<commit_before>---
layout: page
title: Tutorial
permalink: /tutorial/
---

**This page is under construction. Pardon the sketchiness for now.**

## What do you want to do?

- Take research notes for a paper in order to be able to search them for ... anything.  

- Follow the traditional (and ever-valid) methods of writing a note with a title, some keywords (tags), a note (with comment or summary if desired), and some bibliographical information (book or article title and page number[s]).  

- Find particular notes on particular themes and issues. 

- Send those particular notes to a file that will be the basis for a portion of your outline or draft. 

## All of these basic research, organization, and writing steps are steeped in traditional methods. 

- As researchers and writers of papers, articles, books -- from grade school, high school, college, graduate school, through our professional writings -- as well as teachers and editors of countless efforts by others, we know the game. Indeed, we are the coaches and referees and main players of the game!  And our own coaches told us how to do it! 

- On the basis of this experience, we made ZettelGeist to do the most important, fundamental steps of research and writing as clear and straightforward as possible, based on the methods that our mentors used to write the great books before personal computers came into being.  

- But because we are ourselves computerized (coming into professional life just as the pc revolution occurred and, therefore, having played _that game_ ever since), we have brought these techniques into the computer world -- more directly than any program has before.  (Believe us: we know because we have tried and deployed every option out there, from 1980 until yesterday -- as a matter of professional need.) 

- Because we know the frustration that so many so-called "notetaking programs" have caused, we have made a fundamental decision to ensure that the basis for all of this is already in the computer and the internet sites you own or have access to.  You don't have to go and buy anything new.  You already have _supercomputers_ that the great writers could never have imagined.  This system will just help you to take advantage of it better in ways consistent with the key principles of research and organization that the great writers developed, but most computer programs have left out.  

- This is the research-writing-computer synthesis we all need! 

## The first thing to know is that with ZettelGeist you can do ALL this with ANY SOFTWARE YOU WANT TO USE!!  

- Many programs suggest they are "app-gnostic" (agnostic or indifferent about which app you use), but that usually just means you can save your work into another format (doc, txt, etc.).  ZettelGeist is truly app neutral in the sense that you can make notes (zettels) with any software, as long as you make them according to a certain pattern (indicating note section, title section, etc...) and save or download them in good old ".txt" format.  

- The "pattern" is exactly what you would use to write out a notecard in the traditional way (by hand, or typed on paper or computer), so it really isn't that big a deal.  Plus, once you make one card (or zettel), you can just edit the same card to make any necessary changes for the next card (change the note, change the page numbers, etc.) then save the new card with a new filename, eg. "note02.txt" and move on...

- You can do this with ANY word processor you want to use: Google Docs, Microsoft Word, LibreOffice.  In fact, you could just use the most basic editor that is already residing on your computer: Notepad, Wordpad (on Windows), TextEdit (Mac), Vim, Emacs, etc. 

- If that last sentence confuses you, don't worry.  Just use Google Docs or Word or whatever you are used to. (The surprise is that you don't actually have to buy any word processor at all because the above basic text editors come with your system and ZettelGeist would allow you to use those for free to research, organize, and write any great work you need to produce -- but let's set that aside for the moment.) 

## Let's try it out with Google Docs since we all have access to that. 

- As you can see on the "Get Started" and "Note Format" page above, a note in ZettelGeist is just a set of information put together in sections marked with a colon  -- as in title: or note: or tags:, etc.  

- There are a number of those (see Note Format page) because, as researchers, we know you might also want to "comment:" or write a "summary:" or add bibliographical information "bibkey:" and "pages:", and so on.  

- BUT this is completely up to you. You can add any of these in any order according to your needs.  A completely valid note would just start with "note:" and then write the text of your note, including all the information you want to produce or record. That would work just fine.  You could then save it as "note-01.txt" and it could be processed in ZettelGeist without a problem (after a couple of changes to the filename so it can be searched and used in the system -- more on that in a minute). 

- If you want the other elements, like title: summary: or comment: great, just add them too. As long as you name sections according to the list on the "Note Format" page, or listed in "zettel -- help", you can create notes however you prefer, with sections in whatever order you like.  Basically, you are making up your own system (based on these universally valid "fields") and can treat any "file" as a blank notecard, just as you do when you buy a pack of 3 x 5 notecards at the pharmacy and make flash cards for a high school class.  Fill them out as you like!

## So, with that flexibilty in mind, let's make your first note.

## For now, just go to Google Docs (or Word, or...your choice -- but we will use Google Docs as the main example here since we all have access and some familiarity with this editor.)  

- Start a new Doc.  

- Then take one step that will help with this experiment. 

  - Go to "Tools>Preferences" and **uncheck** most of the automatic styling elements.  <commit_msg>Update tutorial.md<commit_after>---
layout: page
title: Tutorial
permalink: /tutorial/
---

**This page is under construction. Pardon the sketchiness for now.**

## What do you want to do?

- Take research notes for a paper in order to be able to search them for ... anything.  

- Follow the traditional (and ever-valid) methods of writing a note with a title, some keywords (tags), a note (with comment or summary if desired), and some bibliographical information (book or article title and page number[s]).  

- Find particular notes on particular themes and issues. 

- Send those particular notes to a file that will be the basis for a portion of your outline or draft. 

## All of these basic research, organization, and writing steps are steeped in traditional methods. 

- As researchers and writers of papers, articles, books -- from grade school, high school, college, graduate school, through our professional writings -- as well as teachers and editors of countless efforts by others, we know the game. Indeed, we are the coaches and referees and main players of the game!  And our own coaches taught us how to do it! 

- On the basis of this experience, we made ZettelGeist to do the most important, fundamental steps of research and writing as straightforwardly as possible, based on the methods that our mentors used to write great books before personal computers came into being.  

- But because we are ourselves computerized (having come into professional life just as the pc revolution occurred and, therefore, having played _that game_ ever since), we have merged these techniques into the computer world more directly than any program has before.  (Believe us: we know!  Because we have tried and deployed every option out there, from 1980 until yesterday -- as a matter of professional need.) 

- Since we know the frustration that many so-called "notetaking programs" have caused, we have made a fundamental decision to ensure that the basis for all of this is already in the computer you own and the internet sites have access to.  You don't have to go and buy anything new.  You already have _supercomputers_ that the great writers could never have imagined.  This system will just help you to take advantage of them in ways consistent with the key principles of research and organization that the great writers developed, but most computer programs have left out.  

- This is the research-writing-computer singularity we have been waiting for! 

## The first thing to know is that with ZettelGeist you can do ALL of the above by starting (and finishing) your writing with ANY SOFTWARE YOU WANT TO USE!!  The ZettelGeist program works with and _between_ your preference. 

- Many programs suggest they are "app-gnostic" (agnostic or indifferent about which app you use), but that usually just means you can save your work into another format (doc, txt, etc.).  ZettelGeist is truly app neutral in the sense that you can make notes (zettels) with any software, as long as you make them according to a certain pattern (indicating note section, title section, etc...) and save or download them in good old ".txt" format.  

- The "pattern" is exactly what you would use to write out a notecard in the traditional way (by hand, or typed on paper or computer), so it really isn't that big a deal.  Plus, once you make one card (or zettel), you can just edit the same card to make any necessary changes for the next card (change the note, change the page numbers, etc.) then save the new card with a new filename, eg. "note02.txt" and move on...

- You can do this with ANY word processor you want to use: Google Docs, Microsoft Word, LibreOffice.  In fact, you could just use the most basic editor that is already residing on your computer: Notepad, Wordpad (on Windows), TextEdit (Mac), Vim, Emacs, etc. 

- If that last sentence confuses you, don't worry.  Just use Google Docs or Word or whatever you are used to. (The surprise is that you don't actually have to buy any word processor at all because the above basic text editors come with your system and ZettelGeist would allow you to use those for free to research, organize, and write any great work you need to produce -- but let's set that aside for the moment.) 

## Let's try it out with Google Docs since we all have access to that. 

- As you can see on the "Get Started" and "Note Format" page above, a note in ZettelGeist is just a set of information put together in sections marked with a colon  -- as in title: or note: or tags:, etc.  

- There are a number of those (see Note Format page) because, as researchers, we know you might also want to "comment:" or write a "summary:" or add bibliographical information "bibkey:" and "pages:", and so on.  

- BUT this is completely up to you. You can add any of these in any order according to your needs.  A completely valid note would just start with "note:" and then write the text of your note, including all the information you want to produce or record. That would work just fine.  You could then save it as "note-01.txt" and it could be processed in ZettelGeist without a problem (after a couple of changes to the filename so it can be searched and used in the system -- more on that in a minute). 

- If you want the other elements, like title: summary: or comment: great, just add them too. As long as you name sections according to the list on the "Note Format" page, or listed in "zettel -- help", you can create notes however you prefer, with sections in whatever order you like.  Basically, you are making up your own system (based on these universally valid "fields") and can treat any "file" as a blank notecard, just as you do when you buy a pack of 3 x 5 notecards at the pharmacy and make flash cards for a high school class.  Fill them out as you like!

## So, with that flexibilty in mind, let's make your first note.

## For now, just go to Google Docs (or Word, or...your choice -- but we will use Google Docs as the main example here since we all have access and some familiarity with this editor.)  

- Start a new Doc.  

- Then take one step that will help with this experiment. 

  - Go to "Tools>Preferences" and **uncheck** most of the automatic styling elements.  
{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.049671825621910706, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0016206142127866462, 'mean_word_length': 3.874407582938389, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 3, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 5, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 2, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
{'dir': 'git-commits-cleaned', 'id': '1253535', 'n_tokens_mistral': 3039, 'n_tokens_neox': 2946, 'n_words': 2089}