As I’ve said before, John Kitchin is producing so many videos that it’s hard to keep up. One of his recent videos is about Scimax Notebook, his implementation of digital notebooks based on Projectile, Bozhidar Batsov’s project interaction package. In my Zamansky-79: Project.el post, I mentioned that I’ve never felt the need for a package like Projectile but Kitchin reimagined it as an engine for digital notebooks.
The idea is pretty simple: every notebook is a project in the Projectile sense, and every Projectile project can be thought of and acted on like a notebook. The Scimax Notebook library is simply a series of functions that operate and search the project’s file. All of that is, of course, leveraged on Projectile.
The library and Kitchin’s explanation of it is interesting. It’s clear that the library grew organically with functions being added as there was a need for them. Kitchin says that he rarely uses some of them indicating a failed experiment. In other words, the library grew according to his needs and will doubtless continue to evolve.
The source code, as a literate programming file, is available here. The video provides a quick exegesis of many of the functions and provides an idea of what’s going on. The video itself is just over 37 and a half minutes so you’ll definitely have to schedule some time. If, like me, the idea of an Emacs-based notebook infrastructure appeals to you, be sure to spend the time to watch his video. The source code, being a literate file, should be easy to adapt for your own purposes and needs.