hayom: A command-line journaling application

NOTE: This project is in maintenance mode. I've replaced my use of hayom with hsh, and don't anticipate doing any more work on this.

#Hayom

Hayom is a rewrite (and gradual reimagining) of jrnl. At a base level, it's not written in Python, and therefore doesn't do your choice of breaking constantly when the system Python gets changed, or having to maintain your own pyenv/virtualenv/what-have-you. Beyond that, it has more consistent command-line options, while still retaining a human-first command-line interface.

The file format of Hayom is identical to jrnl, so it's easy to point both tools to the same file if you wish (at least for now) and use them interchangeably. Over time, this likely will change in a subtle and fairly backwards-compatible way, for the basic reason that I want a blank line between the entry title and the entry body. But for now, you're golden.

#Installation

deno install -n hayom --allow-env --allow-read --allow-write --allow-run \
    https://git.sr.ht/~bmp/hayom/blob/main/cli.ts

#Usage

Writing entries with Hayom is designed to be as easy as possible so there is no friction. For short entries, it's trivial to just write what you want directly on the command line:

hayom Today, I ate some pancakes. They were delicious.

Everything up to the end of the first sentence (demarcated by ., ?, or !) will be considered the entry title. It's fine to have just a title.

For longer entries, just type hayom, and it'll pop up an editor. Hayom will honor the editor setting in its config file first, $EDITOR second, and attempt to use nano last.

If there's sufficient interest, I will switch the default to ed.

To read entries, you must specify at least one filtering command. These commands are:

--from/-f: the earliest timestamp to include
--to/-t: the last timestamp to include
--summary/-s: show just entry titles, not bodies
--count/-n: how many entries to show
--on: show entries made on a specific day

You can additionally specify tags (formatted as @tagname) to filter entries.

All of the time-based commands take natural English, not just dates. For example, the following command line gives you all the entries between last month and this month that were about @bob's @tpsreport:

hayom -f '2 months ago' -t 'this month' @bob @tpsreport

Or, if you're curious what you did last Tuesday, it's as easy as writing:

hayom --on 'last Tuesday'

#Editing

For any of the filtering commands, if you add -e/--edit, those entries will pop up in your editor. There, you can add extra entries, change timestamps, delete entries, and whatever else floats your boat. For example, to edit everything I wrote yesterday, I might do

hayom -f yesterday -e

If you cancel your editor without saving, the journal will be left as-is.

#Multiple Journals

You can have multiple journals. If you do, simply specify the journal you want with the --journal or -j command. E.g., if you had personal and work journals, you might do

hayom -j work Finally filed my stupid @tpsreport
hayom -j personal Sent out a pile of résumés today

If you don't specify a journal, hayom will use the default.

#Configuration

Hayom works fine with no configuration file. If you do that, it will make a journal called .hayom in your $HOME. Alternatively, you can create a file called $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/hayom/hayom.toml (Linux and macOS) or %APPDATA%\hayom\hayom.toml (Windows) with your configuration options. An example configuration file might look like:

editor = "kak"
default = "personal"

[journals.work]
journal = "/home/benjamin/journals/work.txt"

[journals.personal]
journal = "/home/benjamin/journals/personal.txt"

#Community

Feel free to come discuss Hayom either on the skunkworks mailing list or in my IRC channel. These are also great places to report bugs to fix.

#Submitting Patches

If you feel comfortable using git send-email, please kick your patches off to the skunkworks mailing list. If you don't, send me an email or ping me in IRC and I'll find a way for you to get your code to me.