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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

#111

Post by bachmeier »

dsabanin wrote: post #38
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 think it's a perfect excuse to procrastinate. You can spend months configuring Org Mode, tweaking and hacking away, instead of using something like Things, Todoist, or OmniFocus (or thousands more, whichever one you like best) and focusing on the things you should actually be doing and organizing. I've been guilty of that myself.

> I think it's a perfect excuse to procrastinate.

Well, I mean this does come up all the time, where people talk about how much time they sink into Emacs. Emacs is an interface to a programming language. Of course you can stick time into it, just as people spend hundreds of hours writing code with any programming language. For basic usage, you don't need to. I don't think Emacs needs to apologize for being a lot of fun for experimenting and customizing. Those same people would be scrolling Twitter or Facebook if they procrastinated using Emacs.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#112

Post by michael-ax »

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…

rant appreciated!

this thing is a 5 year old specialist's setup and its not appropriate for new users, even the installation instructions have not aged well.

that didn't stop me from copying way to much of his work into my initial setup and crying about the mess i made when i got started though :) if you want to get started with org or that strange editor, consider yourself as having been trolled and look for something that has popup captures and does linked images not something this time/billing specific at first!

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#113

Post by CJefferson »

sparkie wrote: post #108
na85 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are packages you can install to make the copy/cut/paste keys and a few others more Windows-like.

M-x cua-mode should work out of the box

cua conflicts with org, so you can't use them both together (I've been told, and googling suggests this is true)

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#115

Post by bcrosby95 »

CJefferson wrote: post #96
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 mo…

1) Is there any note taking application that makes a good spreadsheet? Just use a dedicated spreadsheet program.

2) I'm using Orgzly and yeah, it's OK. For me, OK is all I really need here since I mostly need org-mode when I'm infront of a computer. When I'm away all I really need it for is quickly adding things to do.

3) Definitely takes getting used to. I started using org-mode a couple years ago as a vim user.

I've also lost a lot of time trying different apps such as Evernote, OneNote, and Trello. And setting everything up to integrate between them. Eventually I decided on markdown files for notes, but the TODO and tag integration of org-mode is what made me switch.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#116

Post by bjoli »

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.

I use it because I already spend about 70% of my computer time in Emacs, and I use org mode almost exclusively for the same things I use Emacs for (getting things done).

It syncs to 3 places, of which 2 are encrypted off-site backups. Since I already do everything in Emacs, org mode extends all the tools I already use (links to emails, specific lines in a source code file, contacts, IRC). I spent one hour learning it about 4 years ago and I use it to manage just about everything I have to do on my computer.

If you are not already sold.on Emacs, however, I understand that it can be a tough thing to swallow.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#117

Post by ubercow13 »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #2

It looks like some people want to spend more time organizing their life than living their life. IDK man, I already need some willpower to use Trello and looks far easier.

Yeah. Many times over the years I have decided to be organised about something, or just my life in general, and made notes, taken research clippings, etc. using whatever system I designed at the time. Sometimes I look back at these years later and realise that I spent so much time creating them, never really used them, and now they are completely irrelevant or useless.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#118

Post by sparkie »

CJefferson wrote: post #113
sparkie wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M-x cua-mode should work out of the box

cua conflicts with org, so you can't use them both together (I've been told, and googling suggests this is true)

There are a few key binding collisions, but otherwise they can be used together.

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#119

Post by inakarmacoma »

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.

I've been using DynaList, so I guess I am vulnerable to this risk. But for some reason I could not figure out a way to make org mode work across all platforms in anyway close to as seamlessly. I was able to sometimes get cross-linking across but it was still pretty clunky. if I wanted to use org mode and I wanted to send random articles and other things to it via share function or send function and a mobile phone or iPad, edited on desktop in emacs, and then search find edit etc from any mobile device, is this really a possibility?

Re: Org Mode – Organize Your Life in Plain Text

#120

Post by mr_spothawk »

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…

for those of us who are working to improve our ability to use org & lisp+emacs this is incredibly helpful.
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