I Should Have Just Used Vimwiki From The Start

often till I'd say about roughly a week ago I had been using Joplin for all my note-taking and Joplin is great I don't have much negative to say about it but I decided to migrate over to something different because there might be an easier way to do note-taking and what I decided to try out was vim wiki and I am really really happy with vim wiki so if you don't know if in wikis basically a plug-in for them that'll basically let you make a personal wiki and yeah it's just a really neat way to do note-taking so before we just waste too much time doing that let's go to the github page and just have a look at what it actually is so there's a lot to cover in here so we're not gonna be going into the syntax today more about why I'm doing this and just generally how vim wiki actually works so the big problem with using Joplin is it stores everything in a database now that's fine if you want to use I think our sink or sink thing or whatever it is used to sync between different devices with Joplin the problem is that there's not really any reason to use a database when all you're storing is plain text files so wouldn't it be easier just to directly use those plain text files and then you can store them however you want so if you want to store them with next cloud you can do that or you can do it with gitlab or you can do it with github github and get labs those aren't really things that make sense when you're directly working with the database you can store a database on those services but I wouldn't recommend doing it there's a lot of problems with doing that so directly working with plain text files basically opens up your ability to sync between devices to basically however you want to do it so that's one of the reasons why I'm doing this the other reason is that it just integrates really well into vim now the problem with Joplin is it kind of just a glorified file manager that opens files in vim there's not really any reason to do that you might as well just eliminate that extra layer and work directly with in vim so for the basic syntax it's pretty straightforward to do a header you just do an equal sign the header and an equal sign on the end and then for dot point you do an asterisk and then you write what you want to write now if we go down a bit further so if you want to do a link between different pages on your wiki you can do two square brackets two square records and then put the stuff you want inside of it I'll show you a better example when I actually go and start working with it that's basically how it works but you don't actually have to do that if you don't like the VIN with you syntax you can switch over to markdown if you want to I'm using vim with you syntax myself but as I said you don't have to use if you don't want to this is a pretty good example of how it actually looks so it'll do things like syntax highlighting for you and it makes it really really easy to actually jump between each of the different wiki pages so if we go down a bit further it also splits things like being able to tick a box and basic stuff like that you also have like programming syntax really cool stuff that makes it really easy to actually take notes within a terminal application now if you're using base vim you're going to want to actually enable some settings now I'm using neo vim so I don't have to do this all of this is enabled by default but in basic VM you have to do set no compatible file type plug-in on and syntax on okay so also you're going to want to actually install the plug-in now this is really easy a bunch of different ways described on here so if you're using vim packages you can do it like this pathogen do it like this I'm using vim plugs so all I would want to do is go into my villain fig or my my native empathic in this case go down to where I'm actually storing my plugin block so down here and then we're going to go down to where I've got vim wiki so pretty much all you don't have to do is copy this line right here into your vim blog block so plug apostrophes on both sides vim wiki / vim wiki real easy to install and obviously you're gonna want to run plug install and then you haven't installed now to actually get into your vim wiki you don't have to go directly to the file and do it from there you can actually jump to your wiki from any other files normally I don't like plugins that add bindings but the special thing about vim wiki is that most of the bindings only run when you're actually within a vim working with the exception obviously of the key to actually get into your vim with you so to get in there all you're gonna have to do is press your leader key and then WW so leader WW that will jump us in now obviously we don't need this net true thing here anymore so let's get rid of that now as you can see it looked a little bit different than the one on the actual github page because my my theme doesn't actually do proper highlighting for the headers I need to fix that up but it's not gonna be too difficult to fix it's probably explained within the actual vim wiki help page so if we scroll down here as you can see when I hover over one of these they actually change a little bit so it shows you that this line is actually a link any of the lines in my theme that are underlined those are links so we don't actually have to just go down with J and K though we can actually jump directly to those links and we can do that by pressing tab so tab will jump us to the next link shift tab will jump us to the previous link makes perfect sense and also it is cyclic which is really nice as well and then to jump into any of these links all we do is press ENTER and that will jump us in and we can go backwards as well by pressing backspace pretty straightforward I would say so we go in here and let's say we wanted to go down to I don't know this general vlogs one or hardware let's go to hardware now as you can see in here I've got a bunch of dot points in here and pretty much this is what I use vim wiki for the main thing I use it for is for video ideas and basically just keeping track of things I'm doing for the channel so say I want to look at stuff for my podcast I'm gonna look at the notes I took for say Corey's podcast pretty much you can see here all the topics I was going to talk about and then we've got some time stamps for Clips I was going to check out so it works pretty straightforward now as I said there is other stuff you can do as well like you can do things like tick boxes and programming stuff but I don't I don't typically use that for myself so I don't really have any examples of that on hand so if we wanted to actually add a new link in here it's also really straightforward now I like to have them with dot points obviously you don't have to have them with dot points if you don't want to that's just what I like to do so if you want to add a new link there's two ways we can do this so if it is a single word name all we have to do is say type the name and then just press ENTER on it and that'll turn it into a link the problem is that if the name actually has multiple words out like let's say for video ideas or video notes we have to do it a bit differently so what we have to do is let's say you just call it test two what we actually have to do here is put the square brackets around and we do that and now that has just turned it into a link so if we want to go to that page all we have to do now is just press ENTER on it and it will generate the file for us and that's all we have to do now it's actually a file within our vim wiki and we don't actually have to save the contents in here by ourselves so if we just type a bunch of stuff in here and then we backspace out let's say we just even quit out of our vim wiki if we go back into it and then go down to test two we will notice that all of the content in there has actually been saved so when you backspace out of any of the files it automatically does the saving for you so you don't actually have to worry about saving that's actually another really convenient thing that this does so if you ever forget to save doesn't matter vim wiki's already done it for you as long as you obviously don't go Kohl on cue I don't believe it's gonna try to save if you call on Q out or if you do any of the other methods to quit without saving as long as you just backspace out it'll automatically save it for you which is really really convenient if we ever want to delete a wiki file all we have to do is go leader WD so leader WD and then you'll see down the bottom it'll give you a prompt to delete the file that you're currently in and then we can just go yes press Enter it's now to leave that file now obviously the link is still here so we're gonna have to go and actually delete the link ourselves and there we go now we've gotten rid of that wiki file and there's a couple of other bunnies you might care about as well so things like leader W are for renaming the wiki file you're in leader WS for actually selecting an opening a wiki file leader WT for selecting an opening in a new tab pretty straightforward how it actually works the other binding I didn't mention just because it's not gonna work on my system is ctrl enter ctrl enter we'll open up the link in a vertical split now it won't work on my system because I've got control-enter bound to something else so I've got it bound to actually close all my notifications for like my dunce notifications so that's not going to work on my system but if you don't have a setup like that then it will work for you if you ever feel like remapping any of the bindings within vim with you the first place I would recommend checking out is the vim wiki mappings help page so if we go vim - wiki mappings as you'll see in here this will basically explain every single function that then where he actually has and how actually remap them so for example you've got vim wiki index you've got them wiki tab index then wiki UI select them with your diary index and a bunch of other ones in here so I'm not going to go through most of these just because I don't really think there's much of a use for most of them typically what I normally do is just use the basic movement binding so I use tab to go to the next link if tab go to the previous link I use ENTER to actually enter a file and backspace to leave a file I don't normally have any use for all of the rest of the stuff but maybe you have some use for it so one thing I do want to mention is that I don't normally enter my vim wiki by going into a vim buffer and then pressing my leader key WW that's too much work what I would rather do is jump directly into the file by actually opening up the vim wiki index file directly and as you'll see when we do that it actually automatically runs the plugin which is really really useful now the other thing you might notice is unlike when I opened up my vim buffer before it didn't automatically open up net true now the way I'm doing this is a little bit of a hack but it kind of works so I'll just show you briefly how I'm actually doing that so if we go into my actual in vim config file again why can I not spell end them today I don't know why anyway so what I'm doing in here is on certain types of files I'm basically saying set this variable so set the no net true variable and that'll be happening on like my Joplin files on my cow cows files on my calculus notes files on vim licky and also my get commit messages pretty much what this variable is doing is in this function here so net true on buffer open this function right here I'm calling the toggle net true function and basically what I'm doing is I'm checking if that variable exists then just don't run the function pretty much pretty straightforward how it works it's a bit of a hack but you know what it works well enough so I'm gonna keep it as it is and pretty much the reason I'm doing that is because say in like get commit messages there's really no reason to have a net true buffer there because I'm never going to be switching over to a separate file the same is true for my vim wiki as well if I select a different file within vim wiki I'm just gonna be doing it through the vim wiki method so that's pretty much why I'm doing that now all I'm doing to actually have my notes backed up remotely is I've got them within a git repo so if we just go have a look at that action folder let's just CD into it vim wiki as you can see it is just in a git repo so nothing special there and then I've also got it on my github so if you ever want to check out what notes I keep go over my github page and pretty much we go into my repo section I've got my vim wiki right here so feel free to come check this out if you ever want to see what sorts of videos I've got coming up or if you want to make video suggestions or anything like that now you might be saying well what about things do you want to be private notes well that's actually really easy to do as well I haven't got that set up right now but pretty much the way I can do that is I can just set up a private github repo and then symlink the files over from that repo into my vim wiki and then I can have private files within my vim wiki you will still see that there's a link there but you won't actually be able to open up the file that it links to just because you won't have access to the file so you can still do private files in this as well and that actually makes it really really useful so I would say that's pretty much everything I want to say about vim wiki for today obviously I didn't really go much into the syntax for today kind of just the very basic basic stuff to get you started and that's kind of all I'm using it for anyway but I would say that then wiki is a really really good way to actually store your notes because you don't have to be locked into using some very specific method to do remote saving you are working directly with in plain text files so you can do whatever it is that you do with vim in plain text files yes Joplin you work with vim or you work with whatever your text editor is but the problem with Joplin is it's just this extra layer that doesn't really add much of a benefit because everything that Joplin does you can just do with in vim wiki with without having that extra layer of separation there so I'm gonna keep using vim wiki I would really recommend it to anyone just starting out it's not too difficult to convert notes marked down over to the vehm wiki syntax and as I said if you go have a look at the github page forth in wiki you can just set it to markdown if you want to and then everything will just work flawlessly obviously you have to go and actually set up your links but besides that everything just works straight out of the box so I think that's pretty much everything for this video but before I go I want to thank my patrons a special thank you goes to Nathan Andrew Road Oakley Liberians Elvin an extra special thank you goes to Tony who is my newest patron so if you want to support the patreon then check out my links down below and also my Amazon affiliate links where you can buy the kyary's in this channel or just literally anything else on Amazon also remember to check out my social links so my desk or my telegram all that sort of stuff and my alternative area platforms my bit tube and my library also remember to smash the like button and leave me a comment down below and remember subscribe Ningaloo belkin down below as well and lastly remember to check out my podcast tech over tea so it's available on youtube and library as well as literally anywhere else you can find podcasts so I think that's pretty much everything for me and I'm out [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Brodie Robertson

Views: 99,842

Keywords: brodie robertson, vim, vimwiki, vimwiki setup, vimwiki notes, vimwiki vs markdown, vimwiki vs joplin, vimwiki workflow, install vimwiki, using vimwiki, vimwiki introduction, vimwiki tutorial, vimwiki markdown, vimwiki linux, vimwiki for notes, vimwiki note taking, switching to vimwiki, switching to vim, vimwiki to html, vimwiki examples, vimwiki plugin, vim vim wiki, vim vimwiki, vim wiki, vimwiki vimplug, arch linux, linux, neovim, terminal, brodie robertson vimwiki

Id: vBJj7YMVn6I

Length: 14min 34sec (874 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020