Hello everyone, I’m working on a little markdown template to use DTPO (= Devon Think Pro Office) as a “Zettelkasten” (Look here for what that is and how it has been approached in the past; See this tool for a pretty good modern version of a Zettelkasten, that sadly doesn’t perform all to well).
What I’m trying to accomplish is hopefully not that hard:
- I have a very simple Markdown-Template, that looks something like this:
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This is what is called a “Zettel”. I put my little “zettel.md” file into the template folder of DTPO and can now easily create a new “Zettel” by clicking on the appropriate Button in the file menu.
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This creates a new Zettel that gets called by DTPO “zettel-$number.md” and the sections I defined in the template.
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I then go ahead and create the note in the zettel format: A thought that occured to me, a quote etc. I start with giving it a title in the form “Title: Zettel $number: $title”
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After I’ve finished writing down, what I wanted to write down, I tag the Zettel with all the appropriate tags I can think of.
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When the note is at this stage, what is left to do is the linking. For this I create links back and forth between the penultimate Zettel of a particular tag and this one. For short: I create the ins and outs of my Zettels and note them in the sections of my Zettels.
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The links have the form zettel-$number.md. I use this script from forum member korm to create said links. Since I have automatic wikilinking for names and aliases activated in the preferences (DTPO->Preferences->Editing->Wikilinks->Names and Aliases), I can click and navigate my Zettelkasten while editing and viewing (via “Best Alternative”).
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This is all great so far. Now, in order to be quicker, I created a little macro in Keyboard Maestro (KM) that helps me with creating what is called a “Folgezettel” (a Zettel the follows the one displayed): I let KM copy the markdown link of the displayed Zettel and let it create a new Zettel. Now I can paste the link that is already in my clipboard to the section “Zettel In”, since it is an incoming Link.
What I want to know how to do now is this:
How to automatically paste that link? Is it possible within a template to do the following: Create a markdown template that uses the info of my cliboard to insert the contents to a particular position in the template? E.g. when I’m having a Link to a preceding Zettel on my clipboard, is there a way to create a template that uses these contents and inserts them under “Zettel In”? Also: It would be nice if the number of the Zettel in the title would be automatically inserted by the template.
How to create a script that works with markdown files, that can find a particular place in a document? It should work something like this: Find the appropriate section of a Zettel and append to the body of that section the clipboard contents.
How to create a script that finds a particular Zettel? I would like to be able to create a link for a Zettel that is not displayed right now. As long as I know the number of the Zettel, I should be fine.
Well, there are a lot of other questions I have as regards to simplifying the work needed to link notes in a two way manner. But any help with the preceding questions would be very much appreciated.
Thank you in advance, I’m looking forward to your ideas and questions (maybe you want to try or have tried in the past to implement a Zettelkasten).
P.S.: I’m not sure if this is the right place for my post. If the admins want to move it someplace else, I’d be fine with it.