It is really nice to have someone reporting on those little things that make a good (unseen) impact on their workflow and that we usually don’t even consider the possibility of having them.
I have something like that implemented and I also noticed that reducing those small frictions result in much more notes and less disruption of the current task, you think of something, a note is added in a few seconds and you can continue working on.
They are also surprisingly easy to implement, and I got surprised how fast it took me to have something functional.
I think the effort put into writing the script was paid back pretty fast, since some of them took just some minutes to write and test.
But, I think the biggest obstacle to do something like that is having the idea and some basic knowledge of programming to do it, and I’m not sure how to transfer it to other people.
Maybe giving them the code with very detailed comments and providing some step-by-step tutorial of how to do it.
Would you mind sharing your code?
Now, to add a note to such a file, all I have to do is click inside the command-prompt I have in the top corner of my screen, type “l ” plus the name of the list,
I found that using some keybindings to rely solely on the keyboard also made a good improvement.
There are several available keys that can be used to call the scripts directly, and if it depends on a parameter as in your case, I use the system tool that ask for a command then run it, on LXDE it is A-F2 or W-r (the same from windows).
I recommend also implementing some scripts to search on the web what is selected by the cursor or open a text file to get a query to be searched.
While I’m reading I just open new tabs in the browser to find things I want to look for more details.
I doesn’t interrupt the reading flow and I also don’t forget to search for them later (and I don’t have more the thought that there was something I wanted to search by I don’t remember what).
reducing those small frictions result in much more notes and less disruption of the current task, you think of something, a note is added in a few seconds and you can continue working on.
I upvoted for this snippet because it’s an important aspect of the situation that I forgot to call out in the main post.
Would you mind sharing your code?
Sure! This one is actually a one-liner: it’s simply “gedit ~/Documents/lists/$1”, which you put in a file called “l” in your ~/bin/ directory. If you prefer a different editor, you can swap out “gedit” for “emacs” or the command used to launch whatever editor you like. (This advice is directed at others reading this comment chain, you probably already know how to do that.)
I found that using some keybindings to rely solely on the keyboard also made a good improvement.
That’s a good idea. I currently have a piece of software that I use to type diacritics (for Toaq) but I’m not super happy with it — it kind of bugs out on occasion and can be slow to insert the characters I want. The software I’m using is AutoKey. What do you use? Are you happy with it?
I recommend also implementing some scripts to search on the web [...]
This is also a good idea. I’m pretty fast at typing and pretty slow with the mouse, so I’d probably instead make a macro for “prompt me for a search key, open a new tab, search that thing, then take me back to the tab I was in before”.
The software I’m using is AutoKey. What do you use? Are you happy with it?
I’m using LXDE as a desktop environment and it allows you to set the shortcuts in its config file.
If I’m not mistaken, other flavors, like GNOME and KDE, had a GUI to bind a certain key sequence to a script.
It seems that it catches the keybindings instantaneously and any lag is due starting a program called by the script, but it is usually around 1 second, which is similar to launch the program independently.
Autokey sounded very promising, but it is too slow.
I wanted to port my emacs keybindings to use system wide, but it was impossible to use due to its lags.
This is also a good idea. I’m pretty fast at typing and pretty slow with the mouse, so I’d probably instead make a macro for “prompt me for a search key, open a new tab, search that thing, then take me back to the tab I was in before”.
My (shell) scripts are pretty simple, the one that prompt me for a search query is:
xclip -o -selection p > query.temp
leafpad query.temp
query=$(<query.temp)
key=${query%%[ .:]*} # get only the first word or 'www' or 'http*'
case $key in
"wiki") # search on wikipedia
term=${query#* } # get from second word to end
url="https://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?family=wikipedia&language=en&go=Go&search=″
;;
## Other cases omitted
*) # didn’t matched anything → search on web
# there is a command—search, but it opens a new window
url=”https://duckduckgo.com/?q=″
term=$query
;;
esac
/opt/firefox/firefox—new-tab “$url$term”
rm query.temp # remove the temp fifo
And a fast search of the current selected text:
query=$(xclip -o -selection p)
if [[ $query =~ ^(http|www).*$ ]]; then
url=$query
elif [[ $query =~ ^.*\..{2,3}(/[^ ]*)?$ ]]; then
url=$query
else
url="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=“$query
fi
/opt/firefox/firefox—new-tab “$url”
I started with the first one, which offers more flexibility, but most of time I use the fast one and I edit the query if it doesn’t return the desired results.
It is really nice to have someone reporting on those little things that make a good (unseen) impact on their workflow and that we usually don’t even consider the possibility of having them. I have something like that implemented and I also noticed that reducing those small frictions result in much more notes and less disruption of the current task, you think of something, a note is added in a few seconds and you can continue working on.
They are also surprisingly easy to implement, and I got surprised how fast it took me to have something functional. I think the effort put into writing the script was paid back pretty fast, since some of them took just some minutes to write and test. But, I think the biggest obstacle to do something like that is having the idea and some basic knowledge of programming to do it, and I’m not sure how to transfer it to other people. Maybe giving them the code with very detailed comments and providing some step-by-step tutorial of how to do it. Would you mind sharing your code?
I found that using some keybindings to rely solely on the keyboard also made a good improvement. There are several available keys that can be used to call the scripts directly, and if it depends on a parameter as in your case, I use the system tool that ask for a command then run it, on LXDE it is
A-F2orW-r(the same from windows).I recommend also implementing some scripts to search on the web what is selected by the cursor or open a text file to get a query to be searched. While I’m reading I just open new tabs in the browser to find things I want to look for more details. I doesn’t interrupt the reading flow and I also don’t forget to search for them later (and I don’t have more the thought that there was something I wanted to search by I don’t remember what).
I upvoted for this snippet because it’s an important aspect of the situation that I forgot to call out in the main post.
Sure! This one is actually a one-liner: it’s simply “gedit ~/Documents/lists/$1”, which you put in a file called “l” in your ~/bin/ directory. If you prefer a different editor, you can swap out “gedit” for “emacs” or the command used to launch whatever editor you like. (This advice is directed at others reading this comment chain, you probably already know how to do that.)
That’s a good idea. I currently have a piece of software that I use to type diacritics (for Toaq) but I’m not super happy with it — it kind of bugs out on occasion and can be slow to insert the characters I want. The software I’m using is AutoKey. What do you use? Are you happy with it?
This is also a good idea. I’m pretty fast at typing and pretty slow with the mouse, so I’d probably instead make a macro for “prompt me for a search key, open a new tab, search that thing, then take me back to the tab I was in before”.
I’m using LXDE as a desktop environment and it allows you to set the shortcuts in its config file. If I’m not mistaken, other flavors, like GNOME and KDE, had a GUI to bind a certain key sequence to a script.
It seems that it catches the keybindings instantaneously and any lag is due starting a program called by the script, but it is usually around 1 second, which is similar to launch the program independently.
Autokey sounded very promising, but it is too slow. I wanted to port my emacs keybindings to use system wide, but it was impossible to use due to its lags.
My (shell) scripts are pretty simple, the one that prompt me for a search query is:
And a fast search of the current selected text:
I started with the first one, which offers more flexibility, but most of time I use the fast one and I edit the query if it doesn’t return the desired results.