# Quickstart - jrnl
Author: Manuel Ebert

# Getting started

## Installation

On OS X, the easiest way to install jrnl is using Homebrew

    brew install jrnl

On other platforms, install jrnl using pip

    pip install jrnl

Or, if you want the option to encrypt your journal,

    pip install jrnl[encrypted]

to install the dependencies for encrypting journals as well.

Note

Installing the encryption library, `pycrypto`, requires a `gcc` compiler. For this reason, jrnl will not install `pycrypto` unless explicitly told so like this. You can install PyCrypto manually first or install it with `pip install pycrypto` if you have a `gcc` compiler. Also note that when using zsh, the correct syntax is `pip install "jrnl[encrypted]"` (note the quotes).

The first time you run `jrnl` you will be asked where your journal file should be created and whether you wish to encrypt it.

## Quickstart

to make a new entry, just type

    jrnl yesterday: Called in sick. Used the time to clean the house and spent 4h on writing my book.

and hit return. `yesterday:` will be interpreted as a time stamp. Everything until the first sentence mark (`.?!:`) will be interpreted as the title, the rest as the body. In your journal file, the result will look like this:

    2012-03-29 09:00 Called in sick.
    Used the time to clean the house and spent 4h on writing my book.

If you just call `jrnl`, you will be prompted to compose your entry - but you can also configure jrnl to use your external editor.

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