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Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

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Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#41

Post by dropit_sphere »

catnaroek wrote: post #27

Emacs has been my text editor of choice for quite a while already, and I'm pretty happy with it. But I've never seen the point to org-mode. What's the benefit over simply using a physical notebook to take notes and keep track of my schedule?

For me anyway, it's the same reason I like Lisp more than other languages.

Pairing with a client the other day, she remarked that she had a hard time following what I was doing. This is because when I write Lisp I usually don't go into it with a plan, because I don't know what I'm going to write yet. So I just keep writing "the next thing," and at the end, presto, a working program!

Org-mode is like that in its relationship w/notebooks. If you know what you're writing, a notebook probably is better, b/c it's easy to carry, doesn't run out of battery, has no load time, etc.

But if (like me) your notebooks have a lot of things half-started, scratched out, and replaced, well, then, org-mode may be for you!

Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#42

Post by _lbaq »

mmel wrote: post #26
colah3 wrote: post #24

I really like org-mode and used it heavily for about a year. But I found having my todo list on a single computer pretty limiting. Thankfully, there's a new generation of org-mode inspired cloud apps: * https://workflowy.com/ -- the most mature app * https://www.moo.do -- really nice Google Apps integration * https://checkvist.com/ -- extremely feature rich I'm really excited by these tools. I feel like org-mode has…

I used orgmode for a while before importing them all into Microsoft OneNote, haven't looked back

I took my OneNote stuff into OrgMode because I think there is a higher risk of OneNote being an unreadable format in the future and/or the service being turned off.

Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#43

Post by _lbaq »

girzel wrote: post #10

It's always good to see Org mode flagged up (though it gets a surprising amount of love on HN). I use Org more or less constantly, and I'll take this opportunity to note an Org-related observation that I've been mulling over for a bit. It's apropos of nothing, but then so was this submission :) The observation has to do with how new Org users get to know the system. The whole thing can seem pretty daunting, especiall…

Good advice, one more thing thats quite useful starting out, if you are a new user, try typing this and see what happens :)

| This is a column

Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#44

Post by mbrock »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #33
colah3 wrote: post #24

I really like org-mode and used it heavily for about a year. But I found having my todo list on a single computer pretty limiting. Thankfully, there's a new generation of org-mode inspired cloud apps: * https://workflowy.com/ -- the most mature app * https://www.moo.do -- really nice Google Apps integration * https://checkvist.com/ -- extremely feature rich I'm really excited by these tools. I feel like org-mode has…

I'd say there's one primary "potential to improve" - a mobile app. The situation is better than it used to be, but frankly still not good enough IMO. Otherwise, an org-mode + Dropbox combo works perfectly for me; every computer I own or work on has Emacs installed anyway. And it's hard to note down so much content on mobile that you won't be able to retype it back on a proper computer under 5 minutes.

I googled and couldn't immediately find a thing that eats notes from IMAP into org-mode. That could be pretty useful for capturing on the go, since e.g. iOS Notes does good IMAP sync.

Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#46

Post by girzel »

Tomte wrote: post #37

"plus it's completely platform agnostic and future proof, because it's just text" This always irks me a bit. Being text doesn't mean that there is no file format and internal semantics to it. Sure, it's easy to hack together some transformation in Perl, but "plus it's completely platform agnostic and future proof, because it's just binary" would be correct, as well. As long as the format is documented.

Right. And an Org file that's "gone off" somehow is pretty frustrating. Totally fixable, but very frustrating.

Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#47

Post by preek »

_lbaq wrote: post #42
mmel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used orgmode for a while before importing them all into Microsoft OneNote, haven't looked back

I took my OneNote stuff into OrgMode because I think there is a higher risk of OneNote being an unreadable format in the future and/or the service being turned off.

This is exactly why I moved from Evernote to org-mode. I've been a paying user for years with thousands of notes - also important legal documents. Right now, the experience was pretty good, but how will it be in 10-40 years? I'm not going to store everything on paper, as well, just to make sure.

The org-mode experience is better, yet totally future proof, because it's just flat text files.

Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#48

Post by egor83 »

carbonmachine wrote: post #32
b01t wrote: post #15

I don't use emacs; should I still invest my time in OrgMode?

I've used emacs solely for orgmode over the last year and I'm not sure I'd recommend it whole-heartedly. Orgmode is great, but the emacs learning curve is steep and unforgiving. It still feels as if I'm faking my way through an ancient language whenever I fumble through keyboard "shortcuts". That said, it's incredibly powerful. Wouldn't continue to torture myself if it wasn't. I like the plain text files, the authori…

> I just wish it existed outside emacs!

"Orgmode for Sublime Text 2 and 3" (didn't try it myself though)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11311465

Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#49

Post by berntb »

Tomte wrote: post #37

"plus it's completely platform agnostic and future proof, because it's just text" This always irks me a bit. Being text doesn't mean that there is no file format and internal semantics to it. Sure, it's easy to hack together some transformation in Perl, but "plus it's completely platform agnostic and future proof, because it's just binary" would be correct, as well. As long as the format is documented.

There is in fact a good Org Mode parser for Perl. I used this, recommended.

This is recent news, CSS-style extractors:

https://perlancar.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/selecting-element...

Re: Org Mode for Emacs – Your Life in Plain Text

#50

Post by pqhwan »

I learned VI before Emacs, and by the time I heard about Org Mode, I had developed a way of using Vim similarly; in a nutshell, I write in a clang file (usually named control.c), and (mis)use syntax highlighting on things like switch statement, comments, TODOs and code folding to add structure (screenshot: http://imgur.com/kqrEahz). I did most of my coding in C in college, got into the habit of writing pseudocode into editors, and ended up with this practice.

For the Org Mode aficionados: I feel that this "thing" meets my needs for the most part. I can create task items, comment them out when I'm done, add notes and TODOs, and fold everything so I can focus on the task I'm working on. What feature do you think I'll benefit the most from, if I decide to switch to Org Mode?

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