Giornata is a simple journaling system for GNU Emacs whose fundamental design is rooted in its hierarchical structure.

~/journal
├── 2024     → directory
│   ├── 01      → directory
│   │   ├── 01     → file
│   │   ├── 02
│   │   ├── 03
│   │   ├── …
│   │   ├── 30
│   │   └── 31
│   └── 02
│       ├── 01
│       ├── 02
│       ├── 03
│       └── …
└── …

The right-most digits are your journal entries, their file extension is purposefully omitted because Giornata is not tied to any particular file format, you can choose whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Giornata is responsible for creating these files and directories so you can focus on writing.

#Introduction

Let's go over the foundations of this system:

1. Writing something in the journal should be very quick; you shouldn't have to think about it.
2. Reviewing the journal should be intuitive; your calendar is the perfect tool for that (for more information, see the "Customization" section).

Writing something with Giornata can be done in one of two ways: the first method, the one you'll be using most often, is to call giornata-today, an interactive function that opens today's journal entry and places the cursor at the end of the buffer.

Uh oh, did you forget to journal yesterday? Well, that shouldn't be a problem. If the calendar is open, giornata-from-calendar can help create (or visit) a journal entry for the date at point, consider binding it to the return key or the left mouse button, you may then click on yesterday and begin to write whatever it is you did that day.

That's everything you need to know to get started, happy journaling!

#Installation

Giornata is not yet available in any package archive so you'll have to obtain it from source by evaluating the following:

(package-vc-install "https://git.sr.ht/~grtcdr/giornata" "2024.05.25")

Start journaling right away by typing M-x giornata-today RET or read through the next section to get an idea of the different customization options at your disposal.

#Customization

Your journal is located in giornata-directory.

A front matter, which as suggested by the name, is automatically inserted at the beginning of every journal entry, the contents of the front matter can be controlled through giornata-front-matter.

Configuration is mostly delegated to directory local variables for which an interactive scaffolding function, giornata-scaffold, exists not only as a good starting point for users new to Giornata but also to make it more convenient to reproduce the same "look and feel" that across different machines via the giornata-dir-locals variable.

Remember that thing about reviewing your journal from the calendar? Giornata can highlight days with a corresponding journal entry if you let it:

(add-hook 'calendar-mode-hook #'giornata-calendar-mode)

If you prefer to access your journal through the menu bar, enabling the variable giornata-menu-item will add an entry named "Giornata" under the "Tools" menu that you can use to jump to your journal.

#Contributing

Giornata is considered feature-complete, you can rely on the package not to suddenly change. I originally built this package with the intent to keep it generic and unopinionated. I will not accept patches that incorporate new features.

#Support

If you wish to contribute a patch, inquire about something or share your feedback, you are welcome to send an email to ~grtcdr/pub@lists.sr.ht. If this is your first time collaborating over email, please check out this guide. If you encounter issues of any kind, please file them in the project's ticket tracker.