imag

Imag is a CLI PIM suite with a nice API-ish commandline interface, so you can integrate it in your tools of coice (Editor, MUA, RSS reader, etc etc).

Modules

All the modules have access to a shared store (which lives in ~/.imag/store/ by default). Files are named after a schema:

~/.imag/store/<module_name>-<hashtype>-<hash>.imag

Where module name is "bookmark" for example. The hashtype is "UUID" by default and the "hash" is a UUID then. Other types are possible as well:

• SHA1
• SHA512

for example (though it might not be a good idea to use SHA hashes, see Linking)

Some modules might not want to store content there, for example you don't want to put your icalendar files in there. So the calendar module just crawls through your ical files and puts the scanned meta-information into the store. Of course, if the content of the ical file changes, the store entry does not. It still points (via its JSON content for example) to the same file. So changes are not tracked (We can argue here whether we want to copy the contents to the store for ical and vcard files, but we cannot argue on for example music files).

If a (for example ical-)file gets removed, the store entry gets invalid and has to be garbage-collected.

The current model is not fixed yet. I'm thinking about copying .ical and .vcard, basically all text files, to the store. This is not possible for media files like music or movies, though. Also this is not feasible for documents like .pdf or similar.

Each of the following modules has a short description including a table what core features are required to get it working.

Linking

The UUID/SHA hashes in the file names can be used to connect two store entries. For example, an entry from the wiki could refer to a contact by a UUID, because the file for the contact has a UUID in its name. These UUIDs are constant and should not change.

A link chain like this

Wiki -> Shopping List -> Calendar Entry
        |                       |
        |                       v
        |                       Contact -> Calendar Entry -> Bookmark
        v
        Wiki Entry -> Bookmark

is totally possible. Scenario: You have a Wiki entry of a recipe you like to cook. The recipe is linked to a shopping list, where you want to buy the ingredients. Of course, you want to do this on a specific date (calendar entry). And you want to do this with your Girlfriend, so she (as a contact) is linked to the calendar entry. Her Birthday is linked to her Contact and for her Birthday, you saw something on amazon, so you bookmarked it and linked it to the calendar entry. On the other hand, the Shopping list has links to some other Wiki entry, because it contains Kiwi, and you have notes about Kiwi, how to cook them properly. You saw this on some website, so you linked to the website from your wiki entry, of course.

Header

So each file in the store has a certain format:

---
<header>
---
<content>

The header contains some structured data (either JSON or YAML), the module uses to store data closely related to the content.

For example, the bookmark-module will use the header only and store URL and tags in some JSON format. The Wiki module might use the Header for storing some meta information about the wiki article (tags, category, maybe even links to other store entries) and the content is the wiki article content written down by the user.

The content is just text entered from the user. In the best case, the module should't touch the content at all.

Here is a short overview what are the modules like:

Module	Indexer	Header	Hdr-Format	Content
Bookmarks		X	JSON
Contacts	X	X	JSON
Calendar	X	X	JSON
Notes		X	YAML	X
Mail	X	X	JSON
Wiki		X	YAML	X
Todo		X	YAML
Shoppinglist		X	YAML
Bibliography	X	X	JSON
News	X	X	JSON
Image	X	X	JSON
Movie	X	X	JSON
Music	X	X	JSON

Explanation:

• An "Indexer" Module does only index some data and store the indexed meta information in the store
• "Header" means that the header part of a store entry is used
• "Hdr-Format" Which format is chosen for the header. Basically: YAML if the user might want to edit the header, otherwise JSON (pretty).
• "Content" means that the content part of a store entry is used

Bookmarks

Bookmarks should be stored in a simple format:

{ "URL": "https://github.com", "tags": ["ducks", "r", "great"]}

Required core feature	Purpose
XDG-open (Browser)	External program

Contacts

Contacts are just read and indexed by imag, to create an internal index of them and to be able to refer to.

Required core feature	Purpose
vcard file format parsing	Data access
XDG-open (Mail program)	External Program

Calendar

Calendar are just read and indexed by imag, to create an internal index of them and to be able to refer to.

Required core feature	Purpose
ical file format parsing	Data access

Notes

Just plain text notes.

Required core feature	Purpose
Linking to other store entries	Data Link
XDG-open (Editor)	External Program

Mail

imag should be able to index all your mail and make them accessible through its interfaces, so you can link contacts, calendar entries, wiki pages, todo notes, etc etc. to your mail.

Some of these things (like linking contacts, calendar entries) should be linked automatically.

Required core feature	Purpose
Parser: Maildir	Data access
Parser: mbox	Data access
XDG-open (Mail program)	External Program
XDG-open (Editor)	External Program

Personal Wiki

imag should contain a complete personal wiki software. It should contain of simple markdown files which have a YAML header, nothing too special for the first step.

Required core feature	Purpose
Parser: Markdown	Data parsing
XDG-open (Editor)	External Program
XDG-open (Mail program)	External Program
XDG-open (Browser)	External Program

Some more ideas:

• Extract URLs and put them into store as Bookmarks

Todo-List

imag should also contain a full todo-tool. I'm thinking about integrating taskwarrior through a wrapper here.

Required core feature	Purpose
Library: taskwarrior	Implementation
XDG-open (Editor)	External Program

Shoppinglist

Simply dot-and-tick lists.

Required core feature	Purpose
Module: Todo-List	Implementation
XDG-open (Editor)	External Program

• Sub-form of the Todo-List module

Bibliography management

BibTex would be the first step, maybe we should be able to add the actual PDFs here as well... didn't waste too much thoughts on this by now. If we have the PDF data, we need git-annex.

Required core feature	Purpose
BibTex parsing	Data parsing
Backend: git-annex	Data parsing
XDG-open (Editor)	External Program
XDG-open (PDF viewer)	External Program
XDG-open (Office suite)	External Program

News (RSS)

Just indexing, reading news is not task of imag and so isn't syncing.

Required core feature	Purpose
Parser: RSS	Data parsing
Parser: Atom	Data parsing

Image

Just indexing photos.

Required core feature	Purpose
Backend: git-annex	Data parsing
Image metadata reading	Data parsing
XDG-open (Image viewer)	External Program

Video

Just indexing movies.

Required core feature	Purpose
Backend: git-annex	Data parsing
Movie metadata reading	Data parsing
XDG-open (Movie viewer)	External Program

Music

Just indexing music.

Required core feature	Purpose
Backend: git-annex	Data parsing
Music metadata reading	Data parsing
XDG-open (Music player)	External Program

License

This code is released under terms of GNU GPLv2.