Creating Special Notes Directory

[DennisTheMenace780]

I am trying to use Telekasten for both personal and work related things, but I want to create a separate directory for work that can house my work_templated notes. Much like the weekly and daily notes that go to a special directory, I am curious if it is possible to create more special directories? That way, all I need to do is simply add my work directory to .gitignore so I can safely upload my notes to Github without worry about leaking any information.

[lambtho12]

You can create vaults and clearly separate work and personal stuff. Vaults can be in completely different paths, they do not need to have a common hierarchy. You could even go as far as creating different vaults for different clients/projects if that fits your workflow. You can then use the switch_vaults function to call a picker and easily swap between the different vaults.

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As a side note, you may also be interested in git-crypt, which is a small tool that transparently encrypts and decrypts some files or sub-directories of your repo. With that, you can still have your config online but the sensitive stuff is always encrypted.

[DennisTheMenace780]

Sorry, when I say "special directory" I am referencing the phrasing used in the provided configuration file:

    -- dir names for special notes (absolute path or subdir name)
    dailies      = home .. '/' .. 'daily',
    weeklies     = home .. '/' .. 'weekly',
    templates    = home .. '/' .. 'templates',

The way these work is that when you create a daily/weekly note for instance it automatically gets added to those repositories. So what I was thinking was having something like this instead:

    -- dir names for special notes (absolute path or subdir name)
    dailies      = home .. '/' .. 'daily',
    weeklies     = home .. '/' .. 'weekly',
    templates    = home .. '/' .. 'templates',
   work            = home .. '/' .. 'work-dailies'

That way if I were to use a work-dailies templated note for example, that note would be automatically created in the specific directory (work-dailies) that I want it to be in. I did try the vault suggestion and modified the configuration settings which worked, but felt a bit awkward because of the transition necessary using the switch_vault command, and also not necessarily knowing on my status line (Lualine) what the current vault is (though maybe this is something I can modify, I just don't know).

Basically if there was a way in a single vault to create a "special directory" like the dailies and weeklies, I think it would improve the UX of creating notes. But, the vault approach is also a viable alternative.

[lambtho12]

I don't really like the idea of adding a million different options for "special directories". Especially when these directories do not bring anything specific. As I understand it, it is just a regular subdirectory but for your work suff.
You can already create a note in a specific subdirectory by just calling the create_note function and using work/myworknote.md as your title. For me this is not a big deal.

What we could do to make things 'faster' is allowing some options to the lua functions used to create and search the notes so you could craft custom mappings that fit your needs.
For instance something like :lua require('telekasten').new_note({ subdir='work' }) could create a note in the subdirectory work automatically and you would only have to type the title myworknote.md. Likewise, we could have find_files with specific options to only search for files in some subdirectories. You can then just have mappings like <leader>zn for new notes and <leader>znw for the same function but with the appropriate argument.

Would that resolve what you ask here?

[lambtho12]

In a more general way, I think it would be best to expose as many options as possible for the lua functions so people can craft custom mappings like that for many different things. This will simplify the codebase and make it easier to maintain for us. There is as may workflows as there are people using telekasten, implementing custom stuff ourselves will just be a mess.

[DennisTheMenace780]

For instance something like :lua require('telekasten').new_note({ subdir='work' }) could create a note in the subdirectory work automatically and you would only have to type the title myworknote.md. Likewise, we could have find_files with specific options to only search for files in some subdirectories. You can then just have mappings like <leader>zn for new notes and <leader>znw for the same function but with the appropriate argument.

I think this would be right on the nose for what I am looking for! If you would like, I can open a separate issue for a feature request and link this conversation?

[Zethtren]

I like this idea so I can more easily key bind specific directories.

It would be nice to have all of these options available in new_note

title = '{{uuid-title}}' -- If no title then the hyphen is omitted
prompt_title = false -- Create note using uuid as filename
dir = 'path/to/subdir'
template = 'path/to/template'

Its nice having these in the config but it is very restrictive.

I would like to put all of my "fleeting" notes in a subdir so my home dir can ba more of a "TOC directory"

I would also like to have custom dirs for larger notes such as "questions", "work" So I can better organize things.

I know you can use the built in search to find specific items super easy and that works great. But sometimes it helps to be able to just scroll through things in groups so I can decide was is still important and what needs updating without having to remember every small item.

I tried something like this:
vim.keymap.set("n", "zn", "Telekasten new_note<CR>scratch/"..os.date(format)..'.md')

and it worked intermittenly.
Sometimes it went without fail but most of the times after verifying the file name and hitting enter telescope shows as empty. So I can't locate the file to edit.