#+title: Org Zettelkasten Manual
#+subtitle: Release {{{version}}}
#+author: Yann Herklotz
#+language: en

#+texinfo: @insertcopying

* Introduction
:PROPERTIES:
:DESCRIPTION: Getting started.
:END:
#+cindex: introduction

Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten is becoming increasingly popular for being a great
note taking technique. However, it is often misunderstood as taking notes
without any structure, whereas Luhmann actually structured his notes
hierarchically, but also allowed for arbitrary links between notes. This post
will describe the general note-taking workflow that Luhmann used and a practical
implementation of the Zettelkasten in Emacs’ built-in org-mode, which I have
been using regularly for my notes and has been working well.

** Inserting new notes
#+cindex: notes

There are several possible notes that can be inserted into the Zettelkasten, but
the need for them should arise naturally and one therefore doesn’t have to think
about the separate types of notes directly. In addition to the following types
of notes, Luhmann also had a separate box for references and notes about those
references, however, these are not added to the Zettelkasten in my case because
I felt like using tools specifically to keep track of references is a better
system for me. This is mentioned further in the keeping track of references
section.

*** Permanent Notes
#+cindex: notes

Inserting new notes into the Zettelkasten can be done for any new piece of
information one wants to permanently add to the tree of notes and therefore the
network of notes. These are therefore called “permanent notes,” however, these
are not the only notes that may appear in the network. The most important thing
to take into consideration is that “permanent notes” should be completely in
your own words, and express an idea that also links to other parts in the
network. At the start it may be necessary to create a few topics that these
notes fit into, however, eventually one should be able to find notes that are
similar enough which this new note should follow.

*** Index notes
#+cindex: notes

Apart from that, there can also be “index notes,” which try to give some
structure to a subsection that may have gotten lost with all of the branches
that may have been added. In addition to that, these may tie in other notes from
other topics as well that relate to that topic. These can therefore just be
added whenever you feel like there are too many notes for a subtopic and cannot
keep track of all the possible links.

** Keeping track of references
#+cindex: references

Luhmann kept track of references by inserting them into their own box in a
linear structure and then referring to them by ID whenever they needed to be
cited. These are often called “bibliographical notes.” In addition to that,
notes that were not permanent and more relevant to a specific paper or book were
also added separately to the other notes and were called “literature notes,” as
these often contained summaries of the papers or books that were cited. Even
though these were written in his own words, they only really were relevant to
the paper itself as temporary notes, which could eventually be added as
“permanent notes” into the Zettelkasten and linked to other notes when a
narrative developed that did link this piece of knowledge to other notes.

As references are quite separate to the other notes anyways, I prefer to keep
them quite separate as well, and instead use standard bibliography management
tools to keep track of all my references as well as linking notes to the
references in the tool itself. In my case this is using ebib in Emacs, however,
any alternative works as well, such as Zotero.

In my notes, I then reference these by their bibtex identifier that is
automatically generated, and which is later used when referencing the same
literature in LaTeX, for example. This allows me to keep these notes quite
separate and forces me to think about links when I do eventually add them to the
network as “permanent notes.”

* GNU Free Documentation License
:PROPERTIES:
:APPENDIX: t
:DESCRIPTION: The license for this documentation.
:END:

#+include: fdl.org

* Main Index
:PROPERTIES:
:INDEX:    cp
:DESCRIPTION: An index of Org Zettelkasten concepts and features.
:END:

* Copying
:PROPERTIES:
:copying: t
:END:

This manual is for Org Zettelkasten version {{{version}}}.

Copyright \copy 2022  Yann Herklotz.

#+begin_quote
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being "A GNU Manual,"
and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below.  A copy of the license
is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License."

(a) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is: "You have the freedom to copy and
modify this GNU manual."
#+end_quote

* Export Setup :noexport:

#+setupfile: doc-setup.org

#+export_file_name: org-zettelkasten.texi

#+texinfo_dir_category: Zettelkasten
#+texinfo_dir_title: Org Zettelkasten
#+texinfo_dir_desc: A Zettelkasten mode leveraging Org