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 PyCyrypto manually first or install it with pip install pycrypto if you have a gcc compiler.
The first time you run jrnl you will be asked where your journal file should be created and whether you wish to encrypt it.
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.