anki-whitespace

This is alpha software; only a few features from anki-editor are supported right now.

A minor mode building on anki-editor, with a more lightweight syntax. This is useful when notes are to be integrated into a Zettelkasten-like system, such as org-roam or denote. See for example [Andy Matuschak's notes] for why such an integration might be useful; in particular, anki-whitespace's syntax is heavily inspired by the mnemonic-medium.

See anki-editor's README for information on external dependencies, like AnkiConnect, and how to interact with them.

Installation

Using package-vc.el

If you are on Emacs 29 and newer, you can use package-vc-install:

(package-vc-install
 '(anki-editor . (:url "https://github.com/anki-editor/anki-whitespace")))

Additionally, vc-use-package provides use-package integration:

(use-package anki-editor
  :vc (:fetcher github :repo anki-editor/anki-whitespace))

Alternatively, if you're on Emacs 30, a :vc keyword is built into use-package:

(use-package anki-editor
  :vc (:url "https://github.com/anki-editor/anki-whitespace" :rev :newest))

Usage

Note layout

By default¹, a note is a separate paragraph of text, prefixed by anki-whitespace-prefix (which defaults to >>> ). Followed by the prefix are any of the following options:

• deck: the deck that the note should be filed under.
• type: the note type (Basic, Cloze, …).
• id: Anki note ID (filled in automatically by Anki).
• title: optional title for the note.

You can add new options to anki-whitespace-options, and adjust anki-whitespace-note-at-point as needed.

Any further syntax is determined by the note type. The only steadfast rule is that everything has to be one paragraph; optionally, a note can end sooner than that by ending with anki-whitespace-suffir (default: <<<). The two builtin types, Basic and Cloze, specify the following rules:

• The Basic type looks for two things: a question beginning with "Q: ", and an answer beginning with "A: ". For example:

  >>> deck: Default, type: Basic
  Q: A question
  A: An answer
  
  >>> deck: Default::Maths, type: Basic
  Q: A question
  A: An answer
  \[
    \LaTeX
  \]
  

• The Cloze type simply looks for anki-editor-style cloze-deletions:

  >>> deck: Default, type: Cloze
  Please {{c1::complete}} my sentence
  
  >>> deck: Default::Misc, type: Cloze
  Please {{c1::complete}} my sentence {{c2::completely}}
  

Commands

anki-whitespace doesn't bind to any keys, and indeed doesn't provide all that many new commands; rather, it augments—by means of nadvice.el—the commands of anki-editor. So far, the following things are implemented (and thus usable in anki-whitespace-mode):

• Pushing notes: anki-editor-push-note-at-point, anki-whitespace-push-notes-in-buffer, anki-whitespace-push-notes-dwim.

• Creating new notes: anki-whitespace-new-note.

• Deleting notes: anki-editor-delete-note-at-point.

In particular, these functionalities also work when invoked via anki-editor-ui.

Footnotes

1. The code functionality is relatively little code, so the exact syntax of the notes is quite configurable. ↩