.. _recipes:

FAQ
===

Recipes
-------

Co-occurrence of tags
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I want to find out how often I mentioned my flatmates Alberto and Melo in the same entry, I run ::

    jrnl @alberto --tags | grep @melo

And will get something like ``@melo: 9``, meaning there are 9 entries where both ``@alberto`` and ``@melo`` are tagged. How does this work? First, ``jrnl @alberto`` will filter the journal to only entries containing the tag ``@alberto``, and then the ``--tags`` option will print out how often each tag occurred in this `filtered` journal. Finally, we pipe this to ``grep`` which will only display the line containing ``@melo``.

Combining filters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can do things like ::

    jrnl @fixed -starred -n 10 -until "jan 2013" --short

To get a short summary of the 10 most recent, favourited entries before January 1, 2013 that are tagged with ``@fixed``.

External editors
----------------

To use external editors for writing and editing journal entries,  set them up in your ``.jrnl_config`` (see :doc:`advanced usage <advanced>` for details). Generally, after writing an entry, you will have to save and close the file to save the changes to jrnl.

Sublime Text
~~~~~~~~~~~~

To use Sublime Text, install the command line tools for Sublime Text and configure your ``.jrnl_config`` like this:

.. code-block:: javascript

    "editor": "subl -w"

Note the ``-w`` flag to make sure jrnl waits for Sublime Text to close the file before writing into the journal.


MacVim
~~~~~~

Similar to Sublime Text, MacVim must be started with a flag that tells the the process to wait until the file is closed before passing control back to journal. In the case of MacVim, this is ``-f``:

.. code-block:: javascript

    "editor": "mvim -f"

iA Writer
~~~~~~~~~

On OS X, you can use the fabulous `iA Writer <http://www.iawriter.com/mac>`_ to write entries. Configure your ``.jrnl_config`` like this:

.. code-block:: javascript

    "editor": "open -b jp.informationarchitects.WriterForMacOSX -Wn"

What does this do? ``open -b ...`` opens a file using the application identified by the bundle identifier (a unique string for every app out there). ``-Wn`` tells the application to wait until it's closed before passing back control, and to use a new instance of the application.


Notepad++ on Windows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To set `Notepad++ <http://notepad-plus-plus.org/>`_ as your editor, edit the jrnl config file (``.jrnl_config``) like this:

.. code-block:: javascript

      "editor": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Notepad++\\notepad++.exe -multiInst",

The double backslashes are needed so jrnl can read the file path correctly. The ``-multiInst`` option will cause jrnl to open its own Notepad++ window.