Lumb

Note: This document talks about a lot of features that aren't done yet, it's called README-driven development. To see the current state of what's implemented, see spec.md.

Lumb is a text file format for personal logging. For example, you can use it to log:

• What you read
• When you sleep
• What you eat
• What you spend money on
• Your travels
• Time spent on projects
• Configuration changes you make to your computer
• Good/bad habits

You get to define all the data fields that each log contains. Any log entry can be followed by an associated indented block of text, so you can use it as a journal, or a journal that happens to have lots of computer-readable data associated with each entry.

The format is designed for (1) manually typing new entries quickly, and (2) maximum human readability and also prettiness.

Here is an example that allows you to log your money.

Date amount=Num{$} {tx* gift loan owed} dir={send/-> recv/<- earn/<~} to/from=Str comment=Str?

(2009-08-14) $3         -> "Pirate O's" | Sangria Señorial
(2009-08-19) $8         -> :diner       | Omelette & grapefruit juice
(2009-08-22) $12        -> :diner       | Chickpea burger
(2009-08-26) $150  owed -> :bloodcastle | Teeth cleaning
(2010-07-10) $170       -> :store       | Water filtration system
(2010-07-10) $4.23      -> :store       | 1.02 lb of black forest ham
(2010-07-10) $6.37      -> :store       | 1.42 lb of havarti
(2010-07-10) $1.29      -> :store       | Baguette
(2010-07-10) $3.29      -> :store       | Sunflower seed bread
(2010-07-10) $1.45      -> :store       | Four plums
(2010-07-10) $1.39      -> :store       | Tupperware-like container ("POLYBOX")
(2010-07-10) $1.09      -> :store       | Two cans, garbanzo beans
(2010-07-10) $0.79      -> :store       | Two cloves garlic (on sale)
(2010-07-10) $3.99      -> :store       | One bread tin
(2010-07-10) $1.89      -> :store       | Three cucumbers
(2010-07-10) $2.12      -> :store       | Sales tax for the above (8.2%)
(2010-07-12) $200  loan <- 'Paul Allen' | ???
(2012-12-13) $12        <~ :heddy       | Sold a story idea
(2013-04-12) $50        -> :carmichael  | Conceptual advertisement
(2013-04-19) $400  gift <- :anonymous   | Cashing in on my fame
(2013-04-19) $400  gift -> :anonymous   | Gave it all back

For more examples, look in the examples directory.

Note: This is not my money log, I actually got this off a machine called georgie, which I stumbled upon as a result of a mistyped IP address. The file was /floppy/money.lum, and I managed to scp it to my machine, thus rescuing and now reviving a lost file format. I tried to scp a few other interesting-looking files (e.g. I seem to remember jerktoast.rb, and poignant2.yml) but I got scp: /dev/fd0: Input/output error. Someone had ejected the diskette. I still log in to Old Georgie every couple months, but so far no one seems to be touching it. Poor thing has 1231 days of uptime and no disk to boot from.

When you execute the lumb command with no arguments, it will go through all your .lum files (in ~/logs/ by default), parsing and type-checking each one. If there is a parse error or type error, it will complain, and tell you how to fix it. This helps keep your logs consistent and orderly.

You can define additional constraints on your logs. For example, I give you daily.lum:

Date !(date=^ || date=^+1) !(exists(date=$today))

This defines two constraints. The first one ensures that for each entry, the date field is either the same as the previous entry's date field, or the previous entry's date field plus one day. The second constraint ensures that there is an entry for today's date. Together, this makes sure that an entry has been made in the log for every single day from the first entry's date to the present day. If you miss a day, you get an error. If you are unable to fill in an entry for a certain period of time, you can place a ... on its own line in the log to represent missing data, and the constraint will be ignored for those days. You can also mark today's entry with a * to mark it as incomplete, and you'll get a warning until you complete the entry and remove the mark. That way you can make sure not to leave behind any unfinished entries with weird data.

The above file (daily.lum) can be included into any log like this:

<daily> brush floss

This sticks the date field from daily.lum along with its constraints onto the front of this log, which defines brush and floss Boolean fields. Now you are forced to account for every single day in this log, even if that day's entry is blank (just a date).

If there is a base.lum in the ~/logs/ directory, it gets included by default into all your logs. Mine looks like this:

Date ... notes=Str?

This sticks a date field on the front of all your logs, and a notes field at the end.