Howm: Write fragmentarily and read collectively.
Howm is a note-taking tool on Emacs. It is similar to emacs-wiki.el; you can enjoy hyperlinks and full-text search easily. It is not similar to emacs-wiki.el; it can be combined with any format.
- Home
- Introduction by Leah Neukirchen (thx!)
- Detailed English & Russian tutorials by Andrei Sukhovskii (thx!)
- 1-minute introduction on YouTube by Raoul Comninos (thx!)
The following screenshot illustrates the Howm linking system:
(Colorscheme: Modus themes.)
Quick start
If you're using a recent version of Emacs and have enabled the MELPA community package repository, you can simply place the following in your ~/.config/emacs/init.el configuration file and restart Emacs:
(use-package howm
:ensure t)After that, you can press e.g. C-c , , to open the main menu, C-c , a to see a list of all your notes, or C-c , c to capture a new note from anywhere. See the documentation links above for more detailed instructions on how to use Howm.
Alternatively, here is a configurable snippet. If you want to change the note format, delete the menu file 0000-00-00-000000.txt beforehand to regenerate a new menu in that format.
(use-package howm
:ensure t
:init
;;
;; Options: Remove the leading ";" in the following lines if you like.
;;
;; Format
;(require 'howm-markdown) ;; Write notes in markdown-mode. (*1)
;(require 'howm-org) ;; Write notes in Org-mode. (*2)
;;
;; Preferences
;(setq howm-directory "~/Documents/Howm") ;; Where to store the files?
;(setq howm-follow-theme t) ;; Use your Emacs theme colors. (*3)
;;
;; Performance
;(setq howm-menu-expiry-hours 1) ;; Cache menu N hours. (*4)
;(setq howm-menu-refresh-after-save nil) ;; Speed up note saving. (*5)
)- (*1) Markdown-mode must be installed separately. Howm's wiki link
[[...]]is disabled for syntax compatibility. - (*2) Just replace
C-c ,withC-c ;in Howm's documentation, including thatC-c ; ;opens the menu. Howm's wiki link[[...]]is disabled for syntax compatibility. - (*3) Technically, it inherits the colors used by Org-mode; this requires that you either (i) use a theme that defines the Org faces or (ii) that your
init.elloads Org itself. - (*4) Howm caches the menu state, so that opening the menu is instant. But it regenerates the menu if either (i) it's been more than 1 hour (the "expiry hours") since last menu update, or (ii) you saved a file that belongs to Howm (howm-mode was active in the buffer).
- (*5) Howm doesn't regenerate the menu if you save a file either, only if it's been more than 1 hour since the last menu update. If you want to update it more frequently, you have to manually refresh it (keybinding
R).
For a more extensive overview of how you can customize Howm, you can use the Customize system (M-x customize-group RET howm RET). See also Emacs Wiki for various tips.
FAQ
How does Howm compare to Org-roam?
TL;DR: Balanced simplicity, clever linking system, UI for contextual reading.
Most things you can do in Howm are probably possible in Org-roam as well. But Howm is more minimalistic and loose in every way. It is designed on the belief that not aiming for perfect organization is the key to maintaining long-term note-taking without becoming unmanageable. Users seem to appreciate its balance between simplicity and functionality, as well as its smooth navigation UI. The UI, along with the search-based link/backlink system, helps with reading many fragmentary notes collectively.
I've heard Howm is unbearably slow, actually?
There are a few performance options. Once enabled, searches are usually instant, even for 20 years of notes.