NonGNU ELPA - org-journal

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 to org-journal-dir).
• org-journal-find-file - a function to use when opening a journal file. By default it opens a window using find-file-other-window. Set this to find-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 with org-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 variables org-journal-start-on-weekday for changing the start of the week for weekly journals (defaults to Monday). Keep in mind changing org-journal-start-on-weekday won't work for existing weekly journal files.

Customization options related to the journal file contents:

• org-journal-date-format - date format org-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 to true) that will hide previous journal entries if true. Can be set to nil to show previous entries.

Customization options related to org-journal itself:

• org-journal-mode-hook - List of functions to run when org-journal-mode is loaded. By default this is set to '(turn-on-visual-line-mode org-journal-default-enable-encryption).

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"))

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".

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 ((START_POINT (END_POINT . "TEXT")) … (START_POINT (END_POINT . "TEXT"))); and in ascending order of START_POINT.

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"))

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.

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 is t, org-journal will automatically add the current and all future journal entries to org-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.

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))

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.

Yes, see org-journal-file-type.

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.

Yes you can!

• To use org-journal with Spacemacs from the master branch, you must do this:

  1. git clone https://github.com/borgnix/spacemacs-journal.git ~/.emacs.d/private/journal
  2. add it to your ~/.spacemacs. You will need to add journal to the existing dotspacemacs-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 enable org-journal by setting org-enable-org-journal-support to t, see Spacemacs org-journal support.

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) with org-schedule
• C-c C-f (org-journal-open-next-entry) with org-forward-heading-same-level
• C-c C-b (org-journal-open-previous-entry) with org-backward-heading-same-level
• C-c C-j (org-journal-new-entry) with org-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!

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.

Yes, you can write a custom function and assign it org-journal-date-format.

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.