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Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

karl-voit.at

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Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#141

Post by skeledrew »

arboles wrote: post #97
skeledrew wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. Just gave it a try and backslash works as escape. Though also I'm probably unlikely to experience such issues myself as my Emacs theme shows formatting characters even after applying the formatting.

The following: \~300 lines Still exports as \~300 lines (in case of an HTML export). In fact you could "escape it" with any character, the backslash isn't doing anything special, the formatting just doesn't trigger if there's no white space on one side. When I use Org I also do not have auto-formatting, as you do, but the highlighting would still be wrong. And it'd be masochistic to put up with that unless you've inv…

Sounds to me like it's a shortcoming of the exporter then, to not remove the escape characters as appropriate. Though one would think others would've run into this issue and fixed it. Or perhaps you're missing some other prevalent alternative?

The highlighting corrects for me once I "escape" the "~300".

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#142

Post by beej71 »

creata wrote: post #103
beej71 wrote: post #84

I use Markdown for all my books, currently. It used to be a custom XML format, but that was really annoying to type even with custom Vim keybindings. I do wish Markdown were more capable, but it's a good lowest common denominator for HTML and PDF. Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent. My current flow is: Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML -> page-splitter -> sp…

> I'm hoping to replace it with Typst This might be stupid but is there a reason you want to go through docbook and xsltproc instead of setting --pdf-engine=typst?

Yes. Two reasons:

1) More control over the typst output... 2) I didn't know you could do that. :D :D :D

I'll check it out--thanks for the pointer!

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#143

Post by arboles »

skeledrew wrote: post #141
arboles wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following: \~300 lines Still exports as \~300 lines (in case of an HTML export). In fact you could "escape it" with any character, the backslash isn't doing anything special, the formatting just doesn't trigger if there's no white space on one side. When I use Org I also do not have auto-formatting, as you do, but the highlighting would still be wrong. And it'd be masochistic to put up with that unless you've inv…

Sounds to me like it's a shortcoming of the exporter then, to not remove the escape characters as appropriate. Though one would think others would've run into this issue and fixed it. Or perhaps you're missing some other prevalent alternative? The highlighting corrects for me once I "escape" the "~300".

You didn't understand me. The highlighting also disappears if you "escape" with %

  %~300
Or the character A:

  A~300

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#144

Post by beej71 »

creata wrote: post #103
beej71 wrote: post #84

I use Markdown for all my books, currently. It used to be a custom XML format, but that was really annoying to type even with custom Vim keybindings. I do wish Markdown were more capable, but it's a good lowest common denominator for HTML and PDF. Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent. My current flow is: Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML -> page-splitter -> sp…

> I'm hoping to replace it with Typst This might be stupid but is there a reason you want to go through docbook and xsltproc instead of setting --pdf-engine=typst?

Looks like it's getting there, but still needs some work. It's not obeying the book output or number sections. I can probably get the indexing going, though.

Measured at 10x faster than LaTeX.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#145

Post by maximus-decimus »

jasperry wrote: post #16
noufalibrahim wrote: post #5

Org format is reasonably intuitive (so is markdown). But org's real power comes from org-mode and the rest of Emacs. Being able to use it as PIM, as a quick way to write documents and export them, as a way to take notes, the keystrokes which are almost automatic for any Emacs user etc. This is really why it shines. I don't see much value for it as just a markdown format outside Emacs.

The value of Org outside Emacs would be the same value that Markdown has, if it had wider adoption. Voit's post makes a strong argument for Org syntax's ability to serve for all the things Markdown currently does, while being more consistent and concise than Markdown, and so he pushes for it to be more widely adopted. We know that in tech, the better format doesn't always win at first, or ever, but we can advocate!

org-mode is just much more complicated to implement though and just contains so much. it's also a todo app. It also lets you run code like a python notebook. it can show you your tasks in a calendar.

I've used "org-mode" todo apps on android, but people complain they can't really use it because it doesn't implement everything.

The advantage of the core markdown syntax is that you know it works everywhere and it works everywhere because it's small and easy to implement.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#146

Post by G3rn0ti »

Derbasti wrote: post #127

Expressing complex HTML or LaTeX constructs in org-mode is more complicated than writing the raw HTML or LaTeX. So for complex things, I'll always fall back to writing HTML or LaTeX directly. Markdown, instead, just falls back to HTML. Whatever I can't express in markdown, I can simply insert the HTML by hand. These markup languages are always fine for simple things, but have a hard time expressing more complicated t…

You can use code blocks for this and even specify the language so Emacs can provide proper syntax highlighting:

#+BEGIN_SRC html

#+END_SRC

If you are writing a technical document with a lot of code blocks you can have yasnippet to create the blocks for you by keyboard shortcut.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#147

Post by cyrialize »

I've been using Org Mode for organizing my life in plain text for the past 10 years now.

Beorg on iOS [0] makes it great. I've also started using things like org-ql [1] and org-super-agenda [2] to make me even more productive.

I also have a daily log org file I use at work. It helps me keep track of what I need to do and what I've done. It makes yearly reviews easier as well!

[0]: https://www.beorgapp.com/

[1]: https://github.com/alphapapa/org-ql

[2]: https://github.com/alphapapa/org-super-agenda

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#148

Post by vga42 »

IshKebab wrote: post #108

Hmm with the way people go on about it I always assumed there was more to Org mode than "Markdown for Emacs", but this post makes it sound exactly like that. He's also not exactly gaining credibility with "Markdown is useless because it's not standardised; there are lots of slightly different implementations"... Well yeah that's mildly annoying but it's still very useful! And then he completely throws away all credib…

>Can anyone tell me an actual reason to use Org mode over Markdown?

I think the reason in general is simply that org-mode is better, i.e. more carefully defined. I'll mention the things I like more specifically:

- Link syntax in markdown is something I never remember how it goes. Org-mode is [[link][description]].

- Text styles in org-mode make more sense. In markdown, * is used for italics, * for bold. Additionally, * is for lists, which might be confusing.

- Markdown blocks are freaking awful and seem to work by luck more than anything else. Code blocks even worse -- they are made by indenting 4 spaces or a tab! I couldn't come up with a worse way to do that even if I tried. Org-mode has clear #BEGIN_xxx / #END_xxx blocks.

- Markdown has a weird YAML frontmatter syntax. Org-mode has keywords which can be attached to the whole document and properties, which can be attached to every heading.

- Org-mode has tags.

- Org-mode has timestamps.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#149

Post by stackghost »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #130
stackghost wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've recently converted my blog from org-mode to markdown. Me too. I went to Jekyll and I thought I'd miss org but it turns out I don't. Plus I still get a slow lisp-like language (ruby) just like elisp. Org is a neat idea but nothing supports it. You can get a jupyter-like experience with src blocks but have fun sharing it with anyone unless you only interact with other emacs users. Markdown is merely acceptable, I…

Its completely trivial to export orgmode to markdown either as a process or just whenever you copy to the clipboard. Completely trivial isn't a big barrier to interoperation.

Sure but each "completely trivial" step adds complexity to the overall process, which makes it brittle.

I'd rather just write in markdown than have to spend hours upon hours reading the awful emacs docs. I have a thousand things to do and no time.

Org might be better, but it's not better enough.

Re: Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)

#150

Post by tconfrey »

cyrialize wrote: post #147

I've been using Org Mode for organizing my life in plain text for the past 10 years now. Beorg on iOS [0] makes it great. I've also started using things like org-ql [1] and org-super-agenda [2] to make me even more productive. I also have a daily log org file I use at work. It helps me keep track of what I need to do and what I've done. It makes yearly reviews easier as well! [0]: https://www.beorgapp.com/ [1]: https…

Hi @cyrialize , Hopefully this is an acceptable level of self-promotion. It sounds like my browser extension, BrainTool might be useful in your workflow. It's kindof a bookmark/tab management tool. It syncs to a .org file and allows you to do things like mark tabs as a TODO, which you can then track in org-agenda etc. There's some brief descriptions and videos here: https://braintool.org/2025/09/16/Browser-Workflows-with-Brai...
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