In progress. Manage a directory tree containing plain-text notes (with some line drawings). Notes/files connect to each other using symmetric cross-links which are saved outside the plain-text in a corresponding .json file.

Some features:

• Multiple views into an independent repo of plain text notes (with some line drawings).
• Notes can have arbitrary named relationships (links) to each other, resulting in a graph.
• The primary visual metaphor is an infinite 2D surface of fixed-width, non-overlapping, notes that can be operated on with an extensible set of commands.
• Commands usually (but not always) create new columns of notes. Each column is an independent visualization of a subset of notes.
• Find on surface.
• Search all notes on disk in reverse-chronological order.
• Notes can contain hyperlinks in [[wikiwords]] to other notes. Hyperlinks can't contain spaces. Clicking on a hyperlink opens the target in a new column.
• A few other things. Explore the command menu and palette along the top.

Some videos to help visualize these bullets (albeit with outdated UI):

• https://archive.org/details/akkartik-pensieve-2022-07-27 (4.5 minutes)
• https://merveilles.town/@akkartik/108766067153506592 (30 seconds)
• https://archive.org/details/akkartik-pensieve-2022-08-29 (3 minutes)

pensieve.love is a compatible fork of lines.love, an editor for plain text where you can also seamlessly insert line drawings. Designed above all to be easy to modify and give you early warning if your modifications break something.

Getting started

Install LÖVE. It's just a 5MB download, open-source and extremely well-behaved.

The first time you run pensieve.love, do so from a terminal and pass in the directory where you want to store your notes.

(The repo contains a 'data.sample/' directory for trying out with.)

From here on out, restarting pensieve.love will open the same directory. Run again from a terminal if you ever want to switch to a new directory.

Keyboard shortcuts

While editing text:

• ctrl+f to find patterns within a file
• ctrl+c to copy, ctrl+x to cut, ctrl+v to paste
• ctrl+z to undo, ctrl+y to redo
• ctrl+= to zoom in, ctrl+- to zoom out, ctrl+0 to reset zoom
• alt+right/alt+left to jump to the next/previous word, respectively
• mouse drag or shift + movement to select text, ctrl+a to select all
• ctrl+w to modify the sources

For shortcuts while editing drawings, consult the online help. Either:

• hover on a drawing and hit ctrl+h, or
• click on a drawing to start a stroke and then press and hold h to see your options at any point during a stroke.

pensieve.love has been exclusively tested so far with a US keyboard layout. If you use a different layout, please let me know if things worked, or if you found anything amiss: http://akkartik.name/contact

Known issues

• No support yet for Unicode graphemes spanning multiple codepoints.

• No support yet for right-to-left languages.

• Searching is slow. There's no index yet. Searching happens in the same thread as UI updates, so UI may go unresponsive with really large notes. I haven't observed this in practice.

• The text cursor will always stay on the screen. This can have some strange implications:

  • A long series of drawings will get silently skipped when you hit page-down, until a line of text can be showed on screen.
  • If there's no line of text at the top of the file, you may not be able to scroll back up to the top with page-up.

  So far this app isn't really designed for drawing-heavy files. For now I'm targeting mostly-text files with a few drawings mixed in.

• No clipping yet for drawings. In particular, circles/squares/rectangles and point labels can overflow a drawing.

• If you ever see a crash when clicking on the mouse, it might be because a mouse press and release need to happen in separate frames. Try pressing and releasing more slowly and let me know if that helps or not. This is klunky, sorry.

• Touchpads can drag the mouse pointer using a light touch or a heavy click. On Linux, drags using the light touch get interrupted when a key is pressed. You'll have to press down to drag.

• Can't scroll while selecting text with mouse.

• No scrollbars yet. That stuff is hard.

Mirrors and Forks

This repo is a fork of lines.love, an editor for plain text where you can also seamlessly insert line drawings. Updates to it can be downloaded from:

• https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/pensieve.love
• https://tildegit.org/akkartik/pensieve.love
• https://git.merveilles.town/akkartik/pensieve.love
• https://nest.pijul.com/akkartik/pensieve.love (using the Pijul version control system)

Further forks are encouraged. If you show me your fork, I'll link to it here.

Associated tools

• https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/capture.love provides a blank-slate UI into the same notes directory as pensieve.love.
• https://codeberg.org/akkartik/lines2md exports lines.love files to Markdown and (non-editable) SVG.
• https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/lines2html.love exports lines.love files to html and inline SVG.
• https://codeberg.org/eril/lines2html.love provides the option to export just the drawings to a directory. Also provides a CLI, which should be more natural for many people.

Feedback

Most appreciated. Messages, PRs, patches, forks, it's all good.

In particular, pensieve.love has been exclusively tested so far with a US keyboard layout. If you use a different layout, please let me know if things worked, or if you found anything amiss.

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