diff --git a/doc/src/01000-intro.md b/doc/src/01000-intro.md index 7c562bb2..76a67b15 100644 --- a/doc/src/01000-intro.md +++ b/doc/src/01000-intro.md @@ -1,14 +1,8 @@ # Introduction {#sec:introduction} This document is the user documentation for imag, the personal -information management suite for the commandline. Besides beeing a documentation, -it serves also as "roadmap" where this project should go. Parts which are not -yet implemented might be documented already, therefore. Also, because this is a -hobby thing, parts which are implemented might be documented falsely or not at -all. -A list on what is implemented and what is not can be found at the end of this -document. -It might be outdated though. +information management suite for the commandline. Besides being a documentation, +it serves also as "roadmap" where this project should go. **Basically: This is Hobby stuff. Expect incompleteness, false statements and generally read with big grain of salt.** @@ -16,40 +10,40 @@ generally read with big grain of salt.** 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 +CONTRIBUTING file of the repository or in this document, in 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 +The problem this project tries to solve is to provide a modular commandline +application for personal information management. -* 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 +It targets "power users" or "commandline users", uses plain text as a storage +format and tries to be scriptable. +imag offers the ability to link data from different "PIM aspects" (such as +"diary" and "bookmark" for example). -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. +One major goal of imag is to make the PIM data traverseable and queryable. +For example: a wiki article can be linked to an appointment which is linked to a +todo which is linked to a note which is linked to a contact. -Also, having an all-in-one scriptable modular commandline personal information -management suite seemed nice at the time and still does. +imag wants to offer an all-in-one scriptable modular commandline personal +information management suite for all PIM aspects one can think of. +Because imag uses plain text (TOML headers for structured data and plain text +which can be rendered using markdown, for example, for continuous text) +the user is always able to access their data without the imag tools at hand. ## 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 +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. +movies to the store, but creates references to the actual files and stores +meta-information in the store. Detailed explanation on this approach follows in the chapters of this work. @@ -65,3 +59,15 @@ 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. +## Alternative Projects {#sec:intro:alternatives} + +imag is not the only project which tries to solve that particular problem. For +example there is +[org mode](https://orgmode.org) +for the [emacs](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) text editor. +There is also [zim](http://zim-wiki.org/), a desktop wiki editor which is +intended to be used for a personal wiki. + +The difference between imag and the mentioned projects is that imag is not there +yet. Some parts can be used, though it is far away from being feature-complete. + diff --git a/doc/src/01010-architecture.md b/doc/src/01010-architecture.md index 2ad32686..f3d98a9b 100644 --- a/doc/src/01010-architecture.md +++ b/doc/src/01010-architecture.md @@ -65,7 +65,8 @@ With the things from above, a module could have the following architecture: +-----------------------------------+---------+ ``` -The foundation of all imag modules is the store, as one can see in the image. +The foundation of all imag modules is the store, as one can see in the +visualization from above. Above the store library there is the libimagrt, which provides the basic runtime and access to the `Store` object. Cross-cutting, there is the error library (and possibly