# Zim desktop Wiki



## balanga (Oct 29, 2019)

Someone brought to my attention recently Zim desktop Wiki for note taking and task organisation, and I was happy to see that it was available for FreeBSD deskutils/zim. Unfortunately it doesn't seem capable of doing the things shown in a video.

In particular a number of features are missing such as the ToDo List manager and the clickable links do not work. eg I can enter https://zim-wiki.org which appears as a clickable link, but when I try clicking on it I get an Error:-



> /root/https:/zim-wiki.org: No such file or directory



Looks like a really nice app, just wish it worked the way it is supposed to. Anyone else used it?


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## rsronin (Oct 29, 2019)

I tried it on another OS, but ended up using Cherrytree.


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## garry (Nov 4, 2019)

balanga said:


> deskutils/zim. ... a number of features are missing such as the ToDo List manager and the clickable links do not work. ...



There is a Help menu which answers your questions.  For example, the following features are implemented via plugins and to get the feature you need to enable the plugin

```
• Arithmetic
• Attachment Browser
• BackLinks Pane
• BookmarksBar
• Diagram Editor
• Distraction Free Editing
• Ditaa Editor
• Equation Editor
• GNU R Plot Editor
• Gnuplot Editor
• Insert Screenshot
• Insert Symbol
• Inline Calculator
• Journal
• Link Map
• Line Sorter
• Log events with Zeitgeist
• macOS Menubar
• Print to Browser
• Quick Note
• Score Editor
• Sequence Diagram Editor
• Source View
• Spell Checker
• Table Editor
• Table Of Contents
• Tags
• Task List
• Tray Icon
• Version Control
```
To answer your general question about "does anyone use Zim in FreeBSD", well yes I keep a set of Zim notebooks for all of my sysadmin, reading and studies.  It is quite useful as a "scrapbook" with pictures, icons, urls, notes, todo, tables, equations.  An advantage of Zim is that it is plain text, with a keystroke I can switch to editing a page in an external editor (I use gvim), and I can also export an entire notebook to markdown. 

Perhaps read the documentation and give it more of a tryout...


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## balanga (Nov 4, 2019)

garry said:


> There is a Help menu which answers your questions.  For example, the following features are implemented via plugins and to get the feature you need to enable the plugin
> 
> To answer your general question about "does anyone use Zim in FreeBSD", well yes I keep a set of Zim notebooks for all of my sysadmin, reading and studies.  It is quite useful as a "scrapbook" with pictures, icons, urls, notes, todo, tables, equations.  An advantage of Zim is that it is plain text, with a keystroke I can switch to editing a page in an external editor (I use gvim), and I can also export an entire notebook to markdown.
> 
> Perhaps read the documentation and give it more of a tryout...



Thanks for your reply. someone showed my Zim a few weeks back and it looked really good and since I found it available on FreeBSD, I installed it and had a quick look.  I was pretty disappointed at first glance especially since clickable links didn't work and it didn't seem to have the same features as the Linux version. 

Are you able to use Zim (on FreeBSD) to do the things shown here -  



_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBZpWgzO9Ps_


When I click on a link such as https://forums.freebsd.org I get an error msg:-


> /root/https:forums.freebsd.org: No such file or directory



Since one of my main aims with an application like this is to maintain a list of links, it makes Zim a non starter. Is my problem due to some sort of misconfiguration?


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## garry (Nov 4, 2019)

balanga said:


> When I click on a link such as https://forums.freebsd.org I get an error msg:-
> 
> Is my problem due to some sort of misconfiguration?



Most likely it is a mime error, Zim is trying to open a linked "object" with the wrong application.  Try *right*-clicking on the link and choose "_Open with..._" from that context menu.  There you will find a "_Customize..._" option that lets you *Configure an application to open "https://" links *-- choose your web browser and all is well?

*EDIT:  *There is a helpful page in the Help (which is itself a Zim notebook) titled "*Default Applications*" which gives a fuller explanation. (There is a Help menu which answers your questions.)


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## balanga (Nov 4, 2019)

Many thanks, it's working now so worth investigating further.  Any idea if I can use it to maintain todo lists as shown in the video?


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