jkoz / notes

Shell script for compiling pdf/html notes with pandoc.

notes

Shell script for compiling pdf notes with pandoc.

Usage

notes [year|"all"] [module]

Examples

notes
   compiles notes for current year/module

notes all
   compiles all notes

notes 1
   compiles notes for year 1

notes 1 3
   compiles notes for year 1 module 3

Dependencies

* pandoc
* LaTex
* ghostscript

Explanation

This is a script I wrote to help compile my medical school notes with pandoc. As such, it's catered to my needs, but you should be able to adjust it for yours quite easily. Notes are organized in a directory specified by the environment variable $NOTES_DIR. Inside this directory there are years and inside the years there are modules. It also uses environment variables $YEAR and $MODULE for the current year and module. You could define these in the script itself if you'd like. The directory structure looks like this...

/home/connermcd/Dropbox/Courses/Notes
├── MS1
│   ├── MS1.pdf
│   ├── mod1
│   │   ├── img
│   │   └── Pharm - Example.txt
│   ├── mod2
│   ├── mod3
│   └── ...
├── MS2
│   ├── MS2.pdf
│   ├── mod1
│   └── ...
├── about.md
├── fonts.tex
├── html.md
└── slidy.html

Each file has a header indicating the title and date. For instance...

# Pharm - Example
> Date: 04-24-13  
> Instructor: McDaniel

![This is an image](img/image.jpg)\ 

This is used by the script to sort the files chronologically in the exported pdf. Images can be stored in the img directory for the corresponding module.

Vim/bash integration

I use vim and so I have some handy shortcuts that I use for notes that I will include here. These use ack and the Ack.vim vim plugin.

let g:year = system('echo -n "$YEAR"')
let g:module = system('echo -n "$MODULE"')
command! -nargs=1 Nack Ack -i --text --nohtml "<args>" $NOTES_DIR/*/*/*.txt
command! -nargs=1 Note exe "e! " . fnameescape($NOTES_DIR . "/MS". g:year . "/mod" . g:module . "/<args>.txt")

nnoremap <leader>[ :Nls 
nnoremap <leader>] :Note 

augroup markdown
   au!
   au BufNewFile,BufRead,BufWrite *.txt,*.md,*.mkd,*.markdown,*.mdwn setl ft=markdown
   au BufRead,BufNewFile,BufEnter   */mod*/*.txt let &complete="k$NOTES_DIR/**/*.txt"
   au BufRead,BufNewFile,BufEnter   */mod*/*.txt lcd %:h
   au BufRead,BufWrite,InsertChange */mod*/*.txt syn match ErrorMsg '\%>77v.\+'
augroup end

I also use a bash version of the :Nack command so I can search my notes from the command line.

function nack {
   vim -c "Nack $*"
}

MIT License

Copyright (C) 2013 copyright holder

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.