From talking with several users of Zim (personal friends and associates) it seems that one of the primary uses of Zim is to store notes or other "often added but seldom read" data. A common workflow seems to be to have an idea/note, open Zim, navigate to the relevant notebook and page, then add that note/idea as a new line or as a new subpage. In my opinion this could be greatly simplified if there were a form that the user could fill out which would insert the data in the requested place.
For instance, I know that my idea for a new Zim feature should be filed as a new line under the Software notebook, on the Linux:Zim:FeatureRequests page. Currently I must start Zim, open the notebook, navigate to the page, scroll down to the bottom of the page, add some newlines, and only then can I transfer my idea from my head to the computer. Sometimes when ideas are less clear or less developed I may loose part of the thoughttrain by the time I get to the right place.
A better solution might be a three-part form with these fields:
Data field: a textarea for data entry. This is where the idea / note goes.
Navigational field: this is where the user selects a notebook, then the relevant page from the hierarchy of the notebook
New Line / New Page selector: this is where the user selects if the data will appear as a new line in the page, or as a new subpage.
Ideally, the user would be able to start the form whether or not Zim is running, ie, it would be an independent application but it would integrate with Zim so that it could write to notebooks that may be already open in Zim.
Non-essential options that could be added later would be:
*) Add / don't add TODO flag
*) Add / don't add timestamp
*) New Page naming options
*) Precede / don't precede new line with additional newline character
Please change the title on this bug to better reflect the content.
This is not something I will work on anytime soon, but feel free to consider writing a plugin for this. I would say this functionality is a good exercise for someone unfamiliar with the zim code base but working python knowledge.