The motivation is always clear but the execution almost always falls short. At least, that has been my experience with trying to go paperless in the past. I just couldn’t find anything that could beat the simple, intuitive, and fast user experience of picking up a pen and scribbling in a hard covered notebook.

Not only is paper easy to use for the person creating the material, it is also easy to share, or keep secure. But, “insert all obvious motivations for going paperless”, so I rolled my own solution that addresses the above shortcomings. I have been using this setup for 8 months now with mostly positive results, this is the full story.

What is it?

As simple as pen and paper but not, then what is it? I mostly use paper to write and read words and numbers–isn’t it obvious that plain text files the answer? I usually have a different book for each topic–easy, I just need a folder for each book. I usually rule off or start a new page for each day–again easy, a file for each day. That’s the back end sorted: easy to write, easy to read, easy to share. Now how do I make interacting with it just as easy?

Making it natural

At this point I must mention that having my computer at hand is as natural to me as having a paper and pen. Enter emacs, a (great) text editor that is free, extensible, and customizable. An obvious solution, a text editor as a front end to a collection of text files. There’s one more thing though, and that’s a feature of emacs itself; org mode is what’s called a “major mode” that comes with emacs. Skip the technicalities, it’s what gives you all the fancy features that are part of the “obvious motivations for going paperless” but still using plain text files.

Both emacs and org mode are mature and philosophically free software, I have no hesitation intimately integrating them into my life. This is quite important to me, as anyone who writes their thoughts on paper a lot would tell you–a rapport between you and your notebook and pen grows. Also related is the encoding of the plain text files, after all–I am actually storing 1’s and 0’s now, they just happen to look like letters when decoded in a certain way. I am happy to use the ever ubiquitous UTF-8 encoding standard, 10, 20, 30 years down the track I or someone else could probably make whatever machines we would be using by then decode this format.

Setting it up

Some setup is required of both emacs and org mode before becomes the paperless solution of my dreams. Luckily, Howard Abrams has done most the work, I have built and modified this setup to behave how I described above i.e. emulating the paper experience.

For reference, when hotkeys are mentioned C , M , and S correspond to Control, Meta (alt), and Super (win key) respectively. Here on in, I assume you have emacs installed and functioning. I am using a GNU/Linux based operating system, however it should be operating system agnostic up to file paths.

Two files for clarity

I use two configuration files: ~/.emacs.d/init.el for global emacs settings and ~/.emacs.d/modules/org-init.el for my org mode settings. I have separated them for clarity only. The following code snippets go in these files.

~/emacs.d/init.el

Starting with the aesthetics, first and foremost, I want emacs to be less distracting.

;; Disable the toolbar/menu/scrollbar/tooltips ( tool-bar-mode -1 ) ( menu-bar-mode -1 ) ( scroll-bar-mode -1 ) ( tooltip-mode -1 ) ;; Disable the welcome, give me scratch space ( setq inhibit-startup-screen 1 )

Just me and the words now. You can always access the menu by C-<mouse 2> i.e. control + right click, inside the emacs window. Next, I prefer to write on ruled paper.

;; Line highlighting/numbering ( global-linum-mode 1 ) ( global-hl-line-mode 1 )

Furthermore, when nearing the end of a line, wrapping at the word is a lot more natural.

;; Natural reading, wrap at the word ( setq-default word-wrap 1 )

When I am writing a paragraph in emacs I “manually” force the text onto the next line if it extends beyond 72 characters wide. I do this with the M-q keybinding. I think of it like the carriage return on a mechanical typewriter, I want my notes and journal entries to always fit within a certain width “paper”. That’s the aesthetic side of things sorted, apart from a colour theme of your choice, it now gets a little more interesting.

Part of being a scientist is being honest, transparent, and accountable about of thoughts, methods, and results to myself and to others. Discipline and trust has traditionally made a paper log book with entries written in indelible more than good enough for this purpose. In digital document there is no such security–files can be overwritten and you could find it very difficult to determine if it was edited, let alone what was changed. However, this ease of editing also means that the records can be re-written to be more clear and ultimately of higher quality.

A simple solution to this problem is to keep a record of the changes, and the simplest way to do that just keep a backup of each file when it’s edited. Sure, it’ll take up more space but disk is cheap and plain text is easily compressible.

;; Change backup settings ( setq version-control t ;; OpenVMS-esque backup-by-copying t ;; Copy-on-write-esque kept-new-versions 64 ;; Indeliable-ink-esque kept-old-versions 0 ;; delete-old-versions nil ;; ) ( setq backup-directory-alist ;; Save backups in $(pwd)/.bak ' (( "." . ".bak" )) ;; )

With this configuration, emacs will keep up to 64 previous iterations of a file instead of overwriting it and losing all the existing information. The backed up versions are saved in a hidden folder created called .bak at the location of the file. Of course this isn’t bulletproof accountability, trust and discipline is still necessary and must be accepted.

For sensitive notes and journal entries, I want to employ encryption. Auto-saving is a security hazard for these files as it will write a decrypted version of the file temporarily to disk.

;; Disable auto-saving ( setq auto-save-default nil )

Now, moving onto configuring org mode, I need to tell emacs where this other file is.

;; Load other module / package settings ( add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/modules" ) ( load-library "org-init" )

All the above can be put in your ~/emacs.d/init.el file in any order and along with other code.

~/.emacs.d/modules/org-init.el

Moving on, first some key bindings for use later, enable encrypted files support, UTF-8 encoding, and some minor (optional) usability features.

;; Initialize Org Mode ( require 'org ) ;; Simple org key bindings ( define-key global-map "\C-cl" 'org-store-link ) ( define-key global-map "\C-ca" 'org-agenda ) ( setq org-log-done t ) ;; ------------------------ ;; ADVANCED CUSTOMISATION ! ;; ------------------------ ;; Enable symmetric encrpytion support ( require 'org-crypt ) ( setq epg-gpg-program "gpg2" ) ( org-crypt-use-before-save-magic ) ( setq org-tags-exclude-from-inheritance ( quote ( "crypt" ))) ;; GPG key to use for encryption ;; Either the Key ID or set to nil to use symmetric encryption. ( setq org-crypt-key nil ) ;; Set the encoding to utf-8 ( setq org-export-coding-system 'utf-8 ) ( prefer-coding-system 'utf-8 ) ( set-charset-priority 'unicode ) ( setq default-process-coding-system ' ( utf-8-unix . utf-8-unix )) ;; Don't allow editing of folded regions ( setq org-catch-invisible-edits 'error ) ;; Start the weekly agenda on Monday ( setq org-agenda-start-on-weekday 1 ) ;; Enable indentation view, does not effect file. ( setq org-startup-indented t )

Not everything can be described in plain text, however using org mode human readable soft links are supported; thus, attachments are supported as soft links to an external file. I like to make org mode copy any attachment into a folder called attach that gets created along side the plain text file.

;; Make attachments be copied / assigned a uuid ;; and placed in a appropiate folder ( setq org-id-method ( quote uuidgen )) ( setq org-attach-directory "attach/" )

This is the part we’ve all been waiting for–making opening a plain text file as intuitive as opening a book onto a new page. Edit the variables journal-author , journal-base-dir , and journal-books here to suit your needs.

;; ---------------- ;; JOURNAL SYSTEM ! ;; ---------------- ;; SETUP A ROBUST / GENERAL JOURNAL SYSTEM ;; I have modified this from: ;; http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/journaling-org.htm ;; Aqeel Akber, 2016 (@AdmiralAkber) ;; Author name to be auto inserted in entries ( setq journal-author "Aqeel Akber" ) ;; This is the base folder where all your "books" ;; will be stored. ( setq journal-base-dir "~/ORG/" ) ;; These are your "books" (folders), add as many as you like. ;; Note: "sub volumes" are acheivable with sub folders. ( setq journal-books ' ( "nuclphys" "nuclphys/labr" "personal" "saferad" )) ;; Functions for journal ( defun get-journal-file-today ( book ) "Return today's filename for a books journal file." ( interactive ( list ( completing-read "Book: " journal-books ) )) ( expand-file-name ( concat journal-base-dir book "/J" ( format-time-string "%Y%m%d" ) ".org" )) ) ( defun journal-today () "Load todays journal entry for book" ( interactive ) ( find-file ( call-interactively 'get-journal-file-today )) ) ( defun journal-entry-date () "Inserts the journal heading based on the file's name." ( when ( string-match "\\(J\\)\\(20[0-9][0-9]\\)\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\(.org\\)" ( buffer-name )) ( let (( year ( string-to-number ( match-string 2 ( buffer-name )))) ( month ( string-to-number ( match-string 3 ( buffer-name )))) ( day ( string-to-number ( match-string 4 ( buffer-name )))) ( datim nil )) ( setq datim ( encode-time 0 0 0 day month year )) ( format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d (%A)" datim )))) ;; Auto-insert journal header ( auto-insert-mode ) ( eval-after-load 'autoinsert ' ( define-auto-insert ' ( "\\(J\\)\\(20[0-9][0-9]\\)\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\([0-9][0-9]\\)\\(.org\\)" . "Journal Header" ) ' ( "Short description: " "#+TITLE: Journal Entry - " ( car ( last ( split-string ( file-name-directory buffer-file-name ) "/ORG/" )))

( concat "#+AUTHOR: " journal-author )

"#+DATE: " ( journal-entry-date )

"#+FILETAGS: " ( car ( last ( split-string ( file-name-directory buffer-file-name ) "/ORG/" )))



> _

))) ;; Journal Key bindings ( global-set-key ( kbd "C-c j" ) 'journal-today )

There is one more thing left to do, make org mode aware of the files stored in these folders. Remember those fancy features? This enables it and that’s the setup done.

;; Set Org directories [Remember to update with journal books] ( setq org-agenda-files ( list "~/ORG/nuclphys" "~/ORG/nuclphys/labr" "~/ORG/personal" "~/ORG/saferad" ))

Usage and workflow

The crux of this system relies on emacs and org-mode, both of which are very well documented. What I have focused on describing in this section is the small subset of capabilities that are relevant to this article. If it looks like something you like, then I strongly encourage you look up other org-mode tutories to get a taste of what else can be done.

Quick start

In the video:

Open book, personal , to today’s page C-c j

, to today’s page Insert a header as file hasn’t been created yet y

Add a entry headline by starting line with *

Clock in C-c C-x C-i

Expanded “LOGBOOK” TAB

Moved to end of file M->

Forced wrap on final sentence M-q

Clock out C-c C-x C-o

Saving C-c C-s

Exit emacs C-c C-x

Searching

In the video:

Open org-agenda with C-c a

with Select search with s

Type keyword/regex pattern and press RET

Select file from the list to open it, or press x to exit the search.

I didn’t open any files in the video for privacy reasons. The point of notice is that org-mode can actually search through the body of your files.

Tasks

Now that you know the basics, let’s get fancy. This may be a little complicated at first, the basic principle is that org-mode will treat any headlines in your files that start with “TODO” or “DONE” as special items. These then can be listed elegantly with org-agenda . Other than that, you can treat these entries like any other.

In the video:

Toggled a headline into a TODO item with C-c C-t

Added a deadline with C-c C-d

You can also just manually type TODO at the start of a headline.

Clocking in / Clocking out is always good. I could write the whole paper here.

Shift-TAB can toggle visibility of all headlines, or TAB on a single one.

can toggle visibility of all headlines, or on a single one. Saved the file, and closed the buffer with C-x k RET

Now entering org-agenda but pressing t shows TODO items

but pressing shows TODO items Selecting an item and pressing t toggles its completion status

toggles its completion status As usual, x to quit org-agenda and saved any changes

to quit and saved any changes Back to org-agenda press a to get the agenda for the current week. Use f and b to go forward / back a week.

press to get the agenda for the current week. Use and to go forward / back a week. Selecting the file and pressing RET opens it, use C-x 1 to get rid of the split buffer.

Password protection / Encryption

A very handy feature and very easy to use.

In the video:

Added a sub-heading by using ** (you can do this anywhere)

Put the magic words :crypt: at the end of the headline

at the end of the headline Saved the file, followed the prompts for a password, closed emacs.

Shown that the file is indeed encrypted on disk

Opened file and decrypted the headline with M-x org-decrypt-entry

Can now view and edit as per normal, upon saving it encrypts again.

This really doesn’t need a video, just press C-c C-a in any org-mode file and follow the prompts to add an attachment. For cross-links, select any headline and press C-c l to store a link, then C-c C-l to paste it in another org-mode file. To follow any of these links use the binding C-c C-o

Other tips

Make lots of books!

It costs nothing and will make your life easier. Have a book specifically for conferences, make a new one for each project. It’ll make your life easier when you’re trying to look up past entries.

Keep customizing emacs!

Make it your own, enjoy it! There are thousands of packages available on MELPA. You can install them directly from within emacs with list-packages , and all of the ones that I’ve tried have been awesome. My favourite one that might be relevant to mention here is org-gcal . This synchronized my google calendar into an org-mode file, I can then view it via the org agenda. Other favourites of mine that you have seen in the vidoes are company (auto completion) and helm (fancy M-x ).

Conclusions

As I said earlier, I have been using this setup for 8 months. I can comfortably say it has completely replaced paper for my memoirs and has encouraged good habits. For a replacement to my science log book, I would say it has been about 90% successful. It fails in two things, mathematics and sketching. Yes, org-mode does support LaTeX and there is Artist mode but it’s not quite as good as paper and pen, yet. Other than that, I’m paperless.

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