Notes Markdown Highlighter

Visual Studio Code (VSCode) extension for Notes Markdown, a custom file type which can be used for daily notes.

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Overview

Notes Markdown is a custom format that allows creating notes for school, work, and more.

Your Notes exist in standard Markdown format, so they are widely supported, Git-friendly, and easy to use.

This extension enables special highlighting rules, useful commands, and more. It makes your note-taking journey easier and more efficient.

Motivation

I wrote daily notes at work using OneNote. OneNote had its own custom format, slow UI/UX, and a plethora of other issues. Most notably, it wasn't very portable and required you to have a license or special Microsoft software to view it.

Markdown, however, is Git-friendly, easy-to-use, widely supported, and can be easily converted into HTML, Word, and many other formats. In other words, it is superior to OneNote.

But, if Markdown doesn't have formatting (at least, not consistently, nor is special coloring possible).

That's where this extension comes in.

You can now use Markdown for your notes AND you can have coloring. You can have your cake and eat it too.

It also has some handy VSCode commands that automate some note-taking processes.

Features

This VSCode extension features:

• Customizable keyword-based highlighting & formatting for a new file extension: .nmd
  • Applies these formats to VSCode's Markdown Preview, too!
• 24 icons to utilize for different categories of highlighting.
• An interactive Rule Gallery to create new rules, edit existing rules, and more.
• Some commands to make your note-taking easier.
  • A command to insert the timestamp and a keyword.
  • A command to generate a Notes Markdown file for an entire month, useful for daily notes at work or school.
    • This command has many options, like the first day of the week, whether to include weekends, etc.
  • A command to insert a right arrow, useful for process flow.
  • A command to insert a colored definition template, useful for defining terminology or highlighting very important words.

Formatting

Formatting is achieved by a series of rules you define. This provides you complete control over the way your notes look.

Rules are defined by a few configuration items:

• Name: Unique name of the rule, for identification.
• Keywords: The list of word(s) you wish to target for highlighting under this rule.
• Enabled: You can enable or disable this rule.
• Colors: You can control colors for the rule, which controls the way the line of text will be rendered both in-editor and in the Markdown preview.
  • Colors are handled by-theme and a default, in case you do not define it for all theme types.
  • Theme types are: Light, Dark, High-Contrast Light, and High-Contrast Dark.
  • You can configure colors for each of these.

The extension will check your colors and suggest higher-contrast alternatives, as needed.

While this feature may be useful, it may be annoying, so you can disable checks globally, or on a per-rule basis.

Examples

Here's a preview of some sample rules in the editor itself:

These rules also apply to the Markdown Preview! Take a look!

Rule Gallery

Rather than editing the rules in the JSON, it is possible to manage all your rules with the built in Rule Gallery.

The Rule Gallery is a webview window that you can open as a command to see all the icons, your active rules, a preview, and more.

To open it, simply open VSCode's command palette (Ctrl + Shift + P), search for NMD Highlighter, and select: Show Rule Gallery.

On the rule gallery, you can:

• Click on a rule to edit it. You can edit the icon, colors, whether it is enabled, and more.
• Create a brand new rule using the "Create new rule" button. This will walk through rule creation using a series of prompts baked into VSCode.
• View all available icons in a single page.
• Reload the webview, in case settings have changed.

Commands

Timestamp Inserter

You can insert a timestamp (via: Ctrl + Shift + T) which will input the timestamp and the keyword in the following format:

[HH:MM] KEYWORD:

This allows quicker insertion of the keyword, and captures the time, if that's handy to you.

Insert Rightarrow

You can insert a right arrow (via: Ctrl + K `), which will insert a LaTeX right arrow, useful for processes like "File $\rightarrow$ Open $\rightarrow$ Select File $\rightarrow$ ..."

$\rightarrow$

Insert Definition

You can insert a definition (via: Ctrl + K Ctrl + D), which will insert a LaTeX text-color definition.

$\textcolor{#009f9f}{\textnormal{WORD}} \rightarrow$

This allows quick definitions. It also utilizes VSCode's template system, so when you type your word, you can hit TAB to get to the end of the definition and start typing the definition for your term.

Monthly Note File Generator

Another command is the Monthly Note File Generator, which is useful if you take daily notes. It has multiple options that it will ask you for:

1. Which month and year you are targeting
2. Whether you want to include weekends
3. The first day of the week (Do you fall for the Sunday-is-the-first-day-of-the-week propaganda? well, do ya?)
4. Whether the days should be ascending or descending (should the last day of the month be at the top or the bottom?)

The format of the file is:

# MM/YYYY

## Notes

### MM/DD

### MM/DD

// This pattern continues for every date in the month that you configured...

There are also separators between weeks to help navigate the file!