From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael Brand Subject: Re: [OT] recutils Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2010 08:17:34 +0100 Message-ID: References: <874oauh7zq.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=39324 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1POmNI-0000TF-C7 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sat, 04 Dec 2010 02:17:41 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1POmNH-0008SZ-ED for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Sat, 04 Dec 2010 02:17:40 -0500 In-Reply-To: <874oauh7zq.fsf@gnu.org> List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: "Jose E. Marchesi" Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 22:16, Jose E. Marchesi wrote: > I apologize in advance for the off-topic, but this could be of interest > to people liking to "organize their life" in plain text. =A0This is about > "storing your data" in plain text :D > > I just made the first release of the GNU recutils, a set of tools and > libraries to access human-editable, text-based databases called > recfiles. =A0The data is stored as a sequence of records, each record > containing an arbitrary number of named fields. =A0Advanced capabilities > usually found in other data storage systems are supported by GNU > recutils: data types, data integrity (keys, mandatory fields, etc) as > well as the ability of records to refer to other records (sort of > foreign keys). =A0Despite its simplicity, recfiles can be used to store > medium-sized databases. > > I have been using org-mode for years and it rocks. =A0In some way it > changed my life. =A0It is perfect to store all kind of hierarchical data. > At some point I though about applying a similar philosophy to > "sequential" repetitive data with relationships. =A0Data that we would > store in a relational database. =A0A nice complement to org. =A0The recut= ils > are the result of those thoughts. > > I would highly appreciate any comment or suggestion on improving the > format, the utilities, or whatever. Hi Jose Wow! The ability to have a _relational_ database with foreign keys in a simple text file is so great news for me. A dream I had for many years now. Or is it lack of knowledge from my side about already existing solutions before recutils? Thank you a lot for your work, sharing it to the community, posting it also on this list here and for asking for suggestions which I would like to give at the end. I was thinking about using sqlite from the command line and together with shell scripts for stuff like my collection of music with recordings, MIDI files, scores and so on. Because at least for me editing a text file is by far simpler, more interactive and more convenient than editing with SQL I will prefer recutils over sqlite. But since recfiles, the text files of recutils, are not hierarchically organized I am still considering to use only Org for the case of my collection of music. Org would have the advantages of outlining, hyperlinks, column view, todo, tags, agenda view, export for publishing and many others. Thus my wish for the file format would be to somehow keep in mind Org to potentially - convert the files bidirectionally between the format of recfiles and Org, with or without something like "literate programming" of org-babel - use recutils as a language extension to org-babel, recutils reading data streamed to its stdin from org-babel and piping back to into org-babel result (no writing by recutils to the file) - as an imagination: run recutils on a file in the format of Org, only reading or even read/write. I will follow up with an example of what I plan to do for my collection of music, the database table relations squeezed hierarchically into Org as a first attempt. Michael