Deltos

Deltos is a magic notepad, a tool for managing personal information.

Getting started

Install with npm.

npm install -g deltos

Make sure bin/deltos is in your path.

deltos init
deltos post My First Post

Write a post. The header is just YAML, so feel free to add fields. Write a little note and put some tags in the tags field, comma separated. Then close your editor.

You can search all your posts by just running:

deltos search

Just type to filter entries displayed, and select one from the list to edit it.

If you use vim you'll want to check deltos.vim.

What Deltos Is

Deltos is a system for personal information management that I made for myself.

I like wikis, but setting them up can be tedious. Running a DB is a hassle, and I want to be able to use my own text editor. Even if a wiki uses flat files there are still issues.

• Unicode support is typically mediocre
• Thinking up titles is tedious
• Links break and chaos is unleashed when titles change

There are downsides to using uuid keys, but I realized I don't really care about them. The most important thing is I want to start writing just by pushing a button. The next most important thing is I want to find what I've written before. Tags, rich metadata, and files that work with the tools I'm used to (grep and so on) seemed like the best way to do that.

A secondary goal is the ability to dump documents to HTML so as to share them more easily. You are encouraged to rip that bit out and replace it with something that fits your needs.

Basic Idea

You create a note. A note probably has a title, has tags, and has a Body, which is just another kind of metadata but rather longer. The important thing is writing the body down and not having to think too much about the title or getting the metadata correct.

Coming back to what you've written, it's important to be able to organize by various metadata fields, to link notes together, and to use outlines to organize notes in hierarchies when tags don't cut it. You should also be able to edit an article, including its metadata, without breaking links or disrupting the integrity of your web.

License

CC0, WTFPL, Kopyleft All Rites Reversed. Do as you like.

-POLM