[bravura]

Yet-another-note-taking-system that doesn't solve my core problem:

I want to browse my notes in chronological order AND in thematic order. i.e. I want to do semantic search and automatic topic grouping.

[edit: The use-case I have in mind is you are learning about a topic, and your chronological "research notebook" is also an automatic zettlekasten.]

[blackbear_]

That's easily done in Org mode for Emacs https://orgmode.org/

[DougBTX]

Org mode is something that I've always thought I should look at, but never quite have. One thing I like to do with my notes is to keep a short "todo" list at the top, listed in the order that I'm planning to work on them.

Something like:

    Todo
    ====

    - Fix Widget
    - Extend Screen
    - Profit

Then if I need to re-prioritise, I re-order:

    Todo
    ====

    - Profit
    - Fix Widget
    - Extend Screen

and mark tasks as completed:

    Todo
    ====

    + Profit
    - Fix Widget
    - Extend Screen

Once there are too many completed tasks at the top, I move them down into a "Done" section.

Is there a way to manage that in Org mode (linking tasks to further notes would be great to have) while keeping items in relative priority order without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"?

[blackbear_]

Sure, you can do this via the agenda [1], which essentially aggregates your tasks in various ways. You would organize your tasks as headers as follows

    * some project :tag:
    ** open tasks
    *** TODO Fix widget
    a stacktrace
    [[screenshot.png]]
    *** TODO Extend screen
    some notes on xrandr
    ** tasks done
    *** DONE Profit
    some notes about making money
    more notes about how much money was made

Then you can use the agenda to show all TODO items in that project, which preserves the order you have in the Org file.

[1]: https://orgmode.org/manual/Agenda-Views.html

[BeetleB]

This is trivial in org mode. There are multiple ways to do this. The simplest is:

Put your TODOs in the order you want. You can easily reorder them using Alt + Up or Alt + Down. Marking it as complete is also trivial.

The canonical way to do this is to make each TODO a headline with the TODO keyword. To mark as done, put your cursor on the headline and press Shift-Right.

Alternatively, you can use checklists and just press C-c C-c to mark an item as done:

    - [ ] Fix widget
    - [X] Extend Screen
    - [ ] Profit

But you'll find doing it via headlines works best with the rest of org mode (e.g. you can perform queries on headlines, but not on lists).

> Once there are too many completed tasks at the top, I move them down into a "Done" section.

You can refile any headline to another section. Org mode also has the concept of archiving a headline. By default it moves it to an archive file, but I'm sure the location can be customized.

> linking tasks to further notes would be great to have

Org mode supports links - you can link to about anything - another file, another section in the same file, a line number in a file, a search string, an image, a PDF, a web site, etc.

In practice, if you use the headline version of TODO, you just keep the relevant notes under that headline. You can collapse all headlines if you just want to see the TODOs, and expand any given headline to see the details. But even if you go the checklist route you can just add a link to detailed notes.

You can learn to do all this in Org mode in under 30 minutes, if you find the right tutorial/video.

> without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"

These are entirely optional in org mode and not on by default.

If you want to be able to add a TODO in the right spot without moving your cursor to the exact location, you'll want to learn about capture templates, which is a bit more advanced.

[nickthemagicman]

For to do lists Trello is god.

[ricg]

I'm working on something like this (macOS/iOS), although it is not quite ready yet.

Notes can have tags and attributes so you could have attributes per note like: topic=rocketscience, semester=fall2020. Later you could say: "sort all my notes by semester and then group by topic" or if you change your mind, set up a second view for "all notes grouped by topic then by semester".

If you're interested, feel free to contact me through the site (kitestack.com/lnotes). I'd love to learn more about how you currently organize your notes.

[edwinyzh]

Do you mean browsing the notes in chronological order AND in thematic order (something like an outline?) in the SAME TIME? I'm currently doing a re-designing of my DocxManager (outliner based on Word) and you did inspire me!

[asdff]

you can do this all in bash. you could set up a function that takes the text of your note as input along with your metadata and makes a timestamp. then you just index your notes however you'd like.

[ajuc]

Small text files named 20201204_taskno_description.txt (handles chronologic order) + grep (handles topic grouping).

Works like a charm and is very low friction when notekeeping.

[bayindirh]

Zim Wiki?

[zaplin]

zettelkasten ?

edit: you proposed zettelkasten-like solution just when I posted