imag/doc/src/01000-intro.md

# Introduction {#sec:introduction}

This document is the user documentation for imag, the personal
information management suite for the commandline. Besides beeing a documentation,
it servey also as "roadmap" where this project should go. Parts which are not
yet implemented might be documented already, therefore. A list on what is 
implemented and what is not can be found at the end of this document.

If you have any objections, suggestions for improvements, bugs, etc, please file
them. A way to reach out to the imag project maintainer(s) is described in the
CONTRIBUTING file of the repository or in this document, on the appropriate 
section.

## The Problem {#sec:intro:problem}

The problem imag wants to solve is rather simple. When the project was
initiated, there was no PIM-Suite available which

* was for this domain of users ("power-users", "commandline users")
* uses plain text as storage format
* was scriptable
* was modular
* contained functionality to link content

The latter point is the bigger one: "imag" wants to offer the ability for users
to link content. This means not only that a contact may be linked to a
date, but that _all things_ can be linked together. For example that a wiki
article can be linked to a date which is linked to a todo which is linked to a
note which is linked to a contact.

## The Approach {#sec:intro:approach}

The approach "imag" takes on solving this problem is to store content in a
"store" and persisting content in a unified way.
Meta-Information is attached to the content which can be used to store
structured data.
This can be used to implement a variety of "domain modules" using the store.
While content is stored in _one_ place, imag does not duplicate content.
imag does not copy or move icalendar files, emails, vcard files, music or
movies to the store, but indexes them and stores the meta-information in the
store.

Detailed explanation on this approach follows in the chapters of this work.

## Implementation {#sec:intro:implementation}

The program is written in the Rust programming language.

The program consists of libraries which can be re-used by other projects
to implement and adapt imag functionality. An external program may use a
library of the imag distribution to store content in the store of imag and
make it visible to imag this way.

This is a technical detail a user does not necessarily need to know, but as imag
is intended for power-users anyways, we could say it fits here.