MindForger
Technical Documentation

Developer documentation

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses" -- Bjarne Stroustrup

MindForger is written in C++ programming language.

Contribute:

Specifications:

In case that you have any question or want to learn more about technical details please don't hesitate to contact me.

Contribute

Current MindForger implementation is just an initial imperfect sketch of much broader vision. It's purpose is to demonstrate viability of thinking notebook idea and to show possible research directions.

Feel free to contribute! Don't hesitate to contact me.

  • Bugs and suggestions
    • Submit bugs, issues, ideas and enhancements.
  • Translations
    • Translate MindForger to your favorite language.
  • Platform support
    • Port MindForger to your favorite OS or distribution.
  • Code
    • Submit pull request or patch with implementation of a feature you missed.
  • Research
    • Consider making your AI/ML, NLP, data mining, ... research on top of (your) documents indexed to MindForger ontology.
  • Integration
    • How-to or code enabling integration with your (favorite) project.
  • Enhancements
    • Submit performance, efficiency and/or productivity enhancements.
  • Documentation
    • Write a document, blog post or tweet, create YouTube video, ...

Linux development environment

Perhaps you may find useful description of my development environment:

  • Backend library:
    • Source: GitHub
    • Compiler: GCC
    • Compilation speed-up: ccache (set in QtCreator as ccache g++)
    • Make: qmake + make
    • IDE: QtCreator (my own build w/ Emacs-style keyboard shortcuts - find it on GitHub)
    • Debugger: gdb
    • Leaks: valgrind
    • Profiler: GCC + gprof
    • Unit tests: Google Test Framework
  • Qt GUI frontend:
    • Compiler: GCC
    • Make: qmake + make
    • IDE: QtCreator
      • Tools/Options/Fonts: vim dark, 12pt, zoom: 100%
      • Whitespaces: no tabs, visible, no traling whitespaces
      • "Borland Turbo C style help" for Qt via F1
    • Debugger:
      • QtCreator debugger
      • gdb
    • Unit tests: Sikulix
    • Editor: Emacs (quick edits w/ key bindings that enable my productivity)
      • set tabs for 4
      • no tabs just whitespaces
      • alt-x compile > cd ../.. && make (make -k for keep going)

For more details see the source code.

Build

See build on Ubuntu for how to build MindForger:

make build-dev

Unit tests are conducted by the gtest framework. Download, build and optionally install this framework before building MindForger unit tests.

Tests

Prerequisite: Google test framework

  1. Checkout googletest and go to the checkout:
cd googletest
  1. Create/enter a build directory (skip mkdir if build/ already exists, as it does here):
mkdir -p build
cd build
  1. Configure with CMake (Release build, install prefix /usr/local):
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
  1. Build:
make -j$(nproc)
  1. Install system-wide (needs root — this copies headers to /usr/local/include/gtest and /usr/local/include/gmock, and libs to /usr/local/lib):
sudo make install
  1. Refresh the linker cache (usually not strictly required for static libs, but harmless):
sudo ldconfig
  1. Verify the install:
ls /usr/local/include/gtest/gtest.h
ls /usr/local/lib/libgtest.a /usr/local/lib/libgtest_main.a
  1. Set the env vars test-lib-units.sh requires, then run the tests:
export M8R_CPU_CORES=$(nproc)
export M8R_GIT_PATH=/home/dvorka/p/mindforger/git/mindforger
cd /home/dvorka/p/mindforger/git/mindforger/build
make test-lib

MindForger tests:

  • library unit tests
  • frontend GUI tests

Library unit tests:

  • based on Google test framework
  • located in lib/test/src
  • can be run using build/test-lib-units.sh - see source code for running all/particular test w/ or w/o valgrind/gdb/...

Frontend library tests:

  • based on Sikulix
  • located in app/test/sikulix
  • can be run using build/test-gui.sh

For more details check tests source code.

Benchmarks

MindForger has also library benchmarks:

  • based on Google test framework
  • located in lib/test/benchmark
  • can be run using build/test-lib-units.sh - see script source code to run particular benchark.

Benchmarks are disabled by default - go to benchmark source code and remove DISABLED_ prefix from its name. For more details see Google test framework documentation and benchmarks source code.

Packaging

Scripts used to created packages for Linux distributions can be found in:

  • Ubuntu: build/ubuntu
    • tarball > local binary/source deb build (pbuilder) > Launchpad upload > Launchpad PPA
  • Debian: build/debian
    • tarball > local binary/source deb build > local Aptly PPA > PPA snapshot upload to http://www.mindforger.com/debian
  • Fedora: build/fedora
    • deb > alien conversion w/ postprocessing to RPM > upload as release asset

Upstream tarball is created in the same way as archive released via GitHub:

  • GitHub release: build/github

Check make targets for MindForger supported platforms targets:

  • make help

Windows development environment

Perhaps you may find useful description of my development environment:

  • Source:
  • Compiler:
    • Microsoft Visual C++ compiler
  • Make:
    • qmake + cmake + make
  • Installer:
    • JRSoftware Inno Setup
  • IDE:
    • Qt Creator
  • Unit tests:
    • Google Test Framework

For more details see source code.

Install prerequisites

  • Microsoft Visual Studio (Community Edition suffices), during installation add with C++ support (todo: detailed info or screenshot)
    • or [Windows 10 SDK] (untested)(https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk)
  • Qt
    • Download Qt for Windows - Open Source
    • During installation select:
      • Qt->Qt 5.12.x->MSVC 2017 64-bit
      • Qt-> Qt WebEngine
  • cmake

Prepare MindForger sources:

  • Checkout Mindforger
    • git clone https://github.com/dvorka/mindforger.git
    • cd mindforger
    • git checkout dev/1.49.0-win
  • Init dependencies
    • git submodule init
    • git supmodule update

Build dependencies

Building dependecies is required only once, during initial building.

Build cmake-gfm - it requires cmake on the path.

  • Goto cmark-gfm directory:
    • cd deps\cmark-gfm
  • Use build directory:
    • mkdir build
    • cd build
  • Generate build files:
    • cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" -DCMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES=Debug;Release -DCMARK_TESTS=OFF -DCMARK_SHARED=OFF ..
  • Build both release and debug profiles
    • cmake --build . --config Release -- /m
    • cmake --build . --config Debug -- /m

Build MindForger

  • Goto GitHub repository directory:
    • cd $GIT\mindforger
  • Setup development environment in cmd line. Change path according to your MSVC 2017 and Qt installation
    • "C:\software\Qt\5.12.0\msvc2017_64\bin\qtenv2.bat"
    • "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"
  • Generate make files:
    • qmake -r mindforger.pro
  • Build MindForger:
    • nmake
  • .exe binary will be stored in the app\release folder

Plan for Windows build and distribution

GitHub:

  • milestone: https://github.com/dvorka/mindforger/milestone/10
  • branch: https://github.com/dvorka/mindforger/tree/dev/1.49.0-win

2019/1 plan to port MindForger on Windows:

  • [x] development environment:
    • document IDE, compiler and OS setup - QtCreator, LLVM (would be nice), Win10 (VM)
  • [x] backend lib build:
    • rewrite using Qt to portable version (Qt is NOT intentionally used in backend now)
    • decide whether...
      • go with Qt functions on all platforms
      • conditional compilation which introduces Qt dependency for Win only
    • https://github.com/dvorka/mindforger/issues/77
  • [x] (preview) frontend build to identify non-portable code:
    • skip MD 2 HTML rendering (avoid its compilation) w/ html_outline_representation.cpp and MF_NO_MD_2_HTML define
    • skip HTML rendering (avoid its compilation)
    • https://github.com/dvorka/mindforger/issues/648
  • [x] MD 2 HTML rendering:
    • refactor existing impl to iface & implementation allowing to switch renderer
    • migrate to cmark-GFM library ~ GitHub's MD 2 HTML renderer
  • [x] HTML viewer:
    • Qt uses the same engine as on macOS (WebEngine vs. WebKit)
  • [x] full build w/ lib, cmark-GFM and HTML viewer
  • [x] Win installer (possibly Qt based)
  • [ ] make MF real Win app:
    • keyboard shortcuts which follow Windows conventions
    • desktop integration which start associated app for opened attachments (PDF, GIF, ...)

Get pre-release user feedback:

  • https://github.com/dvorka/mindforger/issues/632

Running MindForger

  • Manual run outside of QtCreator requires adding Qt libraries and Zlib libraries to PATH. Zlib binaries are located in `$GIT\mindforger\deps\zlib-win\
  • Qt files. Change path according to your setup
    • "C:\software\Qt\5.12.0\msvc2017_64\bin\qtenv2.bat"
  • Zlib
    • set "PATH=%PATH%;$GIT\mindforger\deps\zlib-win"
  • Start MindForger
    • app\release\mindforger.exe

Creating installer

  • Install Inno Setup 5
  • Prepare development environment. Change path according to your Qt installation
  • "C:\software\Qt\5.12.0\msvc2017_64\bin\qtenv2.bat"
  • Gather dependencies
  • cd $GIT\mindforger
  • windeployqt app\release\mindforger.exe --dir app\release\bin --no-compiler-runtime
  • Build installer. Change path to the vcredist_x64.exe according to your setup.
  • "c:\Program Files (x86)\Inno Setup 5\ISCC.exe" /Qp /DVcRedistPath="c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Redist\MSVC\14.14.26405\vcredist_x64.exe" build\windows\installer\mindforger-setup.iss
  • the result is in the app\release\installer folder

Building unit tests

Unit tests are conducted by the gtest framework. Download, build and optionally install this framework before building MindForger unit tests.

Gtest is expected at C:\Program Files\gtest-distribution by default. If you have it somewhere else you have to update the lib\test\src\src.pro Qt project file to change path to gtest.

Than:

  • Prepare development environment. Change path according to your Qt and MSVC 2017 installation
    • "C:\software\Qt\5.12.0\msvc2017_64\bin\qtenv2.bat"
    • "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"
  • Go to project file
    • cd $GIT\mindforger\lib\test
  • Generate make files
    • qmake -r mindforger-lib-unit-tests.pro "CONFIG+=debug" "CONFIG+=mfdebug"
  • Build tests
    • nmake

Running unit tests

  • Prepare environment
  • set "PATH=%PATH%;$GIT\mindforger\deps\zlib-win"
  • set M8R_GIT_PATH=$GIT\mindforger
  • Run tests
  • cd $GIT\mindforger
  • lib\test\src\debug\mindforger-lib-unit-tests.exe

Using scripts

cd build/
make help

Alternatively, instead using of following above described manual steps, you can take advantage of batch files prepared for building and running MindForger, installer and unit tests. All the scripts are located in the $GIT\mindforger\build folder:

  • build-app.bat
  • build-cmake.bat
  • build-installer.bat
  • build-unit-tests.bat
  • env.bat
  • run-app.bat
  • run-unit-tests.bat

Most important is the env.bat. It's called by others and sets up command line environment. Ammend this file to change paths based on your setup. Other scripts are self-explanatory. The run-unit-tests.bat can also take any argument. This is usefull for passing options to the gtest framework.

Windows Continous Integration (CI)

Continous Integration for Windows:

Optional QtCreator build

  • Start Qt creator
  • Open project %GIT%\mindforger\mindforger.pro
    • Enable Desktop Qt 5.xx MSVC2017 64bit build
    • Set the Build Directory to %GIT%\mindforger

  • Build MSVC 2017 64-bit

  • For setting debugger in QtCreator follow instructions in Qt documention Setting Up Debugger

    • CDB is part for Windows SDK. If you have only Visual Studio, it must be installed additionaly. Download Windows 10 SDK and select Debugging Tools for Windows only.

QtCreator debugging

  • For setting debugger in QtCreator follow instructions in Qt documention Setting Up Debugger
  • CDB is part for Windows SDK. If you have only Visual Studio, it must be installed additionaly. Download Windows 10 SDK and select Debugging Tools for Windows only.

Conventions and BPs

Conventions and best practices.

Git and Branching Conventions

Git:

  • master is the main development branch
  • source code in master branch must be always stable
  • master branch contains the latest MindForger release source code
  • new MindForger version <major>.<minor>.<patch> is developed in Git branch dev/<major>.<minor>/<patch>

Git branch naming convention:

  • feature-<related issue id>/<feature-name>
    • feature branch
  • enhancement-<related issue id>/<enhancement-name>
    • enhancement branch
  • bug-<related issue id>/<description>
    • bug fix branch
  • benchmark-<related issue id>/<description>
    • benchmark branch

  • platform-<release version>/<platform-name>

    • platform support branch

  • dev/<release version>

    • release development branch used before release (stable master)
  • stabilization/<release version>
    • stable brach used after release (patch releases)

Source documentation conventions

Source code documentation conventions:

  • Use Doxygen syntax in source code comments https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~410/doc/doxygen.html

Technical Architecture

MindForger technical architecture.

Library

3rd-party dependencies

cmark-gfm

MindForger uses cmark-gfm for rendering of Markdown documents to HTML:

  • cmark-gfm repository: https://github.com/github/cmark-gfm
  • cmark-gfm repository clone: https://github.com/dvorka/cmark

Fixes to cmark-gfm:

  • https://github.com/dvorka/cmark/commit/bc97db117ec777c112055bc55918b63a89efbb65
    • fix of MSVC 2017 build (Windows)
  • https://github.com/dvorka/cmark/commit/f06d944d8e19816cce322ce87140f8c8cf2db89e
    • Removal of code blocks prefixing with language specification using "language-" to fix Mermaid integration and allow class specification w/o prefix which is not desired.

cmark-gfm versions used:

  • 1.53.0 - onwards
    • 766f161ef6d61019acf3a69f5099489e7d14cd49 0.29.0.gfm.2 (September 16, 2021)
  • ... - 1.52.0
    • https://github.com/dvorka/cmark/commit/3785191c3afb6cabd56776f6d6c73c90f3131d5d 0.28.3.gfm.20 (January 31, 2019) with aforementioned patches
  • 1.42.0 - ...
    • MindForger used Discount for Markdown rendering priort cmark-gfm

Markdown Recursive Descent Parser

NLP: Stemmer, Lexicon, BoW

GUI

Qt

Model View Presenter

Image

Async UI updates

Localization

Adding a new/updating existing MindForger l10n:

  • Add translation name to app/app.pro: TRANSLATIONS += resources/qt/translations/mindforger_en.ts
  • Run lupdate mindforger.pro - it will parse source code and prepare empty file for translations (later update). This is where is new translation written.
    • If lupdate is not present on Ubuntu, then install sudo apt-get install qttools5-dev-tools
  • Edit translations using linguist tool e.g. linguist mindforger_cs.ts
  • Run lrelease app/app.pro to release translations that might be used in build.
  • Add translation .qm resource to app/mf-resources.qrs
  • Build application.
  • Test it:
    • export LANGUAGE=cs_CZ && export LANG=cs_CZ.UTF-8 && ./mindforger
    • export LANGUAGE=pt_BR && export LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8 && ./mindforger

See also:

  • http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/internationalization.html
  • http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtlinguist-hellotr-example.html

Force-driven graph

Benchmarks

Formats specification

MindForger can open any file that uses Markdown format. MindForger can also open any directory that contains Markdown files (also in its sub-directories).

However, you can use MindForger's Markdown hosted DSL and repository format to get much more (mind related) features.

Markdown hosted DSL

This section describes MD conventions that MindForger uses to store outlines.

Description:

  • metadata added by MindForger are optional
  • if user deletes metadata, then they are not added
  • user may activate creation of metadata by adding (any case) just after section title
  • Metadata keyword is case insensitive i.e. any other variant is valid substituation e.g. metadata, MetaData or METADATA
  • tags chosen to follow typical naming e.g. GMail (labels, keywords, ... forbidden)

Example:

# Canonical Message Similarity Code                 

This document contains ideas related to the definition of similarity codes for
canonical messages.

## Requirements                 

... here comes a text.

Repository layout

Design goals:

  • Repository specification SHOULD be general i.e. not bound to MindForger so that anybody can create it, use it and it won't be vendor specific.
  • Repository format MUST be human friendly i.e. easy to create and read for a normal person.

Repository layout:

[ROOT]/
  memory/
    [DIRECTORY-NAME]/
      [OUTLINE-NAME].md                 ... Markdown is default MF format. Source code/markup free text can be inlined
                                            using three back apostrophes. Intentionally there is no txt, TWiki, HTML
                                            as outline format to keep focus (txt/.../HTML can be an attachment of empty
                                            MD file).
      [OUTLINE-NAME].[ATTACH-NAME].png  ... '.' is reserved character
      [OUTLINE-NAME].[ATTACH-NAME].jpg
      [OUTLINE-NAME].[ATTACH-NAME].gif
    ...
  limbo/
  stencils/
    ...
  mind/                                 ... Git ignored directory w/ indexed knowledge base
    index.mf                            ... MF's index can be fully rebuilt from
                                            repository content (file internals and
                                            Git index information), it is used by
                                            MF runtime (navigation, ...)
    fts/                                ... Lucene stores its files to here  
      ...                                 
  .gitignore
  README.md                             ... MF generated info for nice Git repo
                                            that can be customized by user

Example repository:

ROOT/
  outlines/
    My Example/
      frontend-design.twiki
      frontend-design.mockup.jpg
      repository-design.md
      repository-design.overview.png
      repository-design.structure.png
      ideas.txt
  mind/
  .gitignore
  index
  README.md

Description:

  • repository is Git repository
  • .gitignore prevents storing of big attachments and indices to Git
  • DIRECTORY-NAME ... A-Z a-z 0-9 SPACE - _
  • OUTLINE-NAME ... A-Z a-z 0-9 SPACE - _
  • directory is outline label - name directories to be nice labels:
  • do NOT use plurals: 'templates' is not good label > use 'template' instead
  • user lower case for normal adjectives (template, import) and upper case for names like MindForger or Systinet
  • MindForger home screen == cloud of is outline and/or note labels (split screen).
  • Extensions:
  • files w/ extensions that are not explicitly enumerated are ignored by Git (global ignore)

Continuous Integration (CI)

Multiple CI services are used to build, test and package MindForger.

GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions are used to build macOS DiskImaGe packages and tarballs:

See also .github/workflows.

AppVeyor

AppVeyor CI is used to build Windows installer:

See also appveyor.yml.

Travis CI (condemned)

Travis CI is no longer used due to (GitHub account related) privacy issues and coarse grained security:

See also .travis.yml.

Release automation

This is analysis of release automation making MindForger release much faster and less time consuming.

Release artifacts:

  • PPA Launchpad
    • State: fully scripted
    • Todo:
      • Load version number from a central place (env script)
      • Call this script from central release script.
      • Add section to generated report of main release script w/ URLs of Launchpad distros.
  • PPA Debian (private)
    • State: text how to.
    • Todo:
      • Load version number.
      • Write script which automates OLD version removal and new version add.
      • Write script which will upload and replace PPA over FTS/SFTP/scp
      • Add section to generated report of main release
  • .deb
    • ...
  • .rpm
    • ...
  • tarball
    • ...

TODO: employ CIs to build artifacts. TODO: flow diagram of how will MF be released.

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