ficus.vim

🌳 Flat-file based note-taking app for Vim

⚠️ This project is still a work in progress, use at your own risk.

Features

• Vim as editor: Writing with the beloved text editor.
• Flat-file based: Controlling your own data fully.
• Category and tag system: Organizing your notes in a classic way.
• Assets management: Inserting images easily.

Introduction

Ficus.vim is a note-taking app standing on the shoulder of vim. It's flat-file based, which only requires a folder to store your note files. Folder structure is more like this:

/path/to/your/library
├── assets/
├── note-1.md
├── note-2.md
└── ...

Ficus.vim searchs for note files under this folder (not recursively). The attachments can be stored in assets/ or anywhere your like. But Keep them close to your notes is more convenient for referencing.

Currently, ficus.vim supports Markdown. Note's metadata is stored in YAML Front Matter:

/path/to/your/library/note-1.md:
---
title: This is the title
created: 2019-08-15T22:22:22+0800
modified: 2019-08-15T22:22:59+0800
category: categoryA/subcategory/...
tags: [tag1, tag2, ...]
author: Name
description: This is the description
---

Note content goes here ...

Installation

Requirements

• vim 8
• Python3
  • ruamel.yaml: Required for read&write metadata (YAML Front Matter).

Install with vim-plug

Plug 'xinhangliu/ficus.vim'

Quick Start

Configure ficus.vim in your .vimrc. The default library path is ~/Documents/ficus, you can override it with g:ficus_dir option. Read the docs for more options.

Type :Ficus and then press return in vim normal mode to open the ficus window. Window can be closed by command :Ficus!.

For convenience, you can put this line in your .vimrc to easily toggle ficus window:

nnoremap <Leader>[ :FicusToggle<CR>

Views of ficus.vim

There are 3 views in ficus window:

• CategoryView: Show the category tree
• TagView: Show the tags list
• NoteView: Show the notes list of the category/tag

All the views has similar keybindings. For example:

• Switch between views: u
• Open the category/tag/note: o
• Create new note: C
• Rename the category/tag/note: R

Different views have some unique keybindings. For example:

• Collapse/expand category in CategoryView: h/l
• Sort notes by title/created/modified in NoteView: st/sc/sm
• Sort tags by name/count in TagView: st/sc

Assets management

Personally, I don't like external image links. Move the cursor to the link in the note, then execute command :FicusAssetCollect, it will be downloaded into the assets directory. The external link will be replaced with the local one.

:FicusAssetCollect[!] also works with local file paths. The file will be copied or moved (with !) to the assets directory.

:FicusAssetRename can rename the asset under the cursor.

see more details in the docs.

Compatibility

• ✔Unix-like, ✘Windows
• ✔vim, ✘neovim