Re: [emacs-humanities] How do you keep engaged with your writings?

[Gary Klimowicz]

On Jan 29, 2021, at 23:01, M. ‘quintus’ Gülker 
<post+emacs-humanities@guelker.eu> wrote:

> Am 30. Januar 2021 um 15:43 Uhr +1000 schrieb Paul W. Rankin via 
> Emacs-humanities:
>> Also I find it amusing that this list has been discussing ways to not use
>> Emacs.
> 
> Personally, I quite enjoy reading these discussions even if they might
> be considered slightly OT. Emacs is a tool, and with all tools, you
> should always use what suits the case in point best.

Me too. I'm enjoying this a lot.

I've been wrestling with this for 25+ years. About every 5 or 10 years, I 
reorganize things based on finding a better paradigm than I used to have, 
especially one that will scale better with time.

The main problem I've had with pen and paper has been retrieving. Over the 
course of time, I've had something like 30 paper notebooks. Most of the 
notebooks don't even exist any more (just scanned copies). Most of my notes are 
in the form of hand-drawn mind maps.

I've just started on a set of programming language history projects,]. I know I 
will need a method for dealing with a wide variety of topic notes that 
reference source documents (primarily language standards documents, standards 
meeting documents, and language discussions in online forums and mailing lists).

I'm starting to use a Zettelkasten-style model for the notes I write 
(Luhmann-style numbering), with a not-yet-perfected way of storing the variety 
of reference materials. I'm mostly using zetteldeft for the notes, and custom 
org links for the pointers to the references (outside the Zettelkasten).

I'm starting to wish I had a Luhmann-style indexing system for the reference 
material. I don't want these docs to clog up my list of my own notes. But I 
wish I had a handle more permanent than a file's directory and name to refer to 
them by.

I might really want deft and zetteldeft to allow me to have multiple such node 
lists available simultaneously.

G.