README
¶
Migrate your notes from Bear to Zettlr!
Background
I recently switch from Bear to Zettlr to manage my notes. However, I was sad to discover that Bear exports notes in a non-standard way:
- File attachments are HTML links that don't even point to the correct file
- All notes are stored in the same directory, regardless of your tag hierarchy
- The tag format used by Bear (#foo/bar) is incompatible with Zettlr format (#bar)
- Bonus: some file attachment were missing...
So, I decided to write this tool in order to save my hundreds of notes!
Usage
First, export all your notes from Bear.
- Go to Notes
- Hit Cmd+A to select all your notes
- Go to File > Export Notes...
- Select Markdown and check Export attachments
- Select a directory to store your exported notes
- Click Export notes
Then, install git and go.
brew install git golang
Checkout this repository.
git clone https://github.com/nmasse-itix/bearnotes.git
cd bearnotes/cli
Start a discovery of your notes.
go run main.go discover --from /path/to/bear-notes --tag-file /tmp/tags.yaml
If everything goes well, it should display a count of your exported notes along with the discovered tag list.
You can review the generated tag configuration file.
open /tmp/tags.yaml
Finally, launch the proper migration phase.
go run main.go migrate --from /path/to/bear-notes --to /path/to/zettlr-notes --tag-file /tmp/tags.yaml
Review the migrated notes.
If you want to change the default folder hierarchy, read the next section.
Configuration
You can configure how the migration tool stores your notes, in which folder and even rewrite the tags to match Zettlr's format.
The default configuration for a tag is:
foo/bar:
ignore: false
handling_strategy: same-folder
target_directory: foo/bar
target_tag_name: bar
It defines that any note having this tag will go to the foo/bar directory. The #foo/bar tag will be rewritten as #bar. All the notes having the #foo/bar tag, will be stored in the same directory, along with their embedded images and file attachments.
If you think the migration tool wrongly identified a tag, you can switch the ignore option to true.
foo/bar:
ignore: true
If you want to rewrite the #foo/bar tag as #foo-bar, you can change the target_tag_name.
foo/bar:
ignore: false
handling_strategy: same-folder
target_directory: foo/bar
target_tag_name: foo-bar
Note: If you want to remove the tag from the migrated note, use target_tag_name: "".
The target_directory option is straightforward: it defines where to store the notes having this tag.
The handling_strategy option specifies how notes will be saved on the filesystem
- same-folder: all notes having this tag are stored in the target_directory along with their embedded images and file attachments.
- one-note-per-folder: each note will get a sub-folder in the target_directory
Note: given that a document can have multiple tags, it is perfectly valid for a tag to specify no target directory or no handling strategy if you know that another tag will provide them.
If by any chance, for a note the tool cannot determine a target directory or an handling strategy, the note will be stored in the root of the target directory.
And if a note receives different configurations by two different tags, the first one wins (by order of tag appearance in the document).
Filename encoding Between Mac and Linux
If you took your exported notes from a Mac and migrated them on a Linux box, you might encounter some filename encoding issue.
Hopefully, convmv can fix filenames for you!
sudo dnf install convmv
convmv -f utf-8 -t utf-8 --nfc -r --notest /path/to/bear-notes
License
MIT
Documentation
¶
Overview ¶
Package bearnotes provides tools to read Markdown files generated by the Bear app. It can also convert those files to a format suitable for Zettlr.
It handles notes, embedded images and file attachments.
Note: there are some Unicode normalization issues between the filenames in the filesystem and paths in the Markdown file. It is up to the caller to normalize strings when required.
Index ¶
Constants ¶
This section is empty.
Variables ¶
This section is empty.
Functions ¶
func DiscoverNotes ¶
DiscoverNotes walk through recursively the Bear notes directory to find notes. It generates a tag configuration file, suitable for migration.
Types ¶
type File ¶
type File struct {
Location string // The path to the file attachment
Name string // The name of the file
// contains filtered or unexported fields
}
File represents a file attachment in a note.
type Image ¶
type Image struct {
Location string // The path to the embedded image
Description string // The alternative text for the image
// contains filtered or unexported fields
}
Image represents an embedded image in a note.
type Note ¶
type Note struct {
Tags []Tag // All the tags
Files []File // All the file attachments
Images []Image // All the embedded images
// contains filtered or unexported fields
}
Note represents a Bear note with its tags, file attachments and embedded images.
type Tag ¶
type Tag struct {
// The name of the tag (without the leading hashtag)
Name string
// contains filtered or unexported fields
}
Tag represents a Bear tag (#foo)
type TagOptions ¶
type TagOptions struct {
// When true, Ignore specifies that this tag is not relevant.
// It can be useful when a tag is wrongly identified.
Ignore bool `yaml:"ignore"`
// HandlingStrategy specifies how notes will be saved on the filesystem
// - same-folder: all notes having this tag are stored in the TargetDirectory
// along with their embedded images and file attachments.
// - one-note-per-folder: each note will get a sub-folder in the TargetDirectory
// - "" (empty string): no handling specified for this tag
HandlingStrategy string `yaml:"handling_strategy"`
// TargetDirectory specifies where to store notes, along with their images and files
TargetDirectory string `yaml:"target_directory"`
// TargetTagName specifies the new tag name. Since Bear supports nested tags (#foo/bar)
// but Zettlr does not, by default the target is the last component of the Bear tag (#bar).
//
// If TargetTagName is the empty string, the tag is removed from the note.
TargetTagName string `yaml:"target_tag_name"`
// contains filtered or unexported fields
}
TagOptions specifies how to convert notes having this tag.
func NewTagOptions ¶
func NewTagOptions(tag Tag) TagOptions
NewTagOptions initializes a new TagOptions from a Tag object, with sane defaults and counter == 1
Source Files
Directories