org-journal
- Description
- a simple org-mode based journaling mode
- Latest
- org-journal-2.2.0.0.20240225.201950.tar (.sig), 2024-Mar-31, 150 KiB
- Maintainer
- Atom feed
- org-journal.xml
- Website
- http://github.com/bastibe/org-journal
- Browse ELPA's repository
- CGit or Gitweb
- Badge
To install this package from Emacs, use package-install
or list-packages
.
Full description
Figure 1: The org-journal logo
1. org-journal
Adapted from https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/PersonalDiary
Functions to maintain a simple personal diary / journal using in Emacs.
Feel free to use, modify and improve the code! — mtvoid, bastibe
1.1. Synopsis
org-journal
maintains a set of files, depending on the value of
org-journal-file-type
, a file represents a day, week, month or year. When
org-journal-file-type
is set to 'daily
, each file represent a day. In case
org-journal-file-type
is set to 'weekly
, a file represents a week,
etc. Convenient bindings allow the creation of journal records in the current
daily, weekly, monthly or yearly file and search within all records or
specified time intervals. All records can be browsed and searched from the
Emacs Calendar for convenience. All entries in a specified TODO state will be
carried over to the next day, see org-journal-carryover-items
. Optionally,
the journal entry can be encrypted, so can the file, see
org-journal-enable-encryption
and org-journal-encrypt-journal
,
respectively.
Every journal entry must have a CREATED property when using yearly, monthly
and weekly journal files. This property is added by org-journal-new-entry
automatically.
An example of a daily file (it will actually look a lot nicer, depending on your org-mode settings):
* Tuesday, 06/04/13 ** 10:28 Company meeting Endless discussions about projects. Not much progress ** 11:33 Work on org-journal For the longest time, I wanted to have a cool diary app on my computer. However, I simply lacked the right tool for that job. After many hours of searching, I finally found PersonalDiary on EmacsWiki. PersonalDiary is a very simple diary system based on the emacs calendar. It works pretty well, but I don't really like that it only uses unstructured text. Thus, I spent the last two hours making that diary use org-mode and represent every entry as an org-mode headline. Very cool! ** 15:33 Work on org-journal Now my journal automatically creates the right headlines (adds the current time stamp if on the current day, does not add a time stamp for any other day). Additionally, it automatically collapses the headlines in the org-file to the right level (shows everything if in view mode, shows only headlines in new-entry-mode). Emacs and elisp are really cool! ** 16:40 Work on org-journal I uploaded my journal mode to marmalade and Github! Awesome! ** TODO teach org-journal how to brew coffee
An example of a weekly/monthly/yearly journal file, see also
org-journal-file-type
.
* Tuesday, 06/04/13 :PROPERTIES: :CREATED: 20130604 :END: ** 10:28 Company meeting ... ** 11:33 Work on org-journal ... ** 15:33 Work on org-journal ... ** 16:40 Work on org-journal ... * Wednesday, 06/05/13 :PROPERTIES: :CREATED: 20130605 :END: ** 10:28 A new day ... ** 11:33 Work is almost over ... ** TODO teach org-journal how to brew coffee
1.2. Installation
org-journal
is available through NonGNU ELPA, MELPA and MELPA Stable. So
installation should be trivial:
M-x package-install org-journal
Then add (require 'org-journal)
to your .emacs
.
Note! If you are using org-mode
version 9.6 consider customizing the variable org-element-use-cache
and setting it to nil
to workaround an issue where journal items are not properly carried over to the next day
1.3. Quickstart
Doing M-x org-journal-new-entry
will immediately create a journal
directory in the default path (customized using the org-journal-dir
variable), open or create a file in org-journal-mode
, and insert a
template for a new journal entry.
The same command with a prefix argument (C-u M-x
org-journal-new-entry
) will do everything mentioned while skipping
entry creation, which is useful for looking at the current journal
file.
1.4. Basic Usage
Bindings available in org-journal-mode
:
C-c C-f
- go to the next journal file.C-c C-b
- go to the previous journal file.C-c C-j
- insert a new entry into the current journal file (creates the file if not present).C-c C-s
- search the journal for a string.
All journal entries are registered in the Emacs Calendar. To see available journal
entries do M-x calendar
. Bindings available in the calendar-mode
:
j m
- mark entries in calendarj r
- view an entry in a new buffer.j d
- view an entry but do not switch to it.j n
- add a new entry into the day's file (creates the file if not present).j s w
- search in all entries of the current week.j s m
- search in all entries of the current month.j s y
- search in all entries of the current year.j s f
- search in all entries of all time.j s F
- search in all entries in the future.[
- go to previous day with journal entries.]
- go to next day with journal entries.
1.5. Setup and customization
The following variables can be customized through M-x customize
, or configured programmatically in your .init.el
.
See below for an example.
1.5.1. Journal Directory and Files
Customization options related to journal directory and files:
org-journal-dir
- the journal path.org-journal-file-format
- format string for journal file names (may contain directories relative toorg-journal-dir
).org-journal-find-file
- a function to use when opening a journal file. By default it opens a window usingfind-file-other-window
. Set this tofind-file
if you don't want org-journal to split your window.org-extend-today-until
- a number that indicates the hour of your end of the day. If you create a new entry withorg-journal-new-entry
earlier than this time, the journal entry will go into the previous day's journal.org-journal-file-type
- the journal file type either 'daily (default), 'weekly, 'monthly or 'yearly. Also see the customizable variablesorg-journal-start-on-weekday
for changing the start of the week for weekly journals (defaults to Monday). Keep in mind changingorg-journal-start-on-weekday
won't work for existing weekly journal files.
1.5.2. Journal File Content
Customization options related to the journal file contents:
org-journal-date-format
- date formatorg-journal
uses when showing a date within a journal and search results page. It can also be a function, which return value will than be inserted.org-journal-date-prefix
- this string will prefix the date at the top of a journal file.org-journal-time-format
- a timestamp format that will prefix every entry within a daily journal file.org-journal-time-prefix
- a string that will prefix every entry within a daily journal file.org-journal-file-header
- a string that will be inserted at the top of every new journal file. If a string, it will be passed to `format-time-string` along the time value of the new journal entry. It can also be a function expecting a time value.(defun org-journal-file-header-func (time) "Custom function to create journal header." (concat (pcase org-journal-file-type (`daily "#+TITLE: Daily Journal\n#+STARTUP: showeverything") (`weekly "#+TITLE: Weekly Journal\n#+STARTUP: folded") (`monthly "#+TITLE: Monthly Journal\n#+STARTUP: folded") (`yearly "#+TITLE: Yearly Journal\n#+STARTUP: folded")))) (setq org-journal-file-header 'org-journal-file-header-func)
org-journal-hide-entries-p
- a boolean (defaults totrue
) that will hide previous journal entries if true. Can be set tonil
to show previous entries.
1.5.3. org-journal
behavior
Customization options related to org-journal
itself:
org-journal-mode-hook
- List of functions to run whenorg-journal-mode
is loaded. By default this is set to'(turn-on-visual-line-mode org-journal-default-enable-encryption)
.
1.5.4. An example setup
A very basic example of customization.
(setq org-journal-dir "~/org/journal/") (setq org-journal-date-format "%A, %d %B %Y") (require 'org-journal)
For users of use-package
, this setup could look like the following:
(use-package org-journal :ensure t :defer t :init ;; Change default prefix key; needs to be set before loading org-journal (setq org-journal-prefix-key "C-c j ") :config (setq org-journal-dir "~/org/journal/" org-journal-date-format "%A, %d %B %Y"))
1.6. Advanced Usage
1.6.1. Searching the Journal
org-journal
has two searching options: the usual org-mode
agenda search and the
built-in plain text search. The former can become slow with bigger journals, so the
built-in search is a recommended option.
To use the agenda search, you can add all journal entries to your org-agenda by adding
org-journal-dir
to org-agenda-files
and setting org-agenda-file-regexp
to include
files matching your org-journal-file-pattern
.
;; When =org-journal-file-pattern= has the default value, this would be the regex. (setq org-agenda-file-regexp "\\`\\\([^.].*\\.org\\\|[0-9]\\\{8\\\}\\\(\\.gpg\\\)?\\\)\\'") (add-to-list 'org-agenda-files org-journal-dir)
However, this can become very slow if you have many journal entries. As a compromize,
you can set org-journal-enable-agenda-integration
to t
, which automatically adds the
current and all future journal entries to the agenda. This is enough to get an overview
over current and future tasks.
The built-in search is available through the following function: org-journal-search
(C-c C-s
in org-journal-mode
). By default, it will ask for the time interval to search
within (accepting the org-read-date
format such as "-1y" or "-1m") and the string to
search for. Given a prefix argument (C-u org-journal-search
), it will go through the
whole journal.
The order of the search results (ascending or descending by date) can be customized using
the org-journal-search-results-order-by
variable.
Search is also available through the Emacs Calendar as described in "Basic Usage".
1.6.2. Carry Over
By default, org-journal
will try to carry over previous day TODO-marked
items whenever a new journal file is created. The older journal entry will be inserted to the current day's file.
This feature is controlled through the org-journal-carryover-items
variable. To disable this feature set org-journal-carryover-items
to an
empty string ""
. Any agenda tags view match string, tags, properties, and
todo states are allowed. By default this is TODO=”TODO”
. Which will
match TODO items.
The old carryover items in the previous day's journal are processed by the function assigned to org-journal-handle-old-carryover
variable.
Default is to remove all of them. You can change this behavior by
assigning a custom fuction to the variable.
Your function has to take one argument, which is a list of old carryover entries. The list is in form of ((STARTPOINT (ENDPOINT . "TEXT")) … (STARTPOINT (ENDPOINT . "TEXT"))); and in ascending order of STARTPOINT.
For example, you can choose putting a tag on the old carryover entries intead of removing them:
(defun my-old-carryover (old_carryover) (save-excursion (let ((matcher (cdr (org-make-tags-matcher org-journal-carryover-items)))) (dolist (entry (reverse old_carryover)) (save-restriction (narrow-to-region (car entry) (cadr entry)) (goto-char (point-min)) (org-scan-tags '(lambda () (org-set-tags ":carried:")) matcher org--matcher-tags-todo-only)))))) (setq org-journal-handle-old-carryover 'my-old-carryover)
You can also skip carry over of Drawers through the
org-journal-skip-carryover-drawers
variable. This is specifically
useful when you want to skip carry over of previous days clocked
entries when it is under the drawer LOGBOOK
. The variable accepts a
list of drawers names which will be skipped on carry over. Sample
configuration for skipping LOGBOOK
drawer:
(setq org-journal-skip-carryover-drawers (list "LOGBOOK"))
1.6.3. Encryption
The journal entry can be encrypted using org-crypt
, to enable it set
org-journal-enable-encryption
to t
.
You can also encrypt the journal files itself by setting the variable
org-journal-encrypt-journal
to t
. org-journal
will always search for
journal files with the .gpg
extension, and highlights them in the calendar,
etc., regardless of the value of org-journal-encrypt-journal
.
See the info page (info "(epa)Encrypting/decrypting gpg files")
for more
information about gpg encryption in Emacs.
1.6.4. Agenda and Scheduling
An easy way of keeping track of appointments or future TODOs is to simply create a journal entry in the future. Such entries will automatically get a timestamp and show up in the current day's journal entry once you reach that day.
- if
org-journal-enable-agenda-integration
ist
, org-journal will automatically add the current and all future journal entries toorg-agenda-files
.
There are a few helper functions to deal with such scheduled entries:
org-journal-new-scheduled-entry
- prompts for a date, and creates a new journal entry on that date with its timestamp set to the date. By default, this is a TODO entry. Set the prefix to avoid the TODO.org-journal-schedule-view
- creates a read-only overview of scheduled entries.
- iCalendar export
You can export your scheduled entries to an iCalendar file, and subscribe to that file in your calendar application. You need to enable the agenda integration for this to work. I also recommend you set the following values before exporting:
(setq org-journal-enable-agenda-integration t org-icalendar-store-UID t org-icalendar-include-todo "all" org-icalendar-combined-agenda-file "~/path/to/org-journal.ics")
With this done, you can export your agenda, including your scheduled entries, with
(org-icalendar-combine-agenda-files)
.
1.6.5. Journal Capture Template
You can configure a capture template in order to integrate org-journal
with org-capture
,
as in the following example for a daily journal:
(defun org-journal-find-location () ;; Open today's journal, but specify a non-nil prefix argument in order to ;; inhibit inserting the heading; org-capture will insert the heading. (org-journal-new-entry t) (unless (eq org-journal-file-type 'daily) (org-narrow-to-subtree)) (goto-char (point-max))) (setq org-capture-templates '(("j" "Journal entry" plain (function org-journal-find-location) "** %(format-time-string org-journal-time-format)%^{Title}\n%i%?" :jump-to-captured t :immediate-finish t)))
If you want to do the same to schedule a task for a future date, you can use the following:
(defvar org-journal--date-location-scheduled-time nil) (defun org-journal-date-location (&optional scheduled-time) (let ((scheduled-time (or scheduled-time (org-read-date nil nil nil "Date:")))) (setq org-journal--date-location-scheduled-time scheduled-time) (org-journal-new-entry t (org-time-string-to-time scheduled-time)) (unless (eq org-journal-file-type 'daily) (org-narrow-to-subtree)) (goto-char (point-max)))) (setq org-capture-templates '(("j" "Journal entry" plain (function org-journal-date-location) "** TODO %?\n <%(princ org-journal--date-location-scheduled-time)>\n" :jump-to-captured t))
1.6.6. Caching of journal dates
Since version 2.0.0 a cache has been added to speed up calendar
operations. This should drastically improve the performance when using
encrypted journal files, see org-journal-encrypt-journal
.
The caching functionality can be enabled by settings
org-journal-enable-cache
to t
. The cache can be reset by calling
org-journal-invalidate-cache
.
1.7. FAQ
1.7.1. Can I use weekly/monthly/yearly journal entries instead of daily ones?
Yes, see org-journal-file-type
.
1.7.2. Can I have multiple journals?
At the moment, this is not possible. But it should be possible to switch the
value of org-journal-directory
using a custom function or directory local
variables.
1.7.3. Can I use org-journal with Spacemacs?
Yes you can!
To use
org-journal
with Spacemacs from themaster
branch, you must do this:git clone https://github.com/borgnix/spacemacs-journal.git ~/.emacs.d/private/journal
- add it to your
~/.spacemacs
. You will need to addjournal
to the existingdotspacemacs-configuration-layers
list in this file.
The manual of the journal layer can be found at https://github.com/borgnix/spacemacs-journal
- If you use Spacemacs from the
develop
branch you can enableorg-journal
by settingorg-enable-org-journal-support
tot
, see Spacemacs org-journal support.
1.7.4. Some key-bindings in org-journal conflict with org-mode key bindings
Minor modes are supposed to only use key bindings of the form C-c C-?
, where ?
can be any letter, and to not overwrite major mode bindings. With org-mode already using most interesting keys, collisions are inevitable. This means that some org-journal key bindings will not work as expected in an org-mode buffer, and also that some org-mode key bindings will not work as expected in an org-journal buffer.
When working in an org-mode buffer the following org-journal key bindings are overwritten:
C-c C-s
(org-journal-search
) withorg-schedule
C-c C-f
(org-journal-open-next-entry
) withorg-forward-heading-same-level
C-c C-b
(org-journal-open-previous-entry
) withorg-backward-heading-same-level
C-c C-j
(org-journal-new-entry
) withorg-goto
To workaround this, you can use user bindings of the form C-c ?
, where ?
can be any letter, to call the org-journal functions. This allows you to have a set of keybindings that work the same in org-mode and org-journal buffers. However, this is Emacs, and if you don't like a key binding, change it!
1.7.5. Opening journal entries from the calendar are not editable
Old entries are opened in view-mode
, which has convenient key bindings for browsing files. Most notably, you can quickly close view-mode
buffers with q
, scroll them with the SPC
and DEL
, or quit view-mode
with e
.
1.7.6. Can I insert some text on a newly created journal file?
Yes, you can write a custom function and assign it org-journal-date-format
.
1.7.7. Can I do more powerful things on a newly created journal entry?
Yes, there are two hooks that are run when a journal entry is created.
Each (org-journal-new-entry
) will call org-journal-after-entry-create-hook
, and org-journal-after-header-create-hook
is called each time the date (the parent headline of each entry) is generated.
1.8. Convenient org-journal
Snippet Extensions
1.8.1. Kill journal buffer after saving buffer (By @dhruvparamhans)
(defun org-journal-save-entry-and-exit() "Simple convenience function. Saves the buffer of the current day's entry and kills the window Similar to org-capture like behavior" (interactive) (save-buffer) (kill-buffer-and-window)) (define-key org-journal-mode-map (kbd "C-x C-s") 'org-journal-save-entry-and-exit)
1.9. Contributors
See CONTRIBUTORS.
1.10. Contributing to org-journal
We format the code using common-lisp-indent-function
rather than the default
lisp-indent-function
. Please set the variable lisp-indent-function
to
common-lisp-indent-function
, and format the code before creating a PR.
(setq lisp-indent-function 'common-lisp-indent-function) ;; Markt the whole buffer: C-x h ;; Call indent-region: C-M-\
1.11. Changelog
See CHANGELOG.
Old versions
org-journal-2.2.0.0.20240218.184447.tar.lz | 2024-Feb-18 | 30.1 KiB |
org-journal-2.2.0.0.20240107.192234.tar.lz | 2024-Jan-07 | 30.0 KiB |
org-journal-2.2.0.0.20240106.162023.tar.lz | 2024-Jan-06 | 30.2 KiB |
org-journal-2.2.0.0.20231208.152413.tar.lz | 2023-Dec-08 | 30.0 KiB |
org-journal-2.2.0.0.20231022.82922.tar.lz | 2023-Oct-22 | 29.9 KiB |
org-journal-2.2.0.0.20230309.124051.tar.lz | 2023-Mar-09 | 29.9 KiB |
org-journal-2.1.2.0.20230224.152904.tar.lz | 2023-Feb-24 | 29.3 KiB |
org-journal-2.1.2.0.20230116.93659.tar.lz | 2023-Jan-16 | 29.3 KiB |
org-journal-2.1.2.0.20221209.132252.tar.lz | 2022-Dec-09 | 29.3 KiB |
org-journal-2.1.2.0.20220920.151431.tar.lz | 2022-Sep-20 | 29.4 KiB |
News
2.2.0 / 2023-03-09 ================== - fix to check journal files in symlink directory correctly (tomoyukim) - Add note for issue #406 in README.org (Marcel van der Boom) - fix: do not error out on timestamps with extra components (#407) (Janek) - fix failing test case #404 (Jason May) - don't break journaling if CREATED exists at file level #383 (Jason May) - fill docstrings to prevent byte-compile warnings (Jason May) - Add NonGNU ELPA to installation instructions (Stefan Kangas) - Add NonGNU ELPA badge to README.org (Stefan Kangas) - Add copyright and license header (Stefan Kangas) - Encryption enabling added to org-journal-mode-hook (quantum) - added documentation for `org-journal-mode-hook` (quantum) - visual-line-mode not present in org-journal-mode-hook (quantum) - Replace kill-region with delete-region (Janek) - removed repeated text from readme (Harsha Somisetty) - Fix multi-line file header being mixed up with the journal entry. (Alexander Miller) - Minor typos in docstrings (Christopher League) - document org-journal-hide-entries-p (Damien) - Remove deplicate of C-c C-j definition. (Dmitrii Kuragin) - Update documentation to reflect removed 'C-c C-j' global key (Dmitrii Kuragin) - Remove key definition in the package loading. (Dmitrii Kuragin) - Fix failing test (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Set FIXEDCASE flag on replace-regexp-in-string (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Add scheduled entry time of the day (Daniel Nicolai) - Replace get-file-buffer with find-buffer-visiting (wolfwang) - Fix incorrect entry-path when extend-today (yangsheng6810) - Just a little code rework (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Swallow message in test (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Also test against Emacs 27.1 (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Fix and clean-up org-journal-scheduled-weekly-test (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Fix Agenda integration when not using daily files (Christian Schwarzgruber) 2.1.2 / 2021-01-28 ================== - Ignore org-journal-autoloads.el (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Update CONTRIBUTORS file (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Update CHANGELOG file with missing 2.1.1 changes (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Adapt CHANGELOG file for new format (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Add new internal function org-journal--sanity-checks (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Rename org-journal--dir-check-or-create to org-journal--create-journal-dir (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Re-factor org-journal-new-entry (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Rename org-journal--org-heading-p to org-journal--is-date-prefix-org-heading-p (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Mark org-journal-delete-old-carryover public by replacing -- with - (Christian Schwarzgruber) - More work on doc-strings (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Resolve #323 (aragaer) - Add test for #323 and fix small bug in org-journal-new-date-entry (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Formatting (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Fix doc-string warnings (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Add fixme to test case (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Move yearly test to subdirectory too (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Kill any left over buffers after the ert test failed on next execution (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Argument scheduled-time is a list not a string and cannot be passed to org-time-string-to-time (Christian Schwarzgruber) - [tests] Move daily carryover tests to subdirectory (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Prepare for next patch release (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Add test to proof that 7 is correct for Sunday week start (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Try to reproduce #309 (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Define edebug spec for debugging (Christian Schwarzgruber) - Fix "start on sunday" issue (aragaer) - Add missing third arg to `define-obsolete-function-alias` (David Duthie) - Solve error when org-journal-dir has symlink in the path (emiltoacs) - Fixed small typo (Chad Lamb) - Add function `org-journal-reschedule-scheduled-entry` (Resolve #300) (Christian Schwarzgruber) ... ...