Sublime ZK

More on this Zettelkasten concept. One of the developers of The Archive passed along a link to an absolutely incredible Sublime Text package, Sublime ZK.

The package is impressive in what it can do, but also in how it’s documented. The Github page for the project is extensive and includes animated examples of it in action. This is a powerhouse for taking notes. It’s probably not for the casual user but if you want to build a encyclopedia of your own ideas and facts then this is a great starting point.

This is not a simple project either. Here’s a snippet from the description of how it supports search, one of the most important features of a note system:

 #transport !#car : all notes with transport + all notes not containing car (such as #plane)

 There is no comma. Hence, two search terms will be evaluated and the results of all of them will be combined (OR).

 #transport, !#car: all notes with transport - all notes containing car

I’ve been in search of the perfect outboard brain for many years. I capture a lot of small bits of information. Sometimes I know exactly when it will be used, like my wife’s shoe size. Other times I have no idea what it’s for at the moment, like a friend’s favorite movie. It’s been valuable but using the information becomes difficult over time. Either it’s not with me when it’s the most useful, like when I just have a phone. Or, it’s too hard to find because I’ve lost the context of the thought when it was created.

With the document search getting better every day I wish I were more consistent with creating my notes. Had I developed a system a decade ago and stuck with it, I wonder how much more useful the collection would be today. To that point, any collection I do keep needs to be plain text that is totally portable. Proprietary data and services that trap information are not for me. I like that so many new tools sit on top of plain text files.