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Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

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Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#91

Post by spekcular »

jbotz wrote: post #40
spekcular wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If Workflowy does exactly and everything you want, then sure, use that. If there are times though when you wish it did something a little different or a little more or integrated better with some other tools you use then, well, with emacs and org mode you could scratch that itch with probably just a few dozen lines of elisp code. Or if you later find some other tool that suits you better it may not be possible to mov…

But, Workflowly literally does exactly and everything I want. It exports plain text, so my data is always portable. It's great.

I don't want primitive, I want convenient and easy to use. I don't want to have to think about how I'm taking notes or write in lisp or "rice" anything.

Also, Emacs is ugly and doesn't sync with my phone. I'm sure I could fix both of those things with sufficient effort, but again, I want to put forth effort solving actual problems, not remaking my Workflowy setup.

This entire topic is microcosm of goofy command line/unix fetishism.

If you want primitive, get a paper notebook. One page per day. That works well, too (seriously).

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#92

Post by slightwinder »

tonyarkles wrote: post #52
sinkasapa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it is like saying: "Python: Write computer programs in plain text!" In my experience, one does actually just edit text files using org-mode. It is different than the Tasks sub-application of Thunderbird/Lightening, for instance.

Yeah, my first thought when I started reading your comment was “yeah, it’s a bit silly, but you can’t ‘grep’ Jira”. I’ve been a long time org user and am slowly starting to move bits of my workflow out of it to ease collaboration with the staff I’m planning to hire in the next couple months. I absolutely love Org and am not particularly happy about moving away from it, but... it seems like trying to use it in a colla…

> you can’t ‘grep’ Jira”.

Well, you can, if you export your issues. Jira has a well working API. It's not hard to write a script for fetching your stuff locally. There are even one or two plugins on melpa for loading it directly into org-mode.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#93

Post by spekcular »

contravariant wrote: post #34
spekcular wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's always cua-mode if you want something more compatible with usual text editors. No telling what will happen for any other Ctrl,Alt shortcuts, but most regular keys should work as expected. And there's always M-x to just search a command (which will also tell you the hotkey, if any).

Besides "yank," calling alt "Meta" is another silly thing, too. And yes, I'm aware of the reasons. It's still silly in 2020, as was discussed in the recent HN topic on why Emacs isn't attracting new users.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#94

Post by taeric »

jasode wrote: post #78
Nullabillity wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Org-mode documents can include graphics[0] and (formula-driven) spreadsheets[1]. [0]: https://orgmode.org/org.html#Images [1]: https://orgmode.org/org.html#The-Spreadsheet

Yes but I use MS Excel features like pivot tables and MS Word graphics features like drawing arrows as overlays on top of screenshots to annotate them. The other limitation of out-of-the-box Org Mode "plain text" architecture is that it limits collaboration of letting other users edit my file because fine-grain locking is not as straightforward as with a db file like SQLite. My "master todo list" is easier to manage…

These are actually not that hard to do in org-mode, if you are willing to use babel and push the pivot out to something like pandas. :D

That said, no, I don't actually think it is a replacement for spreadsheets. Especially not if you are already fluent in them.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#95

Post by slightwinder »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #82
slightwinder wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my opinion, org-mode eliminates the risk of hitting any sort of barrier after years of sunk costs. Nah, it moves the barrier, but it's still there. There always are barriers. In case of org-mode it's the limitations of emacs and time you need to invest into forging them into whatever system you seek, which often is not even possible with emacs.

Sometimes getting emacs to do what you want can take a ridiculous amount of time. However, if there's something you really cannot do in emacs, my advice would be to try praying, because at that point nothing else can help you.

Or just start a rich environment, like a browser, or excel. Interface-wise there are many things that emacs can't do. Feature-wise there is even more missing because of lacking manpower.

But that's okay. Every job it's right tool.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#96

Post by CJefferson »

madballster wrote: post #49

I see a lot of comments arguing that it's not "worth it" to spend dozens of hours to "get into org-mode" when there are "intuitive tools" such as Evernote or Trello or Todoist etc. What some are missing is the fact that low barriers to entry sometimes turn into barriers to growth at a later stage. After (!) one has sunk thousands of hours into them. I used to keep my academic notes in Evernote and it turned into hell…

Here were my "sunk costs" of org-mode.

1) org-mode makes a bad spreadsheet

2) No good Android interface, Orgzly is OK, but doesn't do advanced features and often crashed for me.

3) Despite lots of trying, I couldn't get "into" using the Emacs shortcut keys, which are different to every other application on Windows.

4) I like variable width fonts, and variable width fonts don't seem to work with various bits of org mode (for example tables)

I'm sure you love org-mode, and that's great, but plenty of people over the years have tried and failed to love emacs, and lost a whole lot of time in the process.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#97

Post by lodi »

jasode wrote: post #72
madballster wrote: post #49

I see a lot of comments arguing that it's not "worth it" to spend dozens of hours to "get into org-mode" when there are "intuitive tools" such as Evernote or Trello or Todoist etc. What some are missing is the fact that low barriers to entry sometimes turn into barriers to growth at a later stage. After (!) one has sunk thousands of hours into them. I used to keep my academic notes in Evernote and it turned into hell…

>, org-mode eliminates the risk of hitting any sort of barrier Ultimately, it depends on the type of user but the "barrier" may be that it's plain text . So Org Mode's data format as a desirable selling point is also its ceiling of functionality. Yes, I store 90% of my notes in plain text. But I also store some programming notes in MS Excel because I need a datagrid as UI with dynamic calculations. I store some proje…

Actually org mode can do all of those things:

* Recalculate formulas a la excel: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro...

* Actually you can go way further than cloning basic excel functionality. For example, you can write inline code to generate or retrieve some data, feed that into a graphing program, and then inline the resulting chart back into the org file. https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html

* Display inline images: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17621495/emacs-org-displ...

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#98

Post by darau1 »

LandR wrote: post #89
darau1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I use org-mode without emacs?

I've never tried org-mode without emacs, but this says you can get an equivalent in other editors like Atom and VS Code. https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-mo... I don't know how customisable it would be in those editors. My org-mode is pretty customized via my emacs config and I don't know if they would support agenda.

Thanks, I'll take a look

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#99

Post by nextos »

purerandomness wrote: post #69
madballster wrote: post #49

I see a lot of comments arguing that it's not "worth it" to spend dozens of hours to "get into org-mode" when there are "intuitive tools" such as Evernote or Trello or Todoist etc. What some are missing is the fact that low barriers to entry sometimes turn into barriers to growth at a later stage. After (!) one has sunk thousands of hours into them. I used to keep my academic notes in Evernote and it turned into hell…

Also, people forget that their favourite SaaS-du-jour probably won't be around after their "Incredible Journey" ends and there won't be a migration path, or it's going to cost too many hours to be worth it. Emacs will be here for us in the next decades, even well after our career ends, and then some.

Besides, Org is not complicated. It has lots of features, but at its core it's just a plain text outliner with hyperlinks, keywords and timestamps.

Org is like Common Lisp in many ways. It offers you lots of paradigms to build your own workflows, but you don't need to use or understand them initially.

An it might suffer from the same PR problem Emacs has. Manuals, tutorials and guides throw all features at once without focussing on core concepts first. And it's overwhelming for newcomers.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#100

Post by M2Ys4U »

I tried to use Org Mode at work last year, to take meeting notes, track time spent on the 12 different projects I have to chip in to and to organise my calendar.

It was okay, but I didn't (and still don't) use Emacs for anything else.

I get the impression that unless you live your life entirely in Emacs then it's just not worth it.

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