denote-roam

A GNU Emacs package to bridge denote and org-roam for format consistent and atomic note taking.

Philosophy

This is a personal workflow developed through discovery. I found that denote is good at making notes, but org-roam is better at linking them. Using them in tandem allows for the most amount of features. This package facilitates this workflow.

I discovered this workflow during a chem lecture because I was bored, but it’s been really helpful for my writing process for school and self study.

Installation/Configuration

This is a personal project, so you will need to install it from version control e.g. my GitHub repository.

use-package — Recommended route

(use-package denote-roam
  :vc (:url "https://github.com/BardofSprites/denote-roam"
       :rev newest)
  :after (denote org-roam)
  :bind
  ("C-c n i" . denote-roam-insert-or-create-node)  ; node insert
  ("C-c n o" . denote-roam-find-or-create-node)    ; node open
  :custom
  ;; default is nil to include denote-journal entries in org-roam database
  (denote-roam-include-journal nil)
  (denote-roam-directory "~/Notes")
  :config
  (denote-roam-mode t))

Manual Install

Install all the dependencies for org-roam and denote. Then clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/BardofSprites/denote-roam.git

Finally, add the package to your load path in your init.el or somewhere:

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/denote-roam")
(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/dependencies")

Plans

• implement node+file counting function that returns number of nodes split across n files
• denote subtree creation (promote headings accordingly)

References

• A video I made about denote and org roam, will likely remake this soon
• https://www.orgroam.com/
• https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote