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A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

jacobzelko.com

41–50 of 125 posts

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#42

A good alternative to strictly terminal-based workflows are tiled window managers. The big gain is that you don't have to give up all those gui apps as they blend in next to the terminal apps quite well.

I was one or two years on Arch with i3 and all was great except when an app (eg a browser or Inkscape) opens a dialogue/modal/popup or whatever and this got stretched over the entire pane, yuck. AFAIK this could be configured somehow but I found configuration not as mature and rock-solid as with tmux or nvim but good though. It was rather a rabbit-hole.

While I prefer the paradigm of tiling wms I eventually stuck with Windows (and WSL2) with its built-in window management but yeah.

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#43
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm in a terminal anyways doing other things. tmux really enables me to compose things together really powerfully.

Starting with Tmux was quite eye-opening to me for exactly this reason. The power of composable tools is hard to exaggerate.

Can you give some examples of what you're able to do or what exactly you mean by composing in this context? I've used tmux a bit but just to split windows and restore sessions...

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#44

At risk of being /that guy/, I find that emacs gives me a nice & consistent "one-stop-shop" for text-based apps instead of having to kludge together a bunch disparate terminal programs. Also, +1 for Julia.

Just the combination of tmux and nvim with shared ctrl-hjkl between both nvim and tmux panes is so buttersmooth and no other setup has given me such an seamless interoperability between an editor and an OS. What this means: you can switch between tmux panes or nvim panes or from tmux to nvim and back always with the same shortcut. This is the most underrated killer feature.

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#45
post #40

Hey everyone! I am the author of the article! If you have any questions, feel free to ping me and I will try to respond in a timely fashion! I intend to always keep this article up to date so feel free to bookmark it for a future reference. Further, it makes my heart so so happy to see so many people being either inspired, interested, or curious about my workflow! I think the best workflow is the one that works for y…

I switched to this setup years ago and I regret all the decades before I've spent with GUIs. One question though, how do I get the floating terminals?

Looks like a vim plugin: https://gist.github.com/TheCedarPrince/7b9b51af4c146880f17c3...

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#46

Hey everyone! I am the author of the article! If you have any questions, feel free to ping me and I will try to respond in a timely fashion! I intend to always keep this article up to date so feel free to bookmark it for a future reference. Further, it makes my heart so so happy to see so many people being either inspired, interested, or curious about my workflow! I think the best workflow is the one that works for y…

I think I used your article on knowledge management when I set up my Browser/Kindle > Zotero > Vim (Markdown) > Pandoc > PDF workflow. Thank you!

After a year of not doing research I'm just getting it all back together and I've swapped Zotero for Jurism a fork that has support for multiple languages that I greatly appreciate.

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#47

why do you prefer writing in terminal based editor?

Author of the article here! For me, I prefer it for two reasons: 1. Distractionless editing - not fiddling with formatting or things like that is quite nice. Especially since I work with markdown and LaTeX, it is easy to convert over to a word file once I get the draft of the version done thanks to pandoc. From there, then I can really worry about the formatting - if I need to as pandoc is great! 2. I like the speed…

Did you consider writing in Sublime text?

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#48
post #7

There's a lot of really good stuff in here about quick access to things. I feel sad that we're all still doing this stuff in teletype emulators, though. Why can't we have this and nice GUIs, too?

I, on the other hand, feel sad that we don't have better terminals, but still rely on ancient teletype protocols, escape codes, and arcana. I'd very much like an advanced, still cli/terminal, interface option.

I think maybe we're asking for the same thing. I want to be able to write commands and small scripts smoothly but have nice integration with graphical tools. Oberon, Acme, and Smalltalk all are environments that try this to various degrees...

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#49

Hey everyone! I am the author of the article! If you have any questions, feel free to ping me and I will try to respond in a timely fashion! I intend to always keep this article up to date so feel free to bookmark it for a future reference. Further, it makes my heart so so happy to see so many people being either inspired, interested, or curious about my workflow! I think the best workflow is the one that works for y…

I think I used your article on knowledge management when I set up my Browser/Kindle > Zotero > Vim (Markdown) > Pandoc > PDF workflow. Thank you! After a year of not doing research I'm just getting it all back together and I've swapped Zotero for Jurism a fork that has support for multiple languages that I greatly appreciate.

That is amazing to hear zwayhowder and am happy to hear that made a difference for you! I need to overhaul that article you referenced at some point as I have a different system in place. It still accomplishes the same goals, but is just a bit neater. :) I will have to check out Jurism too.

Best of luck with your research endeavors!

Re: A terminal-based workflow for research, writing, and programming

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author of the article here! For me, I prefer it for two reasons: 1. Distractionless editing - not fiddling with formatting or things like that is quite nice. Especially since I work with markdown and LaTeX, it is easy to convert over to a word file once I get the draft of the version done thanks to pandoc. From there, then I can really worry about the formatting - if I need to as pandoc is great! 2. I like the speed…

Did you consider writing in Sublime text?

I actually wrote my entire thesis in VSCode with LaTeX workshop! I have friends who swear by Sublime - I can see why! It's really powerful. Traditional GUI editors are great for when I was working on my thesis but I opted for a lighter solution as I do a lot on my laptop at once. The fewer CPU intensive programs for my workflow, the better.
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