Hey Drew (and the rest of sourcehut). I was wondering if you had ever
considered integrating a note taking facility/service into sourcehut ? A
friend and I were discussing the logistics of self-hosting a note taking
service given that most alternatives are either: (i) proprietary and
lock into its associated ecosystem; or (ii) feature deficient. However,
we were not able to come up with a decent solution, i.e. possibility of
offline work; tag-based system; a web interface; and obviously the
ability to work on multiple terminals at once.

We both currently use git (on sourcehut !) for notes, but honestly, git
is too general (and cumbersome) to fit our needs; and so we were
wondering how other people manage their notes between multiple devices.
We were also wondering if people were interested in a note taking
service for sourcehut. I know that sourcehut aims to be
development/developer-focused and note taking isn't exactly a
`developer' service, but it would be nice to see it being implemented in
sourcehut if possible.

-- Kunal

Hello Kunal,

> We both currently use git (on sourcehut !) for notes, but honestly,
> git is too general (and cumbersome) to fit our needs; and so we were
> wondering how other people manage their notes between multiple
> devices.

I am currently working on a university project consisting of 6 members,
and we all take notes and work on the same documents with Git. We made
our own Wiki (for note taking, and basic documentation) written in
Markdown and the documents were written in LaTeX. It is hosted on
GitLab for convenience, but we could migrate our wiki to
https://man.sr.ht with no hassle.

Also would like to note that most of the people working on the project
had very limited knowledge of git, Markdown and LaTeX. It has been a
bit of a hassle (and it may seemed cumbersome) but eventually people
got into the flow, and we enjoyed git's powerful version control and
found it educational.

So maybe try https://man.sr.ht as a notes platform if you haven't, it
has:
- Possibility of offline-work, thanks to decentralisation of git.
- Not proprietary or locked-in (yey git).
- You could work around tagging, by adding labels in the table of
  contents.
- You can view your notes on the web, but no editing.
- Multiple people can work on the same files, but you would have to
  merge it.

It seems to tick all your boxes, and you could make a script to commit
and push/pull the changes automatically, so it can stay out of your way.

I recommend you read this article on Minimum Viable Programs, it
changed the way I think what programs should be:
https://joearms.github.io/published/2014-06-25-minimal-viable-program.html

-- 
Humaid AlQassimi
https://humaidq.ae

Humaid AlQassimi wrote:
> So maybe try https://man.sr.ht as a notes platform if you haven't, 

Is it correct that a wiki can only be created in a git repo, and not in a hg repo? 

If really so, it is a major drawback.

-- 
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/

It would be possible in theory to add hg support, but it needs some hg
experts to draft a design doc for the hg.sr.ht API.

Drew DeVault wrote:
> It would be possible in theory to add hg support, but it needs some hg
> experts to draft a design doc for the hg.sr.ht API.

Unfortunately I'm no hg expert, just a happy hg user with an aversion to git.

-- 
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/

Hey Humaid,

Firstly thank you for your detailed reply. We have in fact been using
git with https://man.sr.ht for synchronising notes. Our main issues
were: the ability to update notes from a phone (for instance, a todo
list); and the ability of sorting/search by tags of notes. For the
latter, we currently use folders as sort of broad overarching tags, but
that quickly does not lend itself well for usability as notes can span
multiple tags at once.

> It seems to tick all your boxes, and you could make a script to commit
and push/pull the changes automatically, so it can stay out of your way.

In fact I, indeed, have set up neovim to auto pull on open and push on
close. It's nice for QoL, but does lead to occasional merge conflicts
when I'm working while commuting (which is perfectly fine, since there
is no way to remove merge conflicts from a notes system anyway).

> - You could work around tagging, by adding labels in the table of
contents.

Interesting ! I didn't think of it this way. I'll try inserting that
into my notes instead of tags. Thank you for that suggestion ! The issue
of updating notes from a phone remains, however.

> I recommend you read this article on Minimum Viable Programs, it
changed the way I think what programs should be:
https://joearms.github.io/published/2014-06-25-minimal-viable-program.html

Thank you for the excellent read. I have always been for minimalism and
minimalist software. I'm currently (planning on) working on a DM
entirely based on an ncurses-like TUI just because I feel most current
DMs are bloated and do not provide me with that sense of minimalism I
strive for.

-- Kunal

> On Nov 3, 2019, at 9:53, Kunal Sareen <kunalsareen@posteo.net> wrote:
> 
> The issue of updating notes from a phone remains, however.

Although not actively using sr.ht for that, mobile.org allows synchronization of org-mode files from a mobile. It may or may not be the beginning of an answer...


Jean-Christophe Helary
-----------------------------------------------
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com @brandelune

> The issue of updating notes from a phone remains, however.

Maybe try Termux[1], never really used it to work on a project from a
phone but I have used git and built some projects with it. I am
assuming you use Android.

[1]: https://termux.com/

-- 
Humaid AlQassimi
https://humaidq.ae

> Maybe try Termux[1], never really used it to work on a project from a
> phone but I have used git and built some projects with it. I am
> assuming you use Android.

Indeed I use LineageOS. However, honestly to me a phone is a glorified
mp3 player with little utility other than keeping track of some todos
(shopping, admin work etc). Hence, I think it's slightly overkill to set
up an entire environment for a terminal not really meant for it (typing
on a phone is just terrible; let alone using git). I admit I'm being too
inflexible regarding the above.

Thanks for all the suggestions regardless, everyone ! For the purposes
of synchronising notes between my desktop and laptop I'll use the
suggestions from Humaid regarding tags.

--
Kunal