Plugin: Journal

[leenzhu]

Hi all,

This is a simple journal plugin, hope it will be helpful for you.

It will create a note of the selected date, if the note already exists, it just open it.

According to the note name template, eg: Journal/{{year}}/{{monthName}}/{{year}}-{{month}}-{{day}}, it will create hierarchy folder for you.

There are two default action in Tools->Journal:

1. create or open note of today (Ctrl+Alt+D)
2. create or open note by selecting the day from calendar(Ctrl+Alt+O).

[bepolymathe]

Hi @leenzhu !

This is a great initiative because Joplin lacked a tool for journaling. On my side, I had created a notebook with all the days of the year for reference but this automates things.

Would it be possible to choose between a Sunday start of the week and a Monday start of the week?

It would also be great to have a command to insert the reference to the current date or to a given date

[leenzhu]

Hi @bepolymathe ,

Thanks for your suggestion, after reading the document of vanilla calendar, I found it is possible to choose the start day of a week, I'll add this feature later.

And also, I'll have a try on adding reference.

[leenzhu]

Hi @bepolymathe

I've updated this plugin, you can check the newer version.

[bepolymathe]

It seems that the update has not been released yet...

[leenzhu]

Sorry, perhaps I make a mistake of the version, just fixed it, i may take some time for joplin market to update. You can also download from my github:
journal-v1.0.2

[bepolymathe]

Ok, it available and works great. Thanks !

[Kai]

Very nice; thank you very much. If I could perhaps have a request for a future version: up to now my (manually created) journalling notes are ordered with a different date format: instead of YYYY.MM.DD as your plugin does it I currently use DD.MM.YYYY; could this perhaps be an option for a future release?

Kind regards,
kai.

Afterthought: can I achieve this by rearranging the parameters in the name? I'll check that ...

[Kai]

YES just rearranging the name components works;
Love it!

[akkuman]

Can I customize diary templates ?

like

## TODO
- [ ] xxx

## Note
- xxx

[leenzhu]

I'm afraid not. This plugin aims to orgnize folder structure of date of journal. Perhaps this plugin Templates would meet your demands, you can customize a shortcut for predefined templates， after creating a journal, then you can press this shortcut for insterting the note content.

[akkuman]

Thank you!!! I already know how to use it

[joeschmoe]

hey man, I really love this plugin. It's badass. That's all

[leenzhu]

I'm glade hear that.

[joeschmoe]

perfect, that was my goal

[Daeraxa]

One idea for this from a Journal function I've seen in a different app is to put a timestamp.
So currently ctrl + alt + d either or creates or opens the current day's note but what I'm suggesting is that either that binding is extended via an additional option or a new command added to generate a new entry to that note with a timestamp (i.e. without the extra step of opening it and using an insert datestamp command or shortcut).

e.g. I press ctrl + alt + d to make a new note and on the top line of the note body it also puts in the time of that note.
Later that day I want to add a new entry, I press ctrl + alt + d again and it inserts a break followed by a new timestamp header ready for the next entry.

# 2022-08-31

## 09:00
Journal entry one

## 10:35
Journal entry two

[bepolymathe]

Hi,

Totally agree with @Daeraxa, it would be ideal. Currently I have a keyboard shortcut calling the "templates" plugin to insert in the text with title + time.

[leenzhu]

Hi @Daeraxa,

From my point of view, organize the contents of notes are really individual. I haven't decided to go further, just wanna keep the journal plugin as simple as it can be.

If you wanna a template for newly create note, I would recomend Templates plugin:

Template Plugin

Hi everyone! I'm Nishant Mittal (https://www.github.com/nishantwrp) from India and this summer I'll be working with Joplin on the template plugin! Abstract Joplin’s desktop app has a template feature i.e. users can make their templates and reuse the templates. For example - SWOT Analysis, Time Table, Meeting Notes, Journal, etc. and what not. But Joplin also has an awesome plugin architecture. So it would be better if we repackage the template feature as a plugin due to many reasons like B…

And if you wanna quick insert some predefined text, eg. date/time, I would recomend Slash plugin:

Plugin: Slash Commands - Datetime & More

The last essential plugin for my workflow which I rush a little bit to be in time for new year resolution. There are still a lot of plugins in my backlogs but they all nice-to-have features so I will not develop any of them soon. Slash Commands is a collection of utility commands that can be executed by typing corresponding keywords, which start with a slash ('/'). Current version only supports two type of commands (string and datetime) but more might be added in the future. [screencap] You c…

Hope this will help you.

[Daeraxa]

@leenzhu

, just wanna keep the journal plugin as simple as it can be.

I get that and definitely understand, it was more about letting you know about a feature from a very similar aspect of another application that I'm familiar with that I know people like as it makes life really easy to just press a single combination and be able to jot down their thoughts instantly.

[bepolymathe]

@Daeraxa

it makes life really easy to just press a single combination and be able to jot down their thoughts instantly.

To reduce friction as much as possible, the most useful feature I've seen working is a "quick capture" function that opens a pop-up where you can simply enter a short piece of information in the note of the day without leaving the place you are... Logseq have a un plugin like this.