Tp-Note: Markup enhanced granular note-taking

Save and edit your clipboard content as a note file

Tp-Note is a note-taking-tool and a template system - freely available for Windows, MacOS and Linux - that consistently synchronizes the note’s meta-data with its filename. Tp-Note's main design goal is to convert some input text - usually provided by the system's clipboard - into a Markdown note file with a descriptive YAML header and a meaningful filename. Tp-Note collects various information about its environment and the clipboard and stores them in variables. New notes are created by filling these variables in predefined and customizable Tera-templates. TP-Note's default templates are written in Markdown and can be easily adapted to any other markup language if needed. After creating a new note, TP-Note launches the system's text editor and connects the default web browser to Tp- Note's internal Markdown/RestructuredText renderer and web server. The viewer detects note file changes and updates the rendition accordingly.

On Tue, 2023-12-19 at 12:58 +1100, Dev Rain wrote:

Found Tp-Note awhile back and it has become part of my daily workflow, and indeed part of my daily note-taking life. I wanted to extend my thanks; so thank you. dev.rain

Read more in Tp-Note’s user manual, Download Tp-Note or visit the project page: Tp-Note - Minimalistic note-taking.

Documentation

User documentation:

• Introductory video

  Tp-Note - Most common use cases - YouTube

• Project page:

  Tp-Note's project page, which you are reading right now, lists where you can download Tp-Note and gives an overview of Tp-Note's resources and documentation.

• User manual:

  The user manual showcases how to best use use Tp-Note and how to integrate it with your file manager.

  Tp-Note user manual - html

  Tp-Note user manual - pdf

• Unix man-page:

  The Unix man-page is Tp-Note's technical reference. Here you learn how to customize Tp-Note's templates and how to change its default settings.

  Tp-Note manual page - html

  Tp-Note manual page - pdf

• Blogposts about Tp-Note

Developer documentation:

• API documentation

  Tp-Note's program code documentation targets mainly software developers. The code is split into a library tpnote-lib and the command line application tpnote. The advanced user may consult the Tp-Note's config module documentation which explains the default templates and setting. Many of them can be customized through Tp-Note's configuration file.

  Constants in API documentation

Source code

Repository:

• Tp-Note on Gitlab

• Tp-Note on Github (mirror)

Distribution

Download installer packages and binaries

Tp-Note Microsoft Windows installer package

• Installer package for Windows:

  tpnote-latest-x86_64.msi

  As this early version of the Windows installer is not signed yet, Windows will show the error message “Windows protected your PC”. As a work-around, when you click on the link “More info”, a ”Run anyway” button will appear allowing you to continue the installation process. In general, regardless of where a program comes from, I recommend checking every installable file with VirusTotal.

Tp-Note Debian/Ubuntu installer package

• Package compiled for Debian:

  x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/debian/tpnote_latest_amd64.deb

Various binaries for Windows, MacOS and Linux

• Binaries for Ubuntu-Linux 18.04, Windows, MacOS:

  1. Open: Releases - getreu/tp-note

  2. Open the latest release.

  3. Open assets.

  4. Download the packed executable for your operating system.

  5. Installation: see below.

• Executable for Windows:

  • x86_64-pc-windows-gnu/release/tpnote.exe

• Linux binary (compiled with Debian):

  • x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/tpnote

  • The following "musl" version also works on headless system.

    x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/tpnote

• Binaries for Raspberry Pi (32 bit):

  • armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf/release/tpnote

• Binaries for Raspberry Pi (64 bit):

  • aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/tpnote

Tp-Note in official package repositories

Tp-Note on NetBSD

• An official package is available on NetBSD and other "pkgsrc" supported platforms.

  To install Tp-Note on NetBSD, simply use the native package manager:

  pkgin install tpnote
  

Tp-Note on NixOS

• An official package is available on NixOS (as of 2024-03-16, only on the unstable branch):

   environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.tpnote ]; 
  

Get Tp-Note with the Nix package manager

• First install the Nix package manager available for Linux, MacOS and Windows (WSL2). Alternatively, for Linux there are also prebuilt Deb/Pacman/Rpm Nix installers available.

  Once you have the Nix package manager installed on your system, try out Tp-Note with:

  nix-shell -p tpnote
  

  or follow installation instructions here: NixOS packages - tpnote

Other resources

• Copy the Unix man-page to /usr/local/share/man/man1:

  • tpnote.1.gz

• Copy Tp-Note's icon to /usr/local/share/icons/:

  • tpnote.svg

Installation

Depending on the availability of installer packages for your operating system, the installation process is more or less automated. For Windows users the fully automated installation package tpnote-latest-x86_64.msi is available. For more information, please consult the Distribution section above and the Installation section in Tp-Note's manual.

Upgrading

While upgrading Tp-Note, new features may cause a change in Tp-Notes's configuration file structure:

*** ERROR:
Can not load or parse the (merged) configuration file(s):
---
invalid length 3, expected fewer elements in array in `viewer.served_mime_types`


Note: this error may occur after upgrading Tp-Note due to some incompatible
configuration file changes.

Tp-Note renames and thus disables the last sourced configuration file.

Additional technical details:
*    Command line parameters:
tpnote -b 
*    Sourced configuration files:
/home/joe/.config/tpnote/tpnote.toml

The configuration file backup is stored in the same directory as the last sourced configuration file, e.g. /home/joe/.config/tpnote/. If Tp-Note sources more than one configuration file, consider the possibility of syntax errors in any of these files (cf. Customization section of Tp-Note_'s man-page).

Building

If the above precompiled binaries do not suite you, you can compile Tp-Note yourself.

1. Install Rust, e.g.

   curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh
   
   sudo apt install build-essential    
   

   A modern Linux desktop usually ships the required shared libraries. Here is a list extracted form a Debian binary:

   ldd target/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/release/tpnote 
        linux-vdso.so.1
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1
        librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0
        libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2
        libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
   

2. Download, compile and install Tp-Note:

   Building on Linux

   cargo install tpnote
   sudo cp ~/.cargo/bin/tpnote /usr/local/bin
   # Copy icon
   sudo cp assets/tpnote.svg /usr/local/share/icons
   

   Unlike previous Linux versions (<= 1.19.13), Tp-Note displays errors and debug messages as notifications. This requires a Linux/BSD based desktop environment that follows the XDG specification, e.g. KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXDC, Mate (and probably also most others).

   The use of notifications also removes former GTK dependencies. Anyway, if you prefer to see error messages on the console only, you can opt out notifications and message boxes. In this case all error messages are dumped on the console from where you started Tp-Note into stderr:

   cargo install --no-default-features \
     --features read-clipboard,viewer,renderer,lang-detection tp-note
   sudo cp ~/.cargo/bin/tpnote /usr/local/bin
   

   Recommended Linux console and server version

   The full-featured version of Tp-Note depends on GUI libraries like Xlib which might not be available on a headless system. Either download the Musl version x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/tpnote or compile Tp-Note yourself without default features:

   cargo install --no-default-features --features renderer,lang-detection tp-note
   sudo cp ~/.cargo/bin/tpnote /usr/local/bin
   

   If Tp-Note's binary size if of concern, omit the lang-detection feature in the cargo invocation above. The lang-detection feature causes 95% of the final binary size because of its extensive language models.

   Building on Windows and macOS

   Build the full-featured version with:

   cargo install tpnote
   

   When building for Windows or macOS, it does not make sense to exclude the message-box feature, because - under Windows and macOS - it does not rely on the notification library. Instead, it uses direct OS-API calls for popping up alert boxes. As these calls have no footprint in binary size or speed, always keep the message-box feature compiled in.

   See also the user manual for a more detailed installation description.

Cross compilation

Debian makes it easy to cross-compile for foreign architectures. Here are some examples:

• Target Musl:

  rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
  sudo apt install musl-tools
  
  cargo build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl --release
  

• Target Raspberry Pi (32 bit):

  rustup target add armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf
  sudo apt install crossbuild-essential-armhf
  
  CARGO_TARGET_ARMV7_UNKNOWN_LINUX_GNUEABIHF_LINKER=/usr/bin/arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc \
    cargo build --target armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf --release
  

• Target Raspberry Pi (arm64, 64 bit):

  rustup target add aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu
  sudo apt install crossbuild-essential-arm64
  
  CARGO_TARGET_AARCH64_UNKNOWN_LINUX_GNU_LINKER=/usr/bin/aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc \
   cargo build  --target aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu --release
  

• Target Windows:

  rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-gnu  
  sudo apt install binutils-mingw-w64 mingw-w64
  cargo build --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu --release 
  

This project follows Semantic Versioning.

About

Author:

• Jens Getreu

Copyright:

• Apache 2 license or MIT license.