[Howm-eng 42] Re: Newbie...

[xma at gnu.org (Xavier Maillard)]

   > 1. how can I extract a mail and turn it into a howm note with the
   > note title being the mail's message ?

   No way at present.  A new code is required for it.  Would you give me
   a concrete example?

I do not have one at present. Actually, I think I could write
something by myself.

   (1)
   snap.el supports Gnus and Wanderlust.
   http://howm.sourceforge.jp/a/snap.el

I read something about it but I am not sure I understand how it
can help or even how I can use it effectively.

   > 2. how can I simply encrypt my notes ? (not all but on a note
   > basis)

   I think it is not easy.
   (1) How can we achieve encryption and efficient search at once?
   (2) It is not special to howm; an independent package for encryption
   will be a better approach.

Well in principle, it is pretty simple to achieve encryption. I
am used to EPG (part of GNU Emacs). I used local-vars to force
automatic encryption of a set of org-mode files.

To be efficient with searching process, we could imagine
launching gpg-agent (or similar) before running emacs and then
have it automaticall decrypt any encrypted file "on the fly"
thus, no need for the user to type its password. SO you will end
up with encryption and efficient search since it could be opened
and decrypted without a manual intervention. Though I do not know
how regular tools such as grep would behave with such a trick.

   (past discussion in Japanese)
   http://howm.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/hiki/hiki.cgi?Encryption

My japanese is pretty inexistent. Could you resume it in emglish
here ? :)

   By the way, howm has a joke feature "rot13". :p

   ;; (1) mkdir ~/r13
   ;; (2) M-x yarot13-find-file RET ~/r13/xxx.howm RET
   ;; (3) Write anything, and C-c C-c to save it with rot13.
   ;; You can search and edit such notes seamlessly in howm.
   ;; Type C-c C-c to save them after modification.
   (setq howm-search-path (list (howm-make-folder:rot13dir "~/r13")))
   (howm-toggle-search-other-dir 1)

   > 3. can I embed local-vars inside a note ? (as to achieve point 2)

   Do you mean something like this?

   Local variables:
   make-backup-files: nil
   transient-mark-mode: t
   End:

Yes.

   Note that all howm's variables are marked as risky-local-variable by
   default for safety.  You need to clear it explicitly as below if you
   want to embed local variables:
   (put 'howm-auto-narrow 'risky-local-variable nil)

That's ok.

   > Latest question:
   > 
   > how do you use howm mode in real life ? Do you take small notes
   > or big notes ? What strategy are you using to "organise" them ?
   > Are there any GTD or cyberpocket user around ? How do you
   > (over)use goto-link and come-from links ?

   I'll show some random tips, though they are not direct answers for
   your question.

   Some users combine org-mode and howm.  It is possible because howm is
   a minor mode.

In fact, I may end up using howm exclusively for all notes
related things. Org-mode would be used for other usages such as
writing long document (an outline document is better for this) or
some sort of log files.

   External grep command makes howm much faster.
   (setq howm-view-use-grep t)

I may try this.

   But too many notes and too long notes are impractical anyway.

So what ? Are you telling me that howm is not suited for people
wanting to take many notes ? How are you doing then ? If you are
using howm since 2005. I am pretty sure you have ended up with
gigas of note files, aren't you ?

   I like "one file for one day" rather than the default "one file for
   one note", with an experimental feature for search-in-result.

What's the advantage to have one file per day instead of the
default setting ?

   (setq howm-file-name-format "%Y/%Y_%m_%d.rd")  ;; I use RD format.
   (setq howm-view-search-in-result-correctly t)  ;; be aware of paragraph

   See here for RD format.
   http://lists.sourceforge.jp/mailman/archives/howm-eng/2005/000014.html

I will have to read this. Thanks.

   I rarely write titles for my notes; they are not necessary.

I do not buy this argument. I think that having many notes should
force people to type an "intelligent" title so as to make the
search process easier.

   The latest beta version of howm-mode is always available at here.
   http://howm.sourceforge.jp/a/howm-test.tar.gz

Nice. In what does it differ with the current 1.3.5 version
though ?

Thank you very much.

	Xavier
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