Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

doc.norang.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 238 posts

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#21

Post by leotaku »

spekcular wrote: post #6
birracerveza wrote: post #3

Org Mode keeps being pushed again and again, but honestly this title is one of the boldest claims I've seen about it. Just look at the document. It's a 400+kb HTML page of Emacs configurations, keybindings and other stuff that makes absolutely no sense unless you've been an avid Emacs user for years. Where is the Plain Text here? I see nothing of the sort. Sure, the output might resemble Plain Text, but it's clearly…

I agree. Why use Org Mode when, for example, Workflowy exists? The latter is robust to your hard drive failing and downloadable in plaintext, too. And it looks better. And you don't have to learn a billion key shortcuts with silly names like "yank" to use it.

With Org you do not need to use a fancy web interface that might disappear from one day to the next. (Though you definitely have the option) The default representation is plain text but you may export to HTML, LaTeX, etc. which is what you are seeing in the original submission. Org can also be used without learning any shortcuts and Emacs terminology, but they are always at your disposal if you need to improve your workflow.

I'm not claiming Org is a silver bullet, or even better than WorkFlowly or anything else people might use, but it definitely has it's place.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#22

Post by adimitrov »

yur3i__ wrote: post #4

I do use org mode for writing documents and presentations but I feel like a lot of these 'organization' tools just result in spending more time tweaking them than actually doing the work you set out to organize.

It's deceptive to look at a document like this and think that you'd have to use all of that knowledge and configuration in order to use org mode for planning your tasks.

Much like Rome, this document wasn't written in a day. You can start using org-mode for task planning and agenda with a fresh (Doom/Spacemacs/vanilla)-Emacs install and be productive from the get go. That's what I did.

Then, you add things whenever you feel like it. You may never feel like it, the default is already very powerful, and I don't have a lot of customization around agendas, etc. in my configuration. The only thing I actually do is set where my org mode files live, set a couple of keybindings, and add one agenda view. That's it. I've been using that same setup for years now.

The rest of my config is merely making it a bit prettier, because default Emacs is somewhat ugly.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#23

Post by pkalinowski »

It looks insanely complicated for no reason.

Why do such super organisation, where you have great search at your disposal?

I just have everything inside Notes folder with subfolders if any project is getting bigger. Anytime I want to look for something, I just do global text search for the whole Notes folder.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#25

Post by leotaku »

kleiba wrote: post #13
birracerveza wrote: post #3

Org Mode keeps being pushed again and again, but honestly this title is one of the boldest claims I've seen about it. Just look at the document. It's a 400+kb HTML page of Emacs configurations, keybindings and other stuff that makes absolutely no sense unless you've been an avid Emacs user for years. Where is the Plain Text here? I see nothing of the sort. Sure, the output might resemble Plain Text, but it's clearly…

Org-mode clearly is two things: 1. A syntax for organizing information 2. An Emacs configuration to create and maintain files in said syntax. Clearly, the "plain text" part of the quote that tripped you off refers to 1. And in theory, you can write and read that format in any editor that supports plain text files. But I think you're right that in reality, and unlike competitors like Markdown or reText, this one is ti…

I use Org with Emacs, but am confident I would be able to continue using my old notes on any editor, should I switch. It would impact my workflow, sure, but not to the extent where I'd rather have used a more universal format in the first place.

So I think "Your life in plain text" still holds today.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#26

Post by [deleted] »

birracerveza wrote: post #3

Org Mode keeps being pushed again and again, but honestly this title is one of the boldest claims I've seen about it. Just look at the document. It's a 400+kb HTML page of Emacs configurations, keybindings and other stuff that makes absolutely no sense unless you've been an avid Emacs user for years. Where is the Plain Text here? I see nothing of the sort. Sure, the output might resemble Plain Text, but it's clearly…

[deleted]

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#27

Post by nojito »

yur3i__ wrote: post #4

I do use org mode for writing documents and presentations but I feel like a lot of these 'organization' tools just result in spending more time tweaking them than actually doing the work you set out to organize.

"organizational tools"

Are a great business idea for this very purpose because it gives people the illusion that they are getting organized --> productive.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#28

Post by michaericalribo »

Org mode is a fun note taking tool built on top of emacs, and it’s great that it works so well for some people. But, in my experience, the hard lock-in to emacs makes it impossible to make a central part of my workflow.

Plus, org mode encourages so much planning to be productive and customization that I end up without any time to get any real work done

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#29

Post by adimitrov »

tomcooks wrote: post #10

Can I get a quick rundown on why Org Mode is better (easier/faster/more organized/whatever you prefer) than a ~/TODO.md file? I use this format: ``` ## yyyy-mm-dd name of the homework - for tasks that have to be done ! for tasks that contain a warning, careful, beware > for tasks I am waiting for others to give me output about ? for tasks I am not sure about v for tasks I've completed x for tasks i won't do, WONTFIX…

Agenda (custom search expressions and aggregation for all kinds of notes), capture buffers (quickly take notes while doing something else), time tracking, column mode (hierarchically sum up time spent and other properties), easily link items to files, even emails or RSS entries, tags, solid latex-export (you can just \textem{mix latex markup in like that}, I don't even write Latex anymore), org-babel, which is kinda like Jupyter, but for everything, including R, Python, etc. in-line image support (works with Latex, so you can have in-line formulas in your latex documents. This is surprisingly useful if you take math-y notes), org-ref which is like bibtex, but for org, and sane, so you can easily manage citations and sources

… seriously. The list is so long. That's just off the top of my head. Granted, some of this is more useful in academia, but depending on how much research you do, it can come in handy at any time.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#30

Post by tams »

The key to using org-mode effectively is ignoring most of the features and using only a tiny subset that you actually need.

You aren't going to look like a wizard, but you are also not going to need to maintain anything ever. These kinds of cookbooks are nice to have around, but it's best to treat them as references, not guides.

Post reply on HN