The denote-rename-buffer-format option

The user option denote-rename-buffer-format controls how the function denote-rename-buffer chooses the name of the buffer-to-be-renamed. It also affects the denote-rename-buffer-mode (Automatically rename Denote file buffers).

The value of this user option is a string that gets combined with the denote-buffer-name-prefix (Set the prefix of all Denote buffers). The following specifiers are placeholders for Denote file name components (The file-naming scheme):

• The ‘%t’ is the Denote ‘TITLE’ in the front matter or the file name.
• The ‘%T’ is the Denote ‘TITLE’ in the file name.
• The ‘%i’ is the Denote ‘IDENTIFIER’ of the file.
• The ‘%I’ is the identifier converted to ‘DAYNAME, DAYNUM MONTHNUM YEAR’.
• The ‘%d’ is the same as ‘%i’ (‘DATE’ mnemonic).
• The ‘%D’ is a “do what I mean” which behaves the same as ‘%t’ and if that returns nothing, it falls back to ‘%I’, then ‘%i’.
• The ‘%s’ is the Denote ‘SIGNATURE’ of the file.
• The ‘%k’ is the Denote ‘KEYWORDS’ of the file.
• The ‘%b’ is an indicator of whether or not the file has backlinks pointing to it. The indicator string is defined in the user option denote-rename-buffer-backlinks-indicator, alias denote-buffer-has-backlinks-string.
• The ‘%%’ is a literal percent sign.

In addition, the following flags are available for each of the specifiers:

‘0’

Pad to the width, if given, with zeros instead of spaces.

‘-’

Pad to the width, if given, on the right instead of the left.

‘<’

Truncate to the width and precision, if given, on the left.

‘>’

Truncate to the width and precision, if given, on the right.

‘^’

Convert to upper case.

‘_’

Convert to lower case.

When combined all together, the above are written thus:

%<flags><width><precision>SPECIFIER-CHARACTER

Any other string it taken as-is.

Users who need yet more flexibility are best served by writing their own function and assigning it to the denote-rename-buffer-function.