Niman

Getting started

Niman keeps notes as plain Markdown files. One note = one .md file on disk; the app’s SQLite database is only a rebuildable index.

Core ideas

  • Library: just a folder. Its settings live inside it as .niman/settings.json, so copying the folder to another machine moves them too; only how it looks on each screen (tree width, text size, editor) stays with the device (see settings).
  • Disk is source of truth: anything the app knows can be rebuilt from the files. Never edit the .niman/ or .history/ folders by hand, but everything else is yours.
  • Notes are UTF-8. A note from elsewhere that is not — a Latin-1 file from an old vault — still opens, searches and exports with its accents: each byte UTF-8 has no place for is read as the Windows-1252 character it stands for there (café, not caf�). Saving writes the note as UTF-8, so its words stay and its encoding becomes the app’s.
  • Multiple libraries: open several folders from a remembered list and switch anytime. Each library has its own settings. On a wide window the layers button at the foot of the rail opens the library window: the known libraries to switch to, Open existing, Create new and Close library, which goes back to the opening screen. Open notes are saved first; a note that cannot be saved keeps the library open and says why. On a phone the same actions are in Settings → Maintenance, and they save the open notes the same way.
  • Forgetting a library takes it off that list; the folder, its notes and its settings stay where they are, and opening it again brings it back. It is in the row’s own menu (⋯, right-click on a desktop, or a long press on a phone), and the library open right now closes first.

The first run

A fresh install opens on a short welcome: what Niman is — notes as files, three ways to write one, links and templates, search, export and import, tasks, sync, and what your device adds — and then one question: have you written Markdown before? The answer only decides how your first library starts. Never opens notes in the live editor and does not offer the Markdown source; A little opens live with both editors offered; All the time opens the source, as the app has always come. Settings → Editor has the switches whenever you change your mind, and the deck is shown once: it lives under Settings → Diagnostics and info as What Niman can do.

The last page can ask for a tour instead (Show me around), and so can the command palette later (Take the tour, which resumes a tour left halfway and starts a finished one over). It points at the real controls — the tree, the create menu, the note and its three modes, the toolbar, the tabs, the dock — and ends by opening the Markdown cheatsheet (#265), every construct written beside how a note shows it. Stop it at any step; nothing of it is left in your library.

First steps

  1. Open (or create) a folder as a library.
  2. Create a note with the Files FAB: New note or New list note (see list notes).
  3. Write in the source editor or the live (WYSIWYG) editor — switch per note or per library, and read the note in the read view (see editing).
  4. Organize with folders, wikilinks, tags and frontmatter (see organization), and let the journal make one note a day for you.
  5. Find notes with full-text search.

Next

  • Editing — Markdown, math, images, spellcheck, the read view.
  • List notes and shopping lists — checklists, quantities, and the ⋮ switch between the two.
  • Organization — trash, history, templates, tags — and reading pictures, PDFs and books.
  • Export — a note, a folder or the library out as Markdown, HTML, PDF or EPUB.
  • Journal — one note per day, with a calendar and a template.
  • Tasks and reminders — todo.txt plus rem: alarms.
  • Themes — the shipped palettes, and a theme of your own.
  • Home-screen widgets — todo and note widgets (Android).
  • Platforms — Android / Linux / Windows notes.
  • Sync — moving a library between machines today.

Edit this page on GitHub