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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

#201

Post by mikekchar »

kiiski wrote: post #114
mikekchar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a couple of key things that people need to grasp with Org mode. First is the way it cycles visibility. You go from closed, to semi-open, to completely open, back to closed again. You can't go backwards. I know this frustrated me for a long time before I got used to it. The next biggest frustration is the way it folds empty lines. If you have a paragraph followed by an empty line, when you fold the p…

> then easily move everything around by folding it and cutting and pasting. You could also use `org-cut-subtree` or `org-copy-subtree` for that. And of course `org-refile` (C-c C-w) is very useful, although you'll probably want to customize it to allow refiling to other places than just the first level headlines of the current file.

Sorry for the slow reply. Just got around to looking at `org-refile`. That is absolutely awesome! Thanks!!!

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

#202

Post by bolivier »

gravypod wrote: post #194

I would love to make the switch from an IDE to something like vim or emacs, I just don't know where to start. Is there something like oh-my-zsh for emacs? I want to be able to have all of the IDE features that I've come to know and love but for a wider range of languages. I usually use C, Asm, Python, php, bash, and a few other languages. don't know where to start.

https://github.com/bbatsov/prelude

or if you know/like Vim:

https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs

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

#203

Post by groovy2shoes »

luxpir wrote: post #131

Anyone turned off by the ridiculous amount of config required for a todo list, feel free to try out my plaintext productivity 'suite'. It's intended to be used in vim, but do as you please! > https://github.com/luxpir/plaintext-productivity Features: todos, timestamps, tagging, calendar, kanban-in-a-text-file (vertical, not horizontal) It was a response to org-mode complexity and the cruft it encourages you to stow a…

Not to put you down or discourage you from sharing useful things, but even that much config is too much for me.

My .vimrc and .gvimrc are small enough that I have them memorized, and I have no reservations about manually typing things like "TODO", date/time, tags, or check boxes.

Like I said, I don't mean to discourage you, but that's my personal preference. I'm sure org-mode and the like make some people more productive, but honestly I don't think the (rather small, really) feature set justifies the bloat; and, frankly, I have a tendency to get sucked into a self-inflicted configuration hell, so I'm likely more productive without them.

ETA: Looks like you're being downvoted. I have no idea why, given that this is Hacker News, after all, and you've just linked us to a hack of your own... Sometimes I hate this place.

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

#204

Post by keep »

mikekchar wrote: post #6
elliotec wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people really love Org Mode, but I completely fail to see the utility of it. I even used emacs (as a text editor!) for a while, and tried Org Mode multiple times, usually ending in confusion and frustration. Not for lack of trying! From my experience, our smart phones are much better personal digital assistants than Org Mode can be, as robust as it is.

I think there are a couple of key things that people need to grasp with Org mode. First is the way it cycles visibility. You go from closed, to semi-open, to completely open, back to closed again. You can't go backwards. I know this frustrated me for a long time before I got used to it. The next biggest frustration is the way it folds empty lines. If you have a paragraph followed by an empty line, when you fold the p…

I too found the behavior of visibility cycling via to be a little annoying. What frustrated me was that pressing a third time throws a tonne of text (assuming you have a reasonable amount of text) at the buffer. Recently I started using some other visibility commands like show-children (C-c ) and show-branches (C-c C-k).

For example, I use org-capture+datetree when taking notes and can have months worth of information in an org buffer. I like to use '2 C-c ' when situated on a month headline to show me all of the top level headings for each day in that month. It gives me a nice overview of what I have been doing for the month.

With regard to your second issue, you can control this behavior with the org-cycle-separator-lines variable. By default, leaving two blank lines will make org leave a space in your outline when folding.

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

#205

Post by luxpir »

groovy2shoes wrote: post #203
luxpir wrote: post #131

Anyone turned off by the ridiculous amount of config required for a todo list, feel free to try out my plaintext productivity 'suite'. It's intended to be used in vim, but do as you please! > https://github.com/luxpir/plaintext-productivity Features: todos, timestamps, tagging, calendar, kanban-in-a-text-file (vertical, not horizontal) It was a response to org-mode complexity and the cruft it encourages you to stow a…

Not to put you down or discourage you from sharing useful things, but even that much config is too much for me. My .vimrc and .gvimrc are small enough that I have them memorized, and I have no reservations about manually typing things like "TODO", date/time, tags, or check boxes. Like I said, I don't mean to discourage you, but that's my personal preference. I'm sure org-mode and the like make some people more produc…

Appreciate the response. The org-mode lot can be quote passionate, as much as the proponents of 'the other' editor I mentioned...

TBH the config is not as minimalist as it could be - the autocomplete isn't necessary, nor the archive and save keymappings. Just the syntax, fold and timestamp settings would do - 5 lines? Many would have those set up already... anyway, the idea is to be editor-agnostic, even (poor) Windows 10 users could use notepad with its timestamping or Notepad++ with its folding etc.

No discouragement at all - whatever works for you. Manually typing is essentially what the calendar setup I posted 'offers'. It's typically quicker than picking from a date-box to just type 12 - TASK under the correct month. Completely with you on that front.

My main problem with org-mode and taskwarrior etc. is they are based on the premise that you will have an inordinate number of tasks to manage. Productivity does not that way lie, IMO. I am not into 'folding away' 400 tasks and brain dumping every useless thought I have. Nor am I into being forced to review dozens of time-wasting entries every week.

Being strict with my work tasks/goals/deadlines means I run a lean list - I've run too many crufty ones before to go back there. I just want the computer to automate as much as it can and to augment my wetware, not to give me more work.

Also no probs for the downvotes. The comment started with a few + but then they quickly got overruled. It happens, no big deal, I just always prefer to have both sides of a cult presented in my decision-making :)

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

#206

Post by dragandj »

atemerev wrote: post #110
dragandj wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you could remap ctrl and put it just next to SPACE. Speaking of that, I also remapped Shift to space, and now I use space for both shift and space (sounds crazy, but it is ergonomically perfect!).

Sorry, on Macs the Cmd key (the one next to space bar) is pretty busy with other mappings. I remapped Ctrl to Caps Lock, which is somewhat better. But Ctrl-B is still quite painful.

I also have a Mac, and I remapped that busy cmd key to left alt ;)

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

#207

Post by alphapapa »

mrbill wrote: post #186
preek wrote: post #31

I've switched to Emacs after 14 years of Vim (with the required evangelism^^). Initially it was because of Clojure, but then I tried org-mode. Now my GTD Setup (formerly Things.app), Notes for everything (formerly Evernote), Time Tracking (formerly Minco), Pomodoro Technique as well as writing slide decks (I'm a part time lecturer, so I do that a lot) are _all_ within org-mode. And not, because it's hipster, but beca…

The only thing that keeps me from being able to move away from Evernote is the oh-so-convenient Web Clipper that lets me save web pages/order receipts/etc (anything in the browser) with a right-click, and not having to "print to pdf" or anything like that. I would love suggestions for alternatives. I've been keeping a plaintext "notes" file as well for damn year 20 years, but am thinking about reorganizing it into Or…

I think I have what you're looking for. :)

https://github.com/alphapapa/org-protocol-capture-html

With this, you can capture HTML content directly into Org, converted into Org syntax with Pandoc.

For example, to capture your comment into Org, I just highlight it in Pentadactyl (Firefox), press "cc", and Emacs pops up a capture buffer with your comment inserted into the capture template. Or if I press "ch", it passes it through Pandoc, converting HTML lists, tables, headings, code blocks, etc. into their Org counterparts.

I also just added support for python-readability, so if I press "cr", the URL of the page is sent to python-readability, which gets the article content (just like the good ol' Readability bookmarklet), then passes it through Pandoc, and then places it into the capture template.

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

#208

Post by alphapapa »

pqhwan wrote: post #50

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 in…

That's a very neat hack you have there, I'd never thought of that.

However, this question:

> What feature do you think I'll benefit the most from, if I decide to switch to Org Mode?

To me, that's like asking, "What feature do you think I'll benefit the most from if I decide to switch from paper to a computer?"

What you have there is syntax highlighting and folding, which is a big improvement over simple text editing.

But Org is a system for capturing, manipulating, and exporting structured data that happens to be stored in plain-text. It's also a tool for literate programming, literate devops, and reproducible research. It's also a tool for writing documents, books, blogs, etc. It's also a PIM/organizer, time-tracker, habit-tracker... The list goes on and on. Org is basically whatever you want or need it to be. You get out of it what you put into it, and it's with you for the long haul, always becoming more powerful and adaptable.

The community is also very friendly. Just check out the mailing list if you need any help.

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

#209

Post by alphapapa »

lcall wrote: post #144

I have written an org-mode replacement that addresses some of the key challenges (hard to learn, awkward) while keeping some key benefits (efficient from keyboard, extremely flexible), and adding huge flexibility in what can be done: http://onemodel.org It is a personal organizer, and the beginning of a platform to change how individuals (or mankind) manage knowledge overall. (Now with an improved web site.) Feedback…

Looks interesting, but Java is a turn-off for me.

Even more of a turn-off for me is storing data in Postgres. Postgres is great, but one of the primary benefits of Org is that it stores data in plain-text. I can get data out of my Org files on any platform with any program that can view text files. To get data out of a Postgres file...is orders of magnitude more complicated.

But it looks interesting. I'd recommend putting up some screenshots, because the front page of your site is a list of links without much actual information. :)

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

#210

Post by alphapapa »

tangue wrote: post #8

I don't know why this get in the frontpage but for those who are willing to give it a try : Org is the best software I've ever used to clock time and generate reports. And org-capture + Deft is a decent note management system (though there is place for improvement)

Deft is good if you store notes in many small files, but doing that gives up many of the powerful features built-in to Org, like the Agenda. (Unless you want to add every little file to your agenda-files list...) You might find this useful:

https://github.com/alphapapa/helm-org-rifle

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