# 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/Ubuntu:

  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 a 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:

   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, e.g.:

*** 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

Mote, 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

2. Download, compile and install Tp-Note:

   Building on Linux

   cargo install tpnote
   sudo cp ~/.cargo/bin/tpnote /usr/local/bin
   # Download icon
   cd /usr/local/share/icons
   sudo wget https://blog.getreu.net/projects/tp-note/assets/tpnote.svg
   

   On Linux, 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 most others).[^no-message-box]

   [^no-message-box]: In case an XDG desktop environment is not available, you can opt out notifications and message boxes by omitting the message-box feature by adding --no-default-features --features lang-detection,read-clipboard,renderer,viewer to cargo install tpnote. Now, all error messages are dumped on the console from where you started Tp-Note into stderr.

   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 lang-detection,renderer tpnote
   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[^win] with:

   cargo install tpnote
   

   [^win]: 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.

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.