Support for journal hierarchy

[pmatulis]

It is not clear whether there is support for a directory hierarchy for journal files. It doesn't seem workable to have one directory (wiki_root/journal appears to be the default for <journal-dir>) that contains an ever-growing number of files. It would be great to have built-in support for journal file creation under:

<journal-dir>/<year>/<month>

[lervag]

You're right: I never imagined this feature (and don't find it interesting myself).

The closest thing we have right now is g:wiki_journal.date_format, but it will only specify the file name and does not support nested directories.

I could look into allowing format strings that contain path delimiters / and create directories as needed. However, it would not be "backwards compatible", that is, you would have to fix any existing entries manually.

I imagine it to work like this:

*g:wiki_journal*
  A dictionary for configuring the journal/diary feature. Available options
  are:

    ...

    date_format~
      Dictionary of filename formats for the 'daily', 'weekly', and 'monthly'
      frequencies. The formats may contain the following keys:

        %y  year (two digits)
        %Y  year (four digits)
        %m  month (01..12)
        %d  day of month (01..31)
        %V  ISO week number with Monday as first day of week
        %U  week number with Sunday as first day of week
        /   Path delimiter

      The filenames will be rooted at the journal root.

  The following example will specify to create journal entries in a path
  hierarchy:

    let g:wiki_journal = {
          \ 'name': 'journal',
          \ 'frequency': 'daily',
          \ 'date_format': {
          \   'daily' : '%Y/%m/%d',
          \   'weekly' : '%Y/week_%V',
          \   'monthly' : '%Y/%m/summary',
          \ },
          \ 'index_use_journal_scheme': v:true,
          \}

  The journal files would then look something like this:

    wiki/journal/
      -> 2021/
        -> 04/
          -> 25.wiki
          -> 26.wiki
      -> 2022/
        -> 06/
          -> 25.wiki
          -> 26.wiki

[lervag]

Is this aligned with your expectation; what you want?

[pmatulis]

Yes, you got it. 👍

[lervag]

I've looked into this now, and I notice that I did not really plan for this kind of thing. There are a lot of changes required to support it. I'll admit this is caused by a poor design of the journal code. I might consider to make a large update, but I won't promise anything.

Essentially: I've mostly assumed a ISO standard date for most things. I should have designed a mapping between a date (in various formats) and a journal file name. When you define the date_format differently, things like "go to next entry" and most type of journal links will stop working.

I'll leave the issue open, and I might go ahead and address this. But, again, I won't make any promises. It will take some time and I'm not blessed with much of that these days.

[pmatulis]

I understand.

[bybor]

Will custom wiki resolver do this? It may be the easiest workaround.

It may result in a path that hasn't yet been created, but maybe Vim has a method to do it?

[lervag]

No, it's not that simple. Or, rather, that's not the problem. You can already set the setting as I suggested in my first post and it will seem to work. But doing :WikiJournalNext and similar will not work with this format. Further, the journal scheme links assumes a link in the same format as the setting, so journal:YYYY-MM-DD would stop working. And other things. So, as I said, I've done some silly choices when I implemented these things, and I think the best way forward is to change the implementation at core of the journal. I think doing this would both improve the plugin a lot and also allow for future improvements and new features, so I believe I might go there. But likely not very fast.

[thw26]

I might recommend the jrnl.sh program as an alternative CLI journal, if you are using vim in CLI.

[lervag]

I've pushed a branch with updates that I believe should allow journal hierarchies. I would be very happy if someone would be willing to test it.

[lervag]

See #249.