Neuron

Neuron is the software that powers this website. It is a note-taking tool based on the Zettelkasten method. Visit the project website to learn more. See also the Ka^ᛦ project, which will eventually inspire a new core for neuron.

project/neuron

2020-10-08 Neuron 1.0 released^ᛦ
2020-09-03 Cerveau: a future-proof web app for notes^ᛦ
2020-07-28 Neuron 0.6 released^ᛦ
2020-05-13 Neuron 0.4 released^ᛦ
2020-03-09 Announcing Neuron - Zettelkasten in Haskell^ᛦ

2020-05-12

Haskell^ᛦ
- On GitHub you can find a list of Haskell projects I’ve worked on (and been working on), the notable of which is Neuron^ᛦ, as well as Ka^ᛦ.
Recently created notes
- All zettels query
Cerveau: a future-proof web app for notes
- Cerveau’s frontend too is written in Haskell. Wait, how is that possible? The GHCJS compiler compiles Haskell code to low-level JavaScript for running in the browser. Cerveau uses the Reflex FRP library, via the excellent Obelisk framework, which takes care of all the plumbing required to produce such full-stack Haskell apps, so that I as a developer can focus on the FRP application logic. FRP, and similar models of UI programming, is simpler to write and extend than callback based code. Anybody who writes Elm¹ can attest to that; however unlike Elm or PureScript, GHCJS code can be shared with the backend. This is what enables Cerveau to directly reuse much of the Neuron source code, thus enabling neuron’s core features to work directly on the browser–for example, live HTML preview while editing the note.
  1. Incidentally, the paper Explicitly Comprehensible Functional Reactive Programming compares The Elm Architecture and Reflex Ecosystem’s frameworks.
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- I created the open-source Neuron to scratch my own itch, wherein I wanted to maintain my notes for a lifetime, without being dependent on proprietory formats or systems. I still wasn’t totally satisfied however, because I did not want to give up on the convenience of managing notes from a web app on my mobile phone. I didn’t want to be tied to a desktop text editor. So, the idea behind Cerveau was born - which began to resolve that dissatifaction without compromising on future-proofness.
- I’d like to announce the public beta of Cerveau¹, a web app for managing plain-text notes from a GitHub repository. Cerveau integrates directly with Neuron which supports Zettelkasten-style note-taking in Markdown. This very site you are reading is managed by Neuron and edited in Cerveau, and its Git repo is essentially a directory of Markdown files.
  1. “Cerveau” is prounced with the “eau” sounding like the “o” in “Go”. See audio playback.
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Emacs
- Emacs is an extensible and customizable text editor that is popular among certain programming language communities. Emacs is also suited for taking notes (à la. orgmode; though I prefer Neuron). There are various “configuration kits” for Emacs.
Neuron 0.6 released
- Neuron (GitHub repo) is a note-taking tool based on Zettelkasten, that aims to be future-proof. Version 0.6 just got released; its major highlight is that neuron is now based on the Pandoc AST. This allows us to support any format supported by Pandoc. Experimental org-mode support is already in, to begin with.
Building Static Haskell binaries using Nix
- For Neuron in particular, see this PR for the actual changes to support building static binaries on Linux.
Sridhar Ratnakumar
- My current projects are Neuron, Ka and Cerveau. I’m generally available for part-time consulting services related to Haskell, Nix and/ or Reflex FRP; for contact info and other details, see my résumé.
Ka
- ka (originally announced in Neuron 1.0 released) is a research playground, and an independent app, for Neuron. See ka.srid.ca for details.
Neuron 1.0 released
- Neuron (GitHub repo) is a note-taking tool based on Zettelkasten, that aims to be future-proof, and is optimized for publishing on the web. Version 1.0 just got released, with better linking support and many other improvements.
Tech
- Neuron - What this site itself is published on