blinry

• playful things with bits and pixels!

My personal wiki!

• I use it every day
• I love it very much
• It's an essential part of my life
• It's extremely simple

Goals for this talk

1. Show you how my wiki works and how I use it
2. Inspire you to create your own wiki
3. Make it easy for you to get started

• 2007: Started with a diary text file
• 2008: Added other text files (ideas, todo, quotes)
• 2010: Tried MediaWiki briefly
  • 
• 2011: Built Vimboy!

Inspiration: Tomboy

Vimboy

• 54 lines of Lua
• as simple as possible

~/permanent/wiki/ $ ls
Blender
Nodevember
Geometry nodes
Neu
Tofu süß-sauer
Kopfschmerzen
Flugsimulator
Im Alltag urst wohl fühlen
Augen
Dutil-Dumas-Message
Bibimbap
Bluetooth-Kopfhörer
Vorhersagen
Stuttgart
Korrekte Aussprache
Hardware Prototype Fund
Scheitern
Piercing
Aftershokz
Überzeugungen
Sommerrollen
...

How to create links?

Two options:

• Using a special syntax, [[like this]]
• Automatically, as soon as a page is mentioned
  • I really like automatic links!

What do I use it for? (1/4)

• time & task management
• tracking of goals and habits
• weekly/monthly reflection
• lists of things I want to watch/read/cook/play
• idea collection (!)
• address book
• project notes
• diary, mental health tools, emotional processing
• shopping list

What do I use it for? (2/4)

• wish list
• collecting random interesting things
• stuff I want to learn
• travel plans
• dream journal
• packing list
• checklists (cleaning, project lifecycle)
• quote collection

What do I use it for? (3/4)

• health notes
• time tracking
• documentation for myself (on software, configuration, processes)
• money bookkeeping
• food preferences
• logs on weight loss
• notes about events
• purchase decisions
• recipes

What do I use it for? (4/4)

• cheat sheets (time zones, postage)
• book summaries
• my clothing sizes
• note-taking in classes
• ...and much more!

Statistics

• 1700 pages
• 9 MB of text
• 3.8 million characters, 500 thousand words
• added ~800 characters/day
• longest page: 200 kB (Diary)
• shortest page: 3 bytes (content: :)\n)
• 2700 commits
• File that has been unmodified for the longest time: Morning pages

What sucks?

• No graphics
• No hierarchy
  • For big projects with many "subpages", I usually create a second wiki.
  • Flat hierarchies are simpler, though. Easy to decide where stuff goes.

What's great?

• Obvious place to put documentation
• Notes at my fingertips
• Getting things off my mind
• Generate new ideas through links

Structure

• A single directory of text files
  • I use ~/permanent/wiki/
• Roughly markdown content

Setting the vimboy filetype

In my Neovim configuration:

vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd({"BufNewFile", "BufRead"}, {
    pattern = os.getenv("HOME") .. "/permanent/wiki/*",
    callback = function()
        vim.bo.filetype = "vimboy"
    end
})

Structure of the plugin

In ~/.local/share/nvim/site/pack/dev/start/vimboy/:

• syntax/vimboy.lua
• ftplugin/vimboy.lua

syntax/vimboy.lua

-- Link the 'vimboyLink' highlight group to the existing 'Underlined' group.
vim.api.nvim_set_hl(0, "vimboyLink", {link = "Underlined"})

-- Remove all existing vimboyLink syntax matches.
vim.cmd('syntax clear vimboyLink')

-- Find the directory of the current file.
local base_dir = vim.fn.expand('%:h')

-- Loop through all files in the directory, and add a syntax match for each one.
for _, file in ipairs(vim.fn.readdir(base_dir)) do
    vim.cmd('syntax match vimboyLink /\\c\\V\\<' .. vim.fn.escape(file, '/\\') .. '/')
end

Stand back, I know regular expressions!

/\c\V\<Example/

• \c: ignore case
• \V: very nomagic
• \<: beginning of a word

ftplugin/vimboy.lua

-- Basic keybindings.
vim.keymap.set('n', '<CR>', OpenLinkUnderCursor)
vim.keymap.set('v', '<CR>', OpenVisualSelection)

-- When entering or deleting a buffer, re-run syntax definitions.
vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd({'BufEnter', 'BufDelete'}, {command='doautoall syntax'})

ftplugin/vimboy.lua

-- Open the link under the cursor, or the word under the cursor if no link is found.
function OpenLinkUnderCursor()
    local cursor_col = vim.fn.col('.')
    if IsOnLink(cursor_col) then
        local lengthOfLine = #vim.fn.getline('.')
        local minCol = FindEndOfLink(cursor_col, 1, -1)
        local maxCol = FindEndOfLink(cursor_col, lengthOfLine, 1)
        local fileToOpen = string.sub(vim.fn.getline('.'), minCol, maxCol)
        OpenPage(fileToOpen)
    else
        vim.cmd('normal! viw')
        OpenVisualSelection()
    end
end

ftplugin/vimboy.lua

-- Loop through the characters of the current line, until we're no longer on a link.
function FindEndOfLink(start_col, end_col, diff)
    for col = start_col, end_col, diff do
        if not IsOnLink(col) then
            return col - diff
        end
    end
    return end_col
end

-- In the line of the cursor, is this column on a link?
function IsOnLink(col)
    local cursor_line = vim.fn.line('.')
    return #vim.fn.synstack(cursor_line, col) > 0
end

ftplugin/vimboy.lua

-- Open the current visual selection.
function OpenVisualSelection()
    vim.cmd('normal! ^[')
    local minCol = vim.fn.col("'<")
    local maxCol = vim.fn.col("'>")
    local fileToOpen = string.sub(vim.fn.getline('.'), minCol, maxCol)
    OpenPage(fileToOpen)
end

ftplugin/vimboy.lua

-- Open the page with the given name.
function OpenPage(name)
    local file_name = vim.api.nvim_buf_get_name(0)
    local base_dir = file_name:match(".*/")

    local fileToOpen = name

    if vim.fn.filereadable(name) == 0 then
        -- If the file doesn't exist, try to find versions of the file with different casing.
        for _, file in ipairs(vim.fn.readdir(base_dir)) do
            if string.lower(name) == string.lower(file) then
                fileToOpen = file
                break
            end
        end
    end
    vim.cmd('edit ' .. vim.fn.fnameescape(fileToOpen))
end

Quick access with w

(Access in 1-2 seconds.)

w script:

cd ~/permanent/wiki/

if [ -z "$*" ]; then
    PAGE="$(fd|fzf --print-query|tail -1)"
else
    PAGE="$*"
fi

if [ -n "$PAGE" ]; then
    "$EDITOR" "$PAGE"
fi

w: Tab completion

For the fish shell:

complete -c w -a '(pushd .; cd ~/permanent/wiki; ls; popd)'

See: "Woher weiß die Shell was sie tun soll wenn ich TAB drücke?" by pseyfert

Headers

I like headers like these!
==========================

And these
---------

# Other people like headers like these

## And these

Mappings for headers

-- Underline the current line with - or =.
for _, v in pairs({'-', '='}) do
    vim.keymap.set('n', '<Leader>' .. v, function()
        local len = #vim.api.nvim_get_current_line()
        local underline = string.rep(v, len)
        vim.api.nvim_put({underline}, "l", true, true)
    end)
end

Timestamping for logs

• d<Tab> inserts 2023-08-25
• dt<Tab> inserts 2023-08-25T15:09+02:00

I use UltiSnips for this:

snippet d "YYYY-MM-DD" i
`date +"%Y-%m-%d"`
endsnippet

snippet dt "YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm+xx00" i
`date -Iminutes`
endsnippet

Checklists

- look
- like
+ this

+ mapping to replace any of -, ?, ~ or x:

vim.keymap.set('n', '+', function()
    vim.cmd('s/^\\s*\\zs[-x~?]/+')
    vim.cmd('w')
end)

Priorized lists

• prefix lines with numbers from 0 to 5
• use :!sort in Vim

Workshop ideas:

5 - visidata
5 - Video editing with Blender
4 - Bitsy
3 - Flexbox
2 - Twine
1 - Go (the game)
0 + CSS art

Autosave

https://github.com/907th/vim-auto-save

~/.config/nvim/ftplugin/vimboy.vim:

let g:auto_save = 1
let g:auto_save_silent = 1

Search with rg

vim-table-mode

git blame

pl script for packing lists

cp ~/permanent/wiki/Packliste ~/tmp/pl
vim ~/tmp/pl

graphboy

graphboy

Multi-device setup

Super important for me to always have access to the wiki!

Roboboy

Termux configuration

~/.termux/termux.properties:

extra-keys = [["TAB", "LEFT", "DOWN", "UP", "RIGHT", "KEYBOARD"]]
terminal-onclick-url = open
back-key = escape

wikisync script:

cd ~/permanent/wiki
git add -A
git commit -m "Sync"

git fetch
git merge origin/main && git push

Possible alternative: Syncthing

https://syncthing.net

Ethersync

Real-time collaborative editing of local text files.

If you'd be excited about this – talk to me!

Vimboy

• https://github.com/blinry/vimboy (VimScript version)
• https://github.com/blinry/vimboy.nvim (Lua rewrite for Neovim)

Obsidian

Start with a folder of plaintext files

• Build your own wiki software, maybe?