using this Memacs module, the link looks different:
[[tsfile:2010-03-10 Foo bar baz.pdf]]
You recognize easily that the path is missing.
When you want to open the PDF file, you put the cursor on the link and
press C-c C-o (for org-open-at-point()). Emacs opens the
filenametimestamps.org_archive (from example invocation above) in a
buffer and jumps right to the heading of this file. The heading
consists of an absolute link to the file in your file system.
Therefore, when you press C-c C-o once again, your PDF file opens
before your eyes.
Nifty, isn’t it?
To access those links, it is necessary to add a custom link like this to your Org-mode configuration:
(setq org-link-abbrev-alist
'(
("tsfile" . "~/path/to/memacs/files.org_archive::/\*.*%s/")
))
As you can see, I am using tsfile which is short for «a time-stamp
file». Choose your own link name.
For quickly entering a link, you may like following yasnippet:
# name : expand link to filename with datestamp
# --
[[tsfile:$1][${2:$$(unless yas-modified-p
(let ((field (nth 0 (yas--snippet-fields (first (yas--snippets-at-point))))))
(concat (buffer-substring (yas--field-start field) (yas--field-end field)))))}]] $0
If you are indexing many files containing an ISO datestamp, you end up with a very large Org-mode file that holds many links.
This can slow down the access method mentioned in the previous section.
To keep a very fast access speed, you might check out a blog article that describes a fast method using grep.
It explains following code:
(defvar memacs-root "~/orgmode/memacs/")
(defvar memacs-file-pattern "filenametimestamps.org_archive") ;; also possible: "*.org"
;; by John Kitchin
(defun my-handle-tsfile-link (querystring)
;; get a list of hits
(let ((queryresults (split-string
(s-trim
(shell-command-to-string
(concat
"grep \""
querystring
"\" "
(concat memacs-root memacs-file-pattern))))
"\n" t)))
;; check length of list (number of lines)
(cond
((= 0 (length queryresults))
;; edge case: empty query result
(message "Sorry, no results found for query: %s" querystring))
(t
(with-temp-buffer
(insert (if (= 1 (length queryresults))
(car queryresults)
(completing-read "Choose: " queryresults)))
(org-mode)
(goto-char (point-min))
(org-next-link)
(org-open-at-point))))))
(org-link-set-parameters
"tsfile"
:follow (lambda (path) (my-handle-tsfile-link path))
:help-echo "Opens the linked file with your default application")