Printable Notes - Neuron

So I've been wanting to work on a project for a while, and I wonder how hard it would be to adapt Neuron to my purposes. Here is an description of the project. For context, I have a lot of problems sleeping, and I try to avoid looking at screens after sundown to help with that, so having a non-screened form of notes is great for me:

so, question. I'd like to work on a project that syncs printed and digitial material.
The ideal workflow would be that I take notes on paper and eventually transfer them to the computer. Then, I print them > out and integrate them into the other sheets of paper.
I was thinking i'd have them all numbered, perhaps with a zettelkasten-style numbering system so new sheets can be inserted in places without renumbering all subsequent pages.
What I'd really like is to have it automatically determine which pages have changed, and therefore which ones need to be printed.

In terms of neuron, I think the idea might be applicable, but what I'd need to do is basically

• keep track of when each note was printed
• determine what needs to be (re)-printed based upon (so for example I can always rename a note without issue as long as I haven't referenced it elsewhere in a printed form, once I have I need to handle that somehow, probably by re-printing the page that has the reference to the renamed page)
• possibly provide some kind of instructions on integrating the notes.

Git can be used to track 'history' of notes. I have a vague plan to integrate Git (optionally) to neuron.

There is a tag for it, with a feature request to display last edited date / author from Git metadata: https://github.com/srid/neuron/issues?q=git+label%3A%22Git+integration%22

ah yeah that would probably handle it then

where/how would it make sense to store "metadata" about a note like "this was last printed on xyz"

Hacking on neuron is very delightful (based on user feedback!), so feel free to poke at it: https://github.com/srid/neuron/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

Joel McCracken said:

where/how would it make sense to store "metadata" about a note like "this was last printed on xyz"

That sounds like a job for a 'neuron plugin'. I have a tag for that too: https://github.com/srid/neuron/labels/as-plugin

cool

yeah this feature is so niche i wouldn't even suggesting merging it upstream unless you thought more people would want it

but i could def hack it and make it do

Try out neuron query meanwhile. We can do Git integration, and include the last commit hash in neuron query's JSON output. Then you can script your printing workflow using it.

Or ... you can just do a sha256 of *.md and compare (no neuron needed).

although, i would possibly think that i'd want to have different print-stylesheets for the neuron

but i assume you'd be interested in taking that upstream

Or even script git directly

More as a plugin, yea. Don't want to complicate neuron core.

Like when org-mode support was added, we went with the 'reader plugin' mechanism: https://github.com/srid/neuron/pull/263

ah; you wouldnt want to add printer-friendly stylesheets to neuron html generation?

(thats fine, im just surprised)

Oh that we can. Feel free to PR

I was talking about git integration

yeah ok cool

Dark-mode would be cool too; but I don't know how.

maybe i can figure that out, idk ive never done either

but i have done a reasonable amount of css in my time

neuron uses clay DSL For css. checkout CONTRIBUTION.md, you'll be susprised at the dev workflow

I mean, even if using Neuron's machinery for this wouldn't work, one advantage of having "future-proof" system is that you can use independent tools at any point in time :big_smile:

I think i've used clay with rib