Migrate notes in Emacs from Deft to Denote
Deft for Emacs
Deft for Emacs is a mode for quickly browsing, filtering, and editing directories of plain text notes.
Deft applies auto saving, so changes are committed to disk automagically.
I have been using Deft for personal notes. All my notes in Deft are in org mode format. Most notes are just plain text, without links or any other fancy stuff.
I do use two to three levels of headers, and sometimes bullets.
Deft offers some methods to search in your notes, but I have not used that often. Just browsing the file names in the directory is most of the time enough to find what I am looking for.
Deft starts with a buffer listing the notes, sorted by last modified date. The most recent modified file is shown on top of the list, the oldest modified file at the bottom. This feature of Deft I like most.
Denote
Denote advertises as "simple notes for Emacs with an efficient file-naming scheme",
Denote comes with an extensive manual.
When creating a new note in Denote, it prompts for a title and then for one or more tags. A new note is created, with a file name consisting of the creation date and time, the sluggified title and the tags, and the file type.
When a region is active at the moment of note creation, Denote prompts the region as the title. Just press enter to accept the title, or change it.
Denote has reached version 2.0 and I expect it to be quite stable now, and started to use it. Again I create the notes in the org mode format.
Denote offers a lot of fancy features for creating notes and to change the title or the tags, to keep the file naming scheme consistent with those elements.
Also it offers an easy to use method to link notes and to view back links.
Unlike Deft, Denote doesn't show the directory at start up. The user has to use Dired for that. Dired is a kind of file manager for Emacs, it shows directory listings in a buffer. Denote shows the directory listing with some color coding, so the title, and the tags stand out.
Import existing notes into Denote
The functions to change the file name are used for importing files.
The most convenient way to import a number of files is to use the denote-dired-rename-marked-files command.
File dates
Denote uses the file-date to create the file name, so make sure you preserve the date when you f.e,, first copy the existing notes before importing.
An easy way to preserve the file date is to use tar to create an archive of the current directory and extract the tar archive in the denote directory.
The denote-dired-rename-marked-files command works also outside the denote directory. You can rename the files where they are and after that move them to the denote directory. The command renames the files, so if you want to use this on your original files, make sure you can roll back. For example first tar the directory, to make sure you don't loose the file dates. (Remember that Git destroys your file dates.)
Once you have imported the files, the file date is coded in the filename, and also is part of the front matter of the note. So, after the import you can forget about preserving the file date, and Git is safe to use.
Importing files
How to import some files into Denote:
- Open the directory in Dired
- Mark the files (with '
m') - Apply the command denote-dired-rename-marked-files
Denote prompts for a tag, I just used 'deft' for the bulk import. Later I can always add one or more tags.
The renaming takes some time. After the command is
finished, the buffers have to be saved. To do this
issue the command C-x s (not C-x C-s) and then use '!'
to save all files.
Denote uses the file name for the title. Deft has saved the notes with a lowercase slug. It you want to use the frontmatter title, you have to come up with a solution for that.
Filtering files with a specific tag
To list only files with a specific tag in Dired:
- Open the directory in Dired
% m(select files based on regular expression)\_<tag>t(toggle marks)k(kill view of marked lines)
To see the complete listing again, use 'g' (revert-buffer).
Example to list only files with tag "gopher":
% m \_gopher t k
Mimic Deft with Denote
I have created a bookmark to the Denote directory.
To do that, just open the directory in Dired and create a bookmark with:
C-x r b
To open a bookmark, list the bookmarks with:
C-x r l
and hit 'enter' on the right line.
To sort the files on the last modified date like in
Deft, just press 's'.
Auto save can probably be set up with the hook from Denote, but I didn't bother.
Made with ♥ by a human - Proud member of the 250kb.club.
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