Why develop Denote when PACKAGE already exists?

I wrote Denote because I was using a variant of Denote’s file-naming scheme before I was even an Emacs user (I switched to Emacs from Tmux+Vim+CLI in the summer of 2019). I was originally inspired by Jekyll, the static site generator, which I started using for my website in 2016 (was on WordPress before). Jekyll’s files follow the ‘YYYY-MM-DD-TITLE.md’ pattern. I liked its efficiency relative to the unstructured mess I had before. Eventually, I started using that scheme outside the confines of my website’s source code. Over time I refined it and here we are.

Note-taking is something I take very seriously, as I am a prolific writer (just check my website, which only reveals the tip of the iceberg). As such, I need a program that does exactly what I want and which I know how to extend. I originally tried to use Org capture templates to create new files with a Denote-style file-naming scheme but never managed to achieve it. Maybe because org-capture has some hard-coded assumptions or I simply am not competent enough to hack on core Org facilities. Whatever the case, an alternative was in order.

The existence of PACKAGE is never a good reason for me not to conduct my own experiments for recreational, educational, or practical purposes. When the question arises of “why not contribute to PACKAGE instead?” the answer is that without me experimenting in the first place, I would lack the skills for such a task. Furthermore, contributing to another package does not guarantee I get what I want in terms of workflow.

Whether you should use Denote or not is another matter altogether: choose whatever you want.