I used to be a religious Org-mode user. Over time, accumulating lots of info and time registrations, I felt I lost the big picture.
What did you lose exactly?
How can we feel in love again with Org?
How to take smart notes with Org mode
51–60 of 74 posts
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#52What level of emacs knowledge does org mode require such that it is actually useful to me and can do stuff Microsoft onenote cannot?
I love org mode, but to be honest I think the killer feature of org mode is that it is implemented in the same editor I use for programming. In fact, I had moved from Emacs to Vim several years prior, but moved back to Emacs simply for org mode (and luckily Evil is good enough that I don't really miss Vim at all). Additionally, everything is ascii. There aren't different editors for different kinds of objects because there aren't different kinds of objects. Even tables are just arbitrary pipes, dashes and pluses. I can hack together something that looks kind of like a row in a table, say, "Emacs, please format that to look pretty" and then carry on hacking away. Dates are just text until I tell Emacs, "Oh, please make that date tomorrow". And then it's just text again. I can do crazy things like write some code in one and think, "Oh I need to remember to check that constant to see if it's right". Then I hit a button and I've got a TODO with either a link to the line of the code, or even a link with the context of the code so that stays valid if the line moves. When I am going through my TODOs, I press a button and my TODO list pops up. I press another button and it jumps to my code. I edit it. Rinse and repeat. It's all just normal text in my normal text editor. I don't think there is anything at all like it.
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#53What level of emacs knowledge does org mode require such that it is actually useful to me and can do stuff Microsoft onenote cannot?
I love org mode, but to be honest I think the killer feature of org mode is that it is implemented in the same editor I use for programming. In fact, I had moved from Emacs to Vim several years prior, but moved back to Emacs simply for org mode (and luckily Evil is good enough that I don't really miss Vim at all). Additionally, everything is ascii. There aren't different editors for different kinds of objects because…
Thank you. Well written.
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't seem to find a reliable source for this quote though. Anyone know of one?
Closest I know is this [0] interview > Weiner: > Well, the work was done in your head but the record of it is still here. > Feynman: > No, it’s not a record, not really, it’s working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper. OK? [0] https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.aip.org/history-programs...
Thanks so much for digging this up! So the version in the article is a pseudo-quote?
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#55I find org mode little complicated for my taste. My note taking is some plain text files in hierarchy and vim. It works even on Android phone using termux. And I am pretty much used to it. For todo, I have a shellscript that takes an argument and open text file of that name. Works reasonably well. Plus, prefix your text files with .md and get all the formatting stuff.
Have you tried vimwiki[1]? I’ve been using it for a daily journal for the past couple of weeks and it’s been quite good. I was using it for tasks as well, but then found Taskwarrior[2] and have since moved on to using it. [1]: https://vimwiki.github.io/ [2]: https://taskwarrior.org/
I am not a prolific vim user, I used nano for same purpose a month ago, where its keybindings were so customized that I thought I'd rather take a chance to learn vim (I am a student).
Have heard about vimwiki. But maybe because I am a student, text files suffice for my purpose. Thanks for reminding about it.
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've actually been flip-flopping between Notion and Org-mode for months, and just the other day decided to finally organize myself all on Notion. I love Org-mode, and will likely continue to use it for various things, but I agree that Notion is the only thing that (to me) surpasses it.
For those of you using Notion, what system do you follow to organize your notes? Is anyone here actively using something similar to Zettelkasten inside Notion?
my Notion/Zettelkasten practice is inspired by this thread: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/404/moving-on
I still don't completely trust the manual ordering of the entries to be persistent, but for notetaking/archiving it has worked well so far. I recently started to write longer notes on one topic, sometimes including passages from several articles, instead of adhering to the size limitations of a paper card
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a few apps that support org-mode. For Android there is http://www.orgzly.com/ For iOS there is https://beorgapp.com/ I think there are a few more but those are the ones I see people talk about.
My problem is with the corporate firewall that inhibits me from using dropbox/box/etc. to sync notes between my mobile phone and the work laptop. Just yesterday I tried to connect through Github (which I can access, for the time being), and running a "Working Copy" (an iphone app) webdav server that shares the github repo clone in the phone with Beorg. It was completely unusable. Does anyone have an alternate suggest…
Setup a hook that exports to HTML and send the file to your mail? Not an elegant solution, but gets the job done.
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#58Hi! Author here, happy to answer any questions.
I'm in the process of moving all my organization stuff into org-mode. This includes agenda, todo lists, project management and notes. This is a long process with a lot of fine tunings and try/errors. But, for me it's like what you said about writing : it's in the process of doing it that you think. This helps me understand my actual needs. And emacs/orgmode is so powerfull and customizable that it's a very goos tool to do that.
Some weeks ago, I read your series of articles about org-mode workflow. I was especially insterested by the one about zettelkasten. This was a trigger for me to switch my notes into org-mode. So I would like first to thank you for your good quality articles !
What interests me in your new package is the automatic link/backlink detection between notes. This is a really great feature I was missing that in the other packages. I'm currently using zetteldeft and I insert hashtags into my notes to be able to search them by tag.
I would like to try org-roam. My question is : in what way should I modify my current note files to be compatible with org-roam ?
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'm a big emacs and org mode fan, but use pen and paper now for note taking. I think this is mainly due to the fact that my note pad sits at my desk as a constant reminder of what needs to be done. Org files sit in my file system and are often forgotten.
Interesting. I always have my notes window open in one half of my monitors. I use it for everything while developing, including pseudocode, developing SQL queries, planning my changes, etc. I use it as a digital scratchpad.
Same. This process works but I have realized the crucial need of tags.
Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode
#60I've seen it suggested before that while 'tasks' need to be well-structured, reference/notes don't. I like the idea of not trying to store notes in a hierarchy, but using search and/or tags to try and reference (or discover relations between) notes. I like the article's emphasis on "how do I want to access this later?". TBH Sometimes I've looked up previous bookmarks or notes, and they didn't have the keywords or tag…
> TBH Sometimes I've looked up previous bookmarks or notes, and they didn't have the keywords or tags I was expecting.
I also use a personal set of scripts for Zettelkasten (in combination with rofi) and I do encounter this sometimes. I've come to the conclusion that it's not a large problem: as long as you find the notes you're looking for most of the time, it's good.
I think the problem of always finding all notes that are relevant to each search is too hard and has diminishing returns. It's best to simply avoid it by relaxing your expectations.