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. 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. ↩