Add user documentation

This patch adds user documentation in for of a mdbook, using a travis
job for running the build of the book in CI to be sure it builds
properly.

Signed-off-by: Matthias Beyer <mail@beyermatthias.de>
This commit is contained in:
Matthias Beyer 2019-08-09 19:17:45 +02:00
parent 74810d9ccc
commit db3bb95227
9 changed files with 218 additions and 0 deletions

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- bash ./scripts/license-headers-updated
- bash ./scripts/branch-contains-no-tmp-commits
- bash ./scripts/version-updated
- language: rust
rust: stable
name: userdoc
cache:
directories:
- /home/travis/.cargo
before_cache:
- rm -rf /home/travis/.cargo/registry
install:
- cargo install mdbook --force
script:
- cd doc/user && mdbook build || exit 1
- language: rust
rust: 1.35.0
cache:

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book

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[book]
authors = ["Matthias Beyer"]
language = "en"
multilingual = false
src = "src"
title = "imag-documentation"

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# Summary
- [Introduction](./intro.md)
- [Approach](./approach.md)
- [Conventions](./conventions.md)
- [Good to know](./good-to-know.md)
- [Examples](./examples.md)

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# The Approach
The approach "imag" takes on solving this problem is to store content in a
plain text storage (the "store") on the filesystem and persisting content in a
unified way.
## The Store
The imag "store" is nothing more than a directory on the filesystem, ususally
`~/.imag/store`.
Imag stores each "entry" under a unique "StoreId" which is nothing more than a
part of the path of the actual file on disk:
```
/home/user/.imag/store/some/entry
| | || |
\ / / \ /
------------- | ------
| "RTP" | "Id"
\ /
------------------
"Store path"
```
* The "RTP" is the Runtimepath of imag, where imag looks for the config file
(`~/.imag/imagrc.toml`) and the `store` directory.
* The "Store path" is where imag looks for the store root. The "Store path" can
be set explicitely in the imag commandline, but end-users normally don't need
to do this.
* The "StoreId" (abbreviated with "Id") is what the user uses when referring to
an entry of the store.
## Entry
One imag entry contains two parts: The Header and the Content part. The header,
which is stored in
[TOML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOML),
contains structured data. This data is most of the time generated by imag
itself, depending on the module that stores the data.
An imag entry contains always a version information header part:
```
[imag]
version = "0.10.0"
```
Each imag module is free to store data under its own header section, where the
name of the section is defined by the module storing it. Thus, "imag-diary"
stores its data in `[diary]`.
A module may store arbitrary textual data.
Of course, imag provides utility commandline tools for querying this data.
An example imag entry could look like this:
```
---
[habit.instance]
comment = 'Eat one fruit per day'
date = '2019-06-28'
is_habit_instance = true
name = 'eat_fruit'
[imag]
version = '0.10.0'
[links]
internal = ['habit/template/eat_fruit']
---
```

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# Conventions
imag has a few conventions which we try to enforce in all module
implementations. This chapter explains the conventions an end-user of imag can
rely on.
## Commandline interface
The commandline interface of every subcommand has a "--help" flag which can be
used to print helptext for the subcommand.
Every imag module implementation can be used for scripting, where it behaves in
the following ways:
* If the standard input is a pipe, imag module implementations assume that store
ids are written to that pipe line by line.
* If the standard output is a pipe, every imag module prints the StoreIDs it
touched while running to the pipe.
All other output is written to stderr.
Piping can be used to combine imag commands.
* If the standard output is not a pipe, the imag module does not print the
StoreIDs it touched.
This behaviour can be overridden with the `--ignore-ids` flag.
## Versioning
imag modules are compatible to eachother as long as the version number is in the
`0.x.y` range.
Modules from different imag versions are not supported to be compatible to
eachother.
## Commandline capabilities
The imag commands can be used to access _all_ data that is stored in the imag
store.
Alternatively, standard unix commandline tools (like `grep`, `cut`, `sed`, ...)
can be used to access all data and all data-points.
In short: All data imag stores is stored in plain text, containing a structured
part (in the markup language "toml") and a plain-text part (which should be
UTF-8 encoded).

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# Examples
imag commands can be chained by piping the output.
This can be used to create, tag and categorize an entry in one step.
```
imag log --to personal "Some personal note" | \
imag tag add foobar | \
imag category set somecategory
```
imag can be configured to use aliases for module commands, so combining a basi
alias `alias i=imag` with imag module aliaes, this can be condensed to:
```
i l --to personal "Some personal note" | \
i t add foobar | \
i c set somecategory
```
for example.

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# Good to know
There are some things in the imag space that a user might want to know before
using imag.
## Tags
Tags are text values that can be added to _any_ entry in the imag store.
The tag has to satisfy some invariants to be valid:
1. it has to be all-lowercase
1. it has no spaces
1. all characters are alphanumeric
Any entry can have any number of tags. Spelling is not checked.
Finding all entries for a tag "foo" is `O(n)` where `n` is the number of entries
in the store.
## Categories
Categories are more restrictive, but also more powerful.
First of all, a category has to exist before an entry can be _linked_ to a
category. A category therefor is represented by an entry and if an entry has a
category, it is linked to said entry.
So, if you create only category with the name "foo", you cannot set the category
"bar" for some entry.
Because categories are linked, finding all entries for a category is trivial and
a `O(1)` operation.

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# Introduction
This document is the end-user documentation for imag, the plain-text personal
information management suite for the commandline.
The imag project wants to provide a set of tools (called "modules") for managing
personal information data on the commandline, where the data is stored in plain
text.
The modules should be scriptable, composable, traverseable and queryable.
The target audience for imag are power-users and commandline natives.
If you have any objections, suggestions for improvements, bugs, etc, please file
them.