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Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

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Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#111

Post by ryukafalz »

rz2k wrote: post #109
thom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emacs is an enormous investment but every time I'm forced to use another editor or IDE I'm reminded how much it pays off. Fundamentally, all Emacs does is treat the whole world as text. Everything from that point forward is about giving you (or allowing you to build) tools to manipulate text in a way that is natural and powerful for you. This doesn't sound particularly earth-shaking, but it really is. Think of a lang…

Is there a way to run Emacs on MacOS with an updated interface? Running Emacs in the terminal limits the functionality, but the GUI versions I've tried are garish-looking to me.

It absolutely is possible to get Emacs on macOS looking super minimal with no toolbars. Here's mine, for example:

https://imgur.com/a/om7exnP

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#113

Post by rz2k »

ryukafalz wrote: post #111
rz2k wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to run Emacs on MacOS with an updated interface? Running Emacs in the terminal limits the functionality, but the GUI versions I've tried are garish-looking to me.

It absolutely is possible to get Emacs on macOS looking super minimal with no toolbars. Here's mine, for example: https://imgur.com/a/om7exnP

I toned down my original comment, but that looks much better than the default installation.

Is that just the default installation with better choices in the settings? I should have been more patient Emacs and persistent in configuring it.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#114

Post by Dylan16807 »

dmd wrote: post #48
svnpenn wrote: post #37

Does anyone know of a small Emacs distribution? I would like to get into Emacs, but its hard to justify 114 MB: https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/emacs-26 Versus Vim 18 MB: https://github.com/vim/vim-win32-installer/releases

Justify in terms of what, exactly? At current disk prices, 114 megabytes costs less than a third of a US penny. Even at minimum wage, you'd make that in under a second.

This is a tangent, but I wish storage was that simple. Too many devices come with non-expandable storage and don't have very big options to start with, even if you're willing to pay well above the normal rate.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#115

Post by iLemming »

gandalfgeek wrote: post #108

Whenever there's an Emacs thread on HN, I want to post the following quote from Neal Stephenson's "In the beginning was the command line": "It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devo…

> emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars

What makes Emacs genuinely great? Not that it was built a long time ago and withstood the test of time. Not the fact that it is absolutely free to use, distribute and extend. Not that it doesn't have tons of bugs (it does), or has superb support for every known programming language (it does not).

To understand what makes Emacs so awesome, to learn and master it, one simply needs to embrace the single fundamental truth about it. Emacs based on Lisp. And please don't make a mistake - I am not talking here about a programming language. I am talking about an idea - one of the most magnificent ideas in computer science. Embrace the awesomeness of that idea, the fluidity, and malleability of the structure. Accept it with all its incredible power and some unavoidable flaws - and you will gain superpowers. Which is not necessarily a good thing. Let me explain.

There's a scientific term "umwelt" that biologists use to describe the world as experienced by a particular organism. Every one of us has this "umwelt" - our "subjective view of the world." Our umwelt is limited by our physical and mental capabilities, past experiences, and social circles we grow up and live. e.g., your subjective understanding of Renaissance Art would drastically differ from when you're taken to a museum at the age of three, and when you go there as an adult, or after studying art for fifteen years.

Learning and understanding Lisp expands your umwelt. You will start seeing things differently. It doesn't inevitably make you a better programmer; it might, but doesn't guarantee it, just like suddenly gaining the ability to see things in the infrared spectrum not guaranteed to make your life better.

Finally, once you embrace the idea of Lisp, soon enough, you find out - humans have yet to invent a better Lisp environment than Emacs.

And that's what Emacs is - it is not just an editor, it is not a mere IDE. Most importantly, it is a Lisp environment - living, "breathing", dynamic and malleable. That's what makes it so extensible. And that's what makes it so versatile. And that's why it will never die.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#116

Post by idolaspecus »

gandalfgeek wrote: post #108

Whenever there's an Emacs thread on HN, I want to post the following quote from Neal Stephenson's "In the beginning was the command line": "It is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful. It is colossal, and yet it only edits straight ASCII text files, which is to say, no fonts, no boldface, no underlining. In other words, the engineer-hours that, in the case of Microsoft Word, were devo…

Oh no. They say you shouldn't meet your heroes, but now I think it might be just as important to never learn which editor they use.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#117

Post by machinesbuddy »

Rerarom wrote: post #2

I don't use emacs. I use text files to organise myself but I use notepad++ to edit them. I have tried to learn emacs a couple of times but I am really unmotivated - don't see any case where it would help me. I am afraid I'm missing something.

You are right if you are comfortable with your editor you're not missing a lot. I tried Emacs for a while it's nice and comfortable the moment your brain get used to the keyboard shortkeys though since it's a different word you start running everything in Emacs and it becomes your OS. Why it can be a problem is another story. Anyway I switched back to use different tools for different jobs. For taking notes and managing them I use Joplin it supports markdown, todo lists, etc. and you can even copy paste images into the editor. Lots of other features as well as sync with different backends.

Re: Life is 90% of my use cases for org-mode

#118

Post by iLemming »

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #98
iLemming wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Markdown is not consistent across the platforms that support it. If I wake you up at 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets? - Extensibility. e.g.: I got tired of manually typing description of links when I insert a link to a GitHub issue, I just wrote a tiny snippet that automatically retrieves the title of that issue. - Literate programming. For example: I can have a pytho…

> Markdown is not consistent across the platforms that support it. That is not true anymore. CommonMark is the formal spec everyone follows now, including most major sites out there. > If I wake you up at 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets? Well, yes. Markdown is super easy to remember. > LaTeX support. I can write some complex math formulas. On top of CommonMark you can a…

> That is not true anymore.

GFM, ExtraMark, MultiMarkdown, MarkdownExtra, Gitlab, Taiga, Showdown, Markua, CommonMark, RMarkdown, etc., etc.

I can promise you, there will be more flavors and extensions in the next 20 years. And if I'm still alive then and we don't invent anything drastically different from keyboard input, I'd probably still be using Org-mode. Among thousands of others.

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