ZettelOutline Rendering

Assemble a first draft from your Zettelkasten notes and an outline file. Markdown aware, allowing you to write arbitrarily nested lists as outlines.

Installation

Install the ruby gem yourself from the command line:

$ gem install zettel_outline

Usage of the program

From the command line, run zettel_outline with the required parameters as the help indicates:

$ zettel_outline
usage: zettel_outline -f <OUTLINE FILE> -a <ARCHIVE PATH> -o <DRAFT FILE>

Required options:
    -f, --file     an outline file
    -a, --archive  path to your Zettel notes
    -o, --output   file to write results to

Also available:
    -h, --help     prints this help
    -v, --verbose  verbose output
    --version

For example:

$ zettel_outline -f outline.txt -a /path/to/notes/ -o draft.txt

This will read the outline.txt from the current directory. It will resolve every Zettel reference using the Zettel note archive (/path/to/notes/) and concatenate the notes's contents into draft.txt.

A sample outline can look like this:

* 201407030825 Why baking is so important for life. I really love baking
* 201601231448 Banana cake. The very best cake ever
    * 201601222058 Nutritional value of bananas
    * 201601222035 Nutritional value of eggs

The nested list of Zettel references will be split into:

1. The Zettel ID, used to find the note in your archive; e.g. "201407030825"
2. The note title, used for the draft's output; e.g. "Why baking is so important for life"
3. The comment, which is everything after the first period in the line; e.g. "I really love baking"

Zettel note contents will be separated using Markdown-enabled HTML comments, which are surrounded with <!-- and -->. So the resulting draft.txt will look similar to this:

<!-- §201407030825 Why baking is so important for life -->
<!-- I really love baking -->

Baking is one of the oldest and definitely one of the
most delicious ways to prepare food.

...

Usage of the library

The higher-level interface of the gem is very simple. Wrapping every parameter into a compile function can look like this:

def compile(outline_path, notes_path, draft_path)
  content = File.read(outline_path)
  result = ZettelOutline::compile(content, notes_path)
  File.open(draft_path, "w") do |f|
    f.write(ZettelOutline::render(result))
  end
end

• ZettelOutline::compile takes the outline as a string and the path to resolve note references.
• ZettelOutline::render is just a wrapper to concatenate the result and return a simple string.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are always welcome! Discuss on the forums.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.