Exploring Denote 2.0 for Emacs

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Denote 2.0 by Protesilaos Stavrou was released on July 21 of this year but I haven’t had a chance to examine the changelog until now. Let’s take a look together!

• https://protesilaos.com/emacs/denote-changelog
• https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/denote.html

We’ll try out as many of the new features as we have time for to see how they might be useful for our note taking workflows.

Here’s the configuration we worked on during the stream:

;; Set an initial theme
(load-theme 'modus-vivendi t)

(use-package evil
  :ensure t
  :init
  (setq evil-want-keybinding nil)
  :config
  (evil-mode 1))

(use-package evil-collection
  :after evil
  :ensure t
  :config
  (evil-collection-init))

(use-package marginalia
  :ensure t
  :after vertico)

(use-package vertico
  :ensure t
  :init
  (vertico-mode)
  (marginalia-mode)

  ;; Show more candidates
  (setq vertico-count 10)

  ;; Grow and shrink the Vertico minibuffer
  (setq vertico-resize t)

  ;; Optionally enable cycling for `vertico-next' and `vertico-previous'.
  (setq vertico-cycle t)

  ;; Add prompt indicator to `completing-read-multiple'.
  ;; We display [CRM<separator>], e.g., [CRM,] if the separator is a comma.
  (defun crm-indicator (args)
    (cons (format "[CRM%s] %s"
                  (replace-regexp-in-string
                   "\\`\\[.*?]\\*\\|\\[.*?]\\*\\'" ""
                   crm-separator)
                  (car args))
          (cdr args)))
  (advice-add #'completing-read-multiple :filter-args #'crm-indicator)

  ;; Enable recursive minibuffers
  (setq enable-recursive-minibuffers t))

(defun dw/denote-rename-buffer-with-prefixed-title (&optional buffer)
  (denote-rename-buffer-with-title)
  (rename-buffer (concat "[D] " (buffer-name (or buffer (current-buffer) title :unique)))))

(use-package denote
  :ensure t
  :custom
  (denote-directory "~/denote-test/Notes")
  (denote-rename-buffer-function 'dw/denote-rename-buffer-with-prefixed-title)
  :config
  (denote-rename-buffer-mode)
  (require 'denote-org-dblock)

  (with-eval-after-load 'org-capture
    (add-to-list 'org-capture-templates
                 '("n" "New note (with Denote)" plain
                   (file denote-last-path)
                   #'denote-org-capture
                   :no-save t
                   :immediate-finish nil
                   :kill-buffer t
                   :jump-to-captured t))))

(custom-set-variables
 ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
 ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
 ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 '(package-selected-packages '(marginalia vertico denote))
 '(safe-local-variable-values
   '((denote-known-keywords "food" "drink")
     (denote-directory . "~/denote/OtherNotes"))))
(custom-set-faces
 ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
 ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
 ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
 ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 )

Here is the directory-local variable file (.dir-locals.el) that I used to create a “silo” of notes:

;;; Directory Local Variables            -*- no-byte-compile: t -*-
;;; For more information see (info "(emacs) Directory Variables")

((nil . ((denote-directory . "~/denote/OtherNotes")
         (denote-known-keywords . ("food" "drink")))))