o           _|_  _  ,              /|  ,_  |)          _
/|/|/|  | /|/| |  |  |  |/ / \_____/|/|/| /_|_/  | |/) |  |  |/ \
 | | |_/|/ | |_/\/|_/|_/|_/ \/      | | |___|    |/| \_/\/|_/|__/
                                                            /|
                                                            \|

A semantic markup framework for meeting minutes

A Word of Caution

Please note that this software is in early alpha phase, and there will most probably be breaking changes to the markup. If updating your documents doesn't bother you, go ahead. In any case, I would love to get feedback on the ideas :-)

Idea

• Write your meeting minutes in your favourite (text-based) markup language, using semantic markup for certain things
• Use minutes-m4rkup to convert your markup to:
  • human-readable formats like Markdown, PDF, HTML, …, resulting in consistent formatting
  • machine-readable formats like JSON, CSV, XML, …
    • for a comprehensive list, see Input and Output Formats

See the tests/ folder for some examples.

Input and Output Formats

Currently supported input formats are:

• Markdown with M4 macros (or, as I call it, M4rkdown)

Currently supported output formats are:

• Markdown
• JSON

Invocation

Currently, every combination of output format and visibility is written in one go:

$ minutes-m4rkup input.m4rkdown

This will create the files input-public.json, input-public.markdown, input-confidential.json and input-confidential.markdown in the current directory.

Macro Reference

The default quoting characters for M4 are already used otherwise in the input formats. To prevent weirdness and make writing meeting minutes easier, minutes-m4rkup redefines the M4 quoting characters as « (opening quote) and » (closing quote). If you should need these characters in any case, you can always get a literal « or » by using the macros LITERAL_QUOTE_OPEN and LITERAL_QUOTE_CLOSE instead.

MEETING_MINUTES()

Gives general information about a meeting, also does initialisation and set-up. Must be the first macro call in a document.

Parameters:

1. Type of the meeting (e.g., board meeting, general meeting, etc.)
2. Date of the meeting
3. Starting time,
4. Place of the meeting
5. (List of) attending people
6. (List of) absent people, if any
7. Name of minute taker

END()

Signals the end of the meeting. Must be the last macro call in the document.

Parameters:

1. Closing time of the meeting

CONFIDENTIAL(), REPLACE_WITH(), END_CONFIDENTIAL()

Specify a text block that should only be rendered in confidential versions of the document, and, optionally, its replacement text in public versions.

Takes no parameters.

Example:

CONFIDENTIAL()dnl
* TODO(T1, Eve, Make Plans for World Domination)
REPLACE_WITH()dnl
* TODO(T1, Eve, Buy some more cookies)
END_CONFIDENTIAL()dnl

Or, without a replacement, the block is simply stripped in public versions:

CONFIDENTIAL()dnl
* TODO(T1, Eve, Make Plans for World Domination)
END_CONFIDENTIAL()dnl

CONSENSUS_ADOPTED(), CONSENSUS_REJECTED()

Record a motion that was not voted for, but there was consensus nevertheless. Use CONSENSUS_ADOPTED if the overall result was positive and the motion was adopted, and CONSENSUS_REJECTED if it was rejected.

No Parameters.

VOTE_ADOPTED(), VOTE_REJECTED()

Vote information. Use VOTE_ADOPTED if the overall result was positive and the motion being voted for was adopted, and VOTE_REJECTED if it was rejected.

Parameters:

1. Number of votes for the cause
2. Number of votes against the cause
3. Number of abstentions

RESOLUTION()

A resolution.

Parameters:

1. Reference number,
2. Vote information, use any of VOTE_ADOPTED, VOTE_REJECTED, CONSENSUS_ADOPTED, CONSENSUS_REJECTED
3. Short text of the resolution,
4. Allocated money, if any (optional)
5. Further text (optional)

TODO(), DONE()

To Do List items. Use TODO to signal that an item needs action, and DONE to signal that an item was done or is no longer valid.

Parameters:

1. Reference number/string etc.
2. Assigned person
3. Descriptive text
4. Additional notes (optional)

Enhancing m4rkup

Before reading your input, minutes-m4rkup will look for additional files in the following locations, and will include them in order:

• $HOME/.minutes-m4rkup.m4
• ./.minutes-m4rkup.m4 (relative to the input file)

You can drop your own M4 macros into those files. For example, for one project I define a WIKI macro in ./.minutes-m4rkup.m4 as following:

dnl WIKI(pagename[, optional link title]): link to wiki pages
define(«MEDIAWIKI_C_WIKI», «ifelse($2,,«[[$1]]»,«[[$1|$2]]»)»)dnl
define(«MEDIAWIKI_P_WIKI», «MEDIAWIKI_C_WIKI($1)»)dnl
define(«MARKDOWN_C_WIKI», «ifelse($2,,«[$1]»,«[$2]»)(https://stratum0.org/wiki/$1)»)dnl
define(«MARKDOWN_P_WIKI», «MARKDOWN_C_WIKI($1)»)dnl
define(«JSON_P_WIKI», «»)dnl M4 will complain if this is not defined
define(«JSON_C_WIKI», «»)dnl
define(«WIKI», F_CODE«_»V_CODE«_WIKI($@)»)dnl

F_CODE contains the respective output format to be rendered, in uppercase, and V_CODE contains a P for the public version, or C for the confidential version.

License

Copyright (C) 2017 Roland Hieber [email protected]

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.