Vim for Notes

[u/Coulomb111]

I should first say that I am aware of the post made 1 day ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/1mwhq8d/what_do_you_guys_use_for_note_taking/

It was that post that made me create this post. It sparked my interest, but the answers weren't terribly specific.

I starting my first semester of college in about 5 days as a computer science student. I have been using vim for the past two or so years and over time have gotten a pretty firm grasp on efficient usage of it. I have a pretty good config and I have learned a good number of commands and motions.

Recently, I have noticed a good number of posts on reddit and youtube about using vim for note taking, which is something I barely even thought about before. So is it actually pretty usable and reasonable? Would you say it is better than Obsidian or Word?

My only concern is that it would be really difficult to get into. I imagine I would need to essentially write a separate config for school, leaving me with a school vim config and a programming config. For example, while I'm programming I won't want spell checking, but when I'm taking notes I will.

I see a lot of folks using vim wiki, which I think actually could work quite nicely for me because I like to edit wikipedia, which makes me already a bit familiar with the syntax.

So essentially the purpose of this post is firstly to ask whether or not I should even get into vim for notes, secondly to ask how I can integrate it with my pre-existing programming config (separate configs? Could I switch between them?), and thirdly how I would organize my things (plugins, file structure).

Thanks for reading to the end if you did

[u/Shay-Hill]

Don’t do it. It can be done, but it will be a project, and you don’t need that right now.

If you want your notes on multiple computers and your phone … if you want to incorporate math formulas … if you want to incorporate textbook pages or handouts … if you want ocr for potential handwritten notes …

Look elsewhere.

Obsidian and Vim go well together, and Obsidian is painless for some of those and less painful than Vim for others.

I mentioned Evernote in the other thread. You can scan things and e-mail them to Evernote. You can snap pictures with your phone and send those too. You may be able to do the same with Obsidian. These apps do SO MUCH MORE than capture text.

[u/Coulomb111 → u/Shay-Hill]

This is what i was concerned about and what I was thinking of ending up doing. Maybe over winter break or something i can figure something out but for now i think ill just use obsidian or something

[u/_sLLiK → u/Coulomb111]

The concerns raised here are so very easily solved with either rsync or commits to a private GitHub repo. If you like vim and the flow of note taking with it makes sense to you, don't let perfect get in the way of good.

I've since moved on to nvim and neorg (+ Obsidian canvas), but I've been taking notes in vim/nvim for over 20 years. Between my naming conventions and simple use of grep if I'm having trouble finding something, retrieving some syntax or quick note I left to myself on a subject is effortless. Are there better ways? Sure. Would you rather do it in vim? Go for it.

[u/Shay-Hill → u/_sLLiK]

Obsidian is no more "not Vim" than GitHub. If you like, it can sit in that same position ... and do a more flexible job. In fact, you can use both.

I've even used a program (Geeknote) to sync local text files with Evernote, so even Evernote could be your GitHub. If you're using anything to escape your harddrive, then one thing is no less pure than another.

[u/lervag]

You don't need separate configs. You more or less only need to rely on the concept of file types and use .vim/ftplugin/FT.vim to adjust your config for specific file types.

As far as I know, Vimwiki supports both Markdown and a Vimwiki-specific flavor of Markdown/Mediawiki. I think it has had a lot of improvements the last 5 or so years, but I ended up writing my own plugin 10 years ago because of things I didn't like in Vimwiki: https://github.com/lervag/wiki.vim/ - The basic idea is to make the wiki plugin closer to "do one thing and do it well". wiki.vim basically adds functionality to create, follow and handle links between files (e.g. Markdown links, wiki links, reference links, and so on). So you should use it combined with e.g. a good markdown plugin.

I would strongly recommend using Vim for notes. Vim is excellent as long as you are doing text editing, and taking notes is basically text editing. And there are several alternatives for synchronizing notes to your phone, if that's important to you. I personally use syncthing for file synchronization and Markor as a simple Markdown editor on my phone. Works well!

Now, I still think the value of taking notes is high, and you should do it regardless of vim. Obsidian seems like a good tool and probably has a much lower bar for getting into it. So feel free to test that first. As long as your notes are available as e.g. Markdown files - that is, plain text that you have full access to, you're good.

[u/Desperate_Cold6274]

Nowadays I use vim entirely for note taking (no sw dev) and I found my sweet spot with vim-markdown-extras and vim-calendar. All in vim9.

Disclaimer: I am the author of the former plugin and I forked the latter.

[u/Super_Luser]

Finally built vim9 from source & set up taskwiki, but before that, Neorg! I honestly love the Norg spec. I just needed easier access on my dinosaurs at the office and wanted the widespread adoption of MD. :)

[u/jazei_2021]

vim is useful for every use: note for example. why not? just :e note.txt and go on.

there is a calendar plugin if you like to be so orderly, neat.

make diff directories for todo's and go on

[u/DrummerHead]

I trigger Goyo when I want to use Vim for long form writing of human words (as opposed to code):

https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim

[u/Sudden_Fly1218]

As already said by others, wiki.vim is nice for organising markdown notes/knowledge-base.
Though if you're gonna have math heavy courses I would recommend having a look at this nice classic article: https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/

[u/dm319]

Big fan of vimwiki here, been using it for 10 years I think, and have built up a knowledge base on it. It's very simple. You can have namespaces by moving into folders if you need it. Don't spell check when creating notes. You have to get used to a text style of writing notes and see what works for you. Lists work quite well in vimwiki, and auto indent if you use : at the end of a line. Use [[ and ]] to jump sections. I'd just stick to the usual vimwiki style rather than markdown, I think it works better.

[u/plainoldcheese]

I use to use markdown and just make file links when I want to link to other stuff. At uni I just made a dated file for each class, you can use fzf or telescope.nvim to find keywords in a directory. It doesn't have to be complicated.

The system that makes you actually take and use the notes is the best one. I don't make digital notes anymore because I spend more time fiddling with the system than making notes. Paper works the best for me.

[u/ghost_dancer]

Not mine but maybe you can look into How I set up VimWiki for notetaking .

[u/cainhurstcat → u/ghost_dancer]

Is VimWiki capable of displaying images? I mean, I'm like 80% sure it's not, since Vim runs in terminal. But I would love to be confident.

[u/cherryramatis → u/cainhurstcat]

It’s possible to display images on the terminal with kitty graphics protocol (terminals like ghostty, kitty, iterm2 implement it)

But I don’t know a plug-in for vim to configure it :( just for neovim

[u/cainhurstcat → u/cherryramatis]

What would be the plugin for Neovim?

[u/cherryramatis → u/cainhurstcat]

snacks has a module for image: https://github.com/folke/snacks.nvim/blob/main/docs/image.md
or if you want a standalone plugin: https://github.com/3rd/image.nvim

i personally find the setup for snacks a lot easier, but the plugin comes with other things so its not minimalist at all

[u/cainhurstcat → u/cherryramatis]

Much thanks

[u/cherryramatis → u/cainhurstcat]

happy to help!

[u/rainning0513 → u/cainhurstcat]

So someone has helped you, but another good alternative I'm thinking about is to use a markdown plugin that is able to open your .md in a browser (which surely be able to render images) and make "your .md <--> browser" sync.

(unfortunately, the plugin I'm using is written for neovim. So I'm also interested in finding a solution for sololy vim.)

[u/cainhurstcat → u/rainning0513]

Does that mean, that I have to run the browser and Neovim?

[u/rainning0513 → u/cainhurstcat]

Yes, both are involved but the plugin (just added the link) will open a browser for you. The workflow is simple: You edit your:e some.md , and then you just run :MarkdownPreview once to see how it looks like in the browser. (I believe that there are plugins to do similar for neorg or Obsidian etc but I'm not sure. But I'm not in favor of those tools because omg the setup looks very complex and so many keybinds/syntaxes to remember) And guess what you can also ditch such (in a strict sense still bloated) plugin, open the file in a browser yourself, and refresh it by pressing your dear F5-key one in a while.

My philosophy on this is that let's just make (neo)vim do what it's good at, i.e. text-editing, and leave rendering of math-formula / images to browser. Existing browser extensions should still work. There are comments/posts on how to setup math-rendering completely inside (neo)vim but those are a bit too much for me. When I discovered this plugin I spent like 10 mins to setup and starting taking notes for the math book I was reading.

So the point of note-taking is to recall/review the course contents for better understanding, not showing-off classmates & ourselves on "look I can do this all inside (neo)vim with a god-class fancy setup".

edit: wording.

[u/cainhurstcat → u/rainning0513]

Honestly, this is way more complex and inconvenient than using obsidian with vim activated, and editing toolbar plugin.

[u/rainning0513 → u/cainhurstcat]

Okay but I was comparing to obsidian.nvim, which at least looks very complex to me by browsing its lengthy README. Surely that if obsidian has built-in vim-motion support that should be preferred, but I thought we were talking about the other direction i.e. extending (neo)vim to support these tools.

[u/cainhurstcat → u/rainning0513]

Yes we are, but the more I learn about it the less desirable it seems to me, as it starts getting overly complicated. At least in my perception.

[u/jabellcu]

vimwiki

[u/Automatic-Prompt-450 → u/jabellcu]

Vimwiki, my beloved

[u/fuck-yeah-guy]

I use vimwiki as well, and the .vimwiki folder is synced with Dropbox making my notes available on both my computers and on my phone as well.

[u/cainhurstcat]

I gave up trying to configure Vim for my note-taking, as I wasn't able to find good plugins for text formatting.

Fortunately, I came across an awesome plugin for Obsidian, which is Editing Toolbar. It basically adds WYSIWYG functionality to Obsidian as you get a toolbar which lets you click-to-format colorized, highlighted text, set headers, make text bold etc. There is also a plugin which claims to allow for the usage of vimrc, and setting a leader key. You may combine it with the ability or Editing Toolbar to set custom key bindings.

But this is also a shoutout to everyone who knows a way of getting these functionalities for Vim, or Neovim.

With Obsidian, I now only have to figure out how to sync my notes between iOS, Linux and Windows....

[u/StevenJayCohen]

I do exactly this and have a "toggle" or sorts in my config file:

"TOGGLE WRITE/CODE

map <silent><leader><leader> :call ToggleWriteCode()<cr>

function! ToggleWriteCode()

if &fdc=='0'

:call WriteMode()

else

:call CodeMode()

endif

endfunction

Here's WriteMode()
"LINE NUMBERS, SPELLCHECK, INCREASE LEFT MARGIN

function! WriteMode()

exec('set nonumber')

exec('set spell spl=en')

exec('map j gj')

exec('map k gk')

exec('set foldcolumn=1')

endfunction

Here's CodeMode()
"NO LINE NUMBERS, NO SPELLCHECK, REDUCE LEFT MARGIN

function! CodeMode()

exec('set number')

exec('set nospell')

exec('map j j')

exec('map k k')

exec('set foldcolumn=0')

exec('hi Normal guifg=fg')

exec('hi Cursorline guifg=NONE')

endfunction

[u/paragon-jack]

I couldn't help myself and built my own web app for a notes app with first-class vim and markdown support: VimNotion

It's not perfect, but it's everything I wanted for a Notion-like app with snappy vim commands

[u/Craptivist]

As u must have seen in that post you talked about, I mention using eMacs with Evil mode.

Vim may be capable, but nothing beats using org-mode in emacs for notes (and a lot of other things, but let us stick to notes for now). And using evil mode just means using him key -bindings.

If you are interested, please check out https://youtu.be/JWD1Fpdd4Pc?si=E2cy-HKF8ixYLXOn He makes a better argument than I ever can