Contents

• VimwikiUtils
  • Introduction
• Requirements
• Features
  • Linking And Creating New Notes
    • VimwikiUtilsLink
    • VimwikiUtilsBacklinks
    • VimwikiUtilsRough
    • VimwikiUtilsSource
  • Organizing Notes
    • VimwikiUtilsTags
    • VimwikiUtilsEmbed
    • VimwikiUtilsGenerateIndex
    • VimwikiUtilsRename
  • Embedding And Editing Of Screenshots
    • VimwikiUtilsSc
    • VimwikiUtilsEditImage
  • Anki Related
    • Anki Cloze
• Default Key mappings
• Installation
  • Packer
  • Lazy
• Getting Started

VimwikiUtils

[!INFO] This is a work in progress and my first time implementing a plugin for nvim.

Introduction

This plugin is an extension for Vimwiki, trying to add to its many capabilities. It also has a predefined wiki structure, which I use in my bioinformatics studies. The wiki structure was inspired by this YouTube video.

/home/usr/zettelkasten/
.
├── 1_rough_notes/
│  ├── unprocessed_note.md
│  └── ...
├── 2_source_material/
│  ├── lecture_slides_1.pdf
│  └── ...
├── 3_tags/
│  ├── rna.md
│  ├── computer_science.md
│  ├── biochemistry.md
│  └── ...
├── 4_atomic_notes/
│  ├── atomic_note_1.md
│  ├── atomic_note_2.md
│  ├── atomic_note_3.md
│  └── ...
├── assets/
│  ├── screenshots/
│  │  ├── screenshot_1.png
│  │  ├── screenshot_2.png
│  │  └── ...
│  ├── gifs/
│  └── ...
├── templates/
│  ├── template_1.md
│  ├── template_2.md
│  └── ...
└── README.md

Requirements

• Vimwiki
• Flameshot
• KolourPaint
• ripgrep

Features

Linking And Creating New Notes

VimwikiUtilsLink

Allows you to quickly link to an existing file or to create a new file based on a template. Pressing <C-f> in insert mode opens a telescope prompt showing all files in 4_atomic_notes/. Either hit <CR> on an existing note (creating a link to it), or press <A-CR> (options + enter) to forcefully create a new note (based on where you are currently at), which will be named after what you typed into the promt. If you type a new note name and there's no other similar note in the fuzzy findings of telescope, you can also just hit <CR> to create the new note. This helps you to dynamically create new notes or link to already existing notes. Use <tab> to autocomplete your promt with the current selection. If you accidentally create a new atomic_note in e.g 3_tags/ or at root level of your wiki, just use VimwikiUtilsEmbed in order to move it to 4_atomic_notes/.

If you link to a new note (pressing <A-CR> while in VimwikiUtilsLink) from within a tag note (a note which is stored 3_tags/), a link to the corresponding tag will automatically be substituted into your template if your template contains a TAG token. See template examples in templates/

Templates currently support the following tokens:

• DATE -> formats to current date
• HEADER -> formats to name of file (removes any _)
• TAG -> links back to tag file (if new note was created from within a tag file)

One can also just disable the templates completely by using use_templates = false in the config.

VimwikiUtilsBacklinks

Find parent files linking to the currently opened file by pressing <leader>fb. Since one file can be referenced by several other files, the files displayed in the picker are by name and line number.

VimwikiUtilsRough

Press <leader>nn to create a rough_note.md in your 1_rough_notes/ based on a chosen template. This is not necessary, but it is useful when you want to quickly take temporary note or notes that don't belong to any tag yet. After polishing the note you can use VimwikiUtilsEmbed to move the rough_note to 4_atomic_notes.

VimwikiUtilsSource

Using this function you can linkt to your soure files (e.g lectures, papers, etc) stored in 2_source_material/. Make sure to name your sources clearly in order to prevent chaos.

Organizing Notes

VimwikiUtilsTags

Easily create or link to existing tags in 3_tags/, which are meant to also structure your wiki. An index can be generated, holding all files tagged by the current tag file. While in insert mode, press <C-e> to open a telescope prompt. Here all your tags will be displayed. Hit <CR> to create a link to the selected tag or hit <A-CR> (options + enter) to forcefully create a new tag (named after what you typed in the promt). If you type a new tag name and there's no other similar tag in the fuzzy findings of telescope, you can also just hit enter to create the new tag (same behavior as VimwikiUtilsLink).

VimwikiUtilsEmbed

Helps handling notes stored in 1_rough_notes/ (or anywhere but 4_atomic_notes/) by automatically moving the currently opened note into your 4_atomic_notes/ dir after you abstract and summarize it.

VimwikiUtilsGenerateIndex

Generates a list of all referencing files formatted as links. Useful when in README.md or in any tag file.

VimwikiUtilsRename

Due to the adjusted wiki structure, the default VimwikiRename doesn't work as expected. This function fixes said issue, it uses several matching patterns to identify links and replaces them using sed.

Embedding And Editing Of Screenshots

VimwikiUtilsSc

Take screenshots on the fly by and embed them into the current markdown file. After calling VimwikiUtilsSc you need to provide an image name. If that image already exists, nothing will happen, otherwise nvim will call the screenshot script after a 5 second delay. This way, you have enough time to set everything up. VimwikiUtilsSc calls Flameshot with the following parameters:

flameshot gui -p <image_path> -d <delay>

, where <image_path> points to the image destination assets/screenshots/<name>.png.

[!INFO]

In order to hide the hint that gets displayed by flameshot gui, disable it in the internal configuration of flameshot (using flameshot config)

VimwikiUtilsEditImage

Hovering over an embedded screenshot and pressing <leader>ii opens KolourPaint (if installed). This allows for additional annotation of already existing screenshots. You can also replace it with any other light weight image editing software using edit_image_exe = "<path_to_alt_executable>". You can also provide args for the alternative exe using edit_image_args = "<args>". Note that <args> needs to be a table, e,g:

{
    images = {
        edit_image_args = { "--fullscreen", "--delay", "3" }, -- (random args)
    }
}

Anki Related

Anki Cloze

I personally like to summarize my lectures in .md and during so I mark key words using the inline code syntax. Having summarized a lecture, it is sometimes tedious to create good Anki cards afterwards. That's why I try to already format my summary into smaller chunks, f.e:

## Multi-modal registration using MIND
- **MIND**: `Modality-Independent Non-local descriptor` 
- Idea: Converting `multi-modal` into `mono-modal` problem
- For each `image pixel`, a set of `local weights` are calculated over `non-local image patches`
- These `weights` can be directly compared between images of different `modalities`

If I now want to quickly create a cloze type Anki card, I can select this paragraph in VISUAL (block or line) mode and hit <leader>ac to call VimwikiUtilsAnkiCloze. There are three options for converting the paragraph into a cloze style Anki card:

Default (''):
All inline code parts share the same cloze id:

## Multi-modal registration using MIND
- **MIND**: {{c1::`Modality-Independent Non-local descriptor`}} 
- Idea: Converting {{c1::`multi-modal`}} into {{c1::`mono-modal`}} problem
- For each {{c1::`image pixel`}}, a set of {{c1::`local weights`}} are calculated over {{c1::`non-local image patches`}}
- These {{c1::`weights`}} can be directly compared between images of different {{c1::`modalities`}}

Per word ('0'):

## Multi-modal registration using MIND
- **MIND**: {{c1::`Modality-Independent Non-local descriptor`}} 
- Idea: Converting {{c2::`multi-modal`}} into {{c3::`mono-modal`}} problem
- For each {{c4::`image pixel`}}, a set of {{c5::`local weights`}} are calculated over {{c6::`non-local image patches`}}
- These {{c7::`weights`}} can be directly compared between images of different {{c8::`modalities`}}

Per line ('1')

## Multi-modal registration using MIND
- **MIND**: {{c1::`Modality-Independent Non-local descriptor`}} 
- Idea: Converting {{c2::`multi-modal`}} into {{c2::`mono-modal`}} problem
- For each {{c3::`image pixel`}}, a set of {{c3::`local weights`}} are calculated over {{c3::`non-local image patches`}}
- These {{c4::`weights`}} can be directly compared between images of different {{c4::`modalities`}}

The converted text is saved to your systems clipboard.

Default Key mappings

Keymap	Function
INSERT <C-f>	VimwikiUtilsLink
INSERT <C-e>	VimwikiUtilsTags
NORMAL <leader>nn	VimwikiUtilsRough
NORMAL <leader>fb	VimwikiUtilsBacklinks
NORMAL <leader>sc	VimwikiUtilsSc
NORMAL <leader>ii	VimwikiUtilsEditImage
NORMAL <leader>sm	VimwikiUtilsSource
NORMAL <leader>m	VimwikiUtilsEmbed
NORMAL <leader>wm	VimwikiUtilsGenerateIndex
NORMAL <leader>wr	VimwikiUtilsRename
VISUAL <leader>ac	VimwikiUtilsAnkiCloze

Installation

Packer

use {
    'mweyrich28/vimwiki_utils',
    requires = {
        'nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim',
        'vimwiki/vimwiki'
    }
}

Lazy

return {
    'mweyrich28/vimwiki_utils',
    dependencies = {
        'nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim',
        'vimwiki/vimwiki',
    },
    config = function()
        require('vimwiki_utils').setup({})
    end,
}

Getting Started

require('vimwiki_utils').setup({})

Or configure your keymaps and dirs like this:

require('vimwiki_utils').setup({
    globals = {
        rough_notes_dir = "1_rough_notes",
        source_dir = "2_source_material",
        tag_dir = "3_tags",
        atomic_notes_dir = "4_atomic_notes",
        screenshot_dir = "assets/screenshots",
    },
    keymaps = {
        vimwiki_utils_link_key = "<C-b>",
        vimwiki_utils_tags_key = "<C-e>",
        vimwiki_utils_rough_key = "<leader>nn",
        vimwiki_utils_backlinks_key = "<leader>fb",
        vimwiki_utils_sc_key = "<leader>sc",
        vimwiki_utils_edit_image_key = "<leader>ii",
        vimwiki_utils_source_key = "<leader>sm",
        vimwiki_utils_embed_key = "<leader>m",
        vimwiki_utils_generate_index_key = "<leader>wm",
        vimwiki_utils_rename = "<leader>wr",
        vimwiki_utils_anki_cloze = "<leader>ac",
    },
    templates = {
        use_templates = false,
        dir = "templates",
    },
    images = {
        edit_image_exe = "/snap/bin/kolourpaint",
        edit_image_args = "",
    }
})

Make sure to create a wiki in your vimwiki.lua config like so:

vim.g.vimwiki_auto_chdir = 1 -- this is currently necessary
vim.g.vimwiki_list = {
    {
        path = '~/path/to/zettelkasten/',
        syntax = 'markdown',
        ext = '.md',
        index = 'README'
    }
}