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I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

kevinkle.in

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Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#41

Post by rayiner »

kovek wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #29

Org Mode is amazing! As an attorney I spend a lot of my time taking notes, tracking moving parts, and working with voluminous PDFs. I've tried a lot of different tools over the years (OneNote, etc.) for this purpose, but they all have serious shortcomings. I used to use Emacs in my previous life as a programmer, but had never used Org Mode before. I've got the following workflow: - Org Mode (with org-superstar) for t…

Do you have smooth scrolling in Emacs? How do you sync your work with your smartphone?

I use Mitsuharu Yamamoto's emacs-mac-port, which has smooth scrolling: https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/src/master/README-m.... Due to the way Emacs works, pdf-tools can't do "continuous scroll" mode. This doesn't bother me much because I always have PDFs set to show the whole page anyway.

I don't sync Org notes with my smart phone. But the nice thing about Emacs (compared to most other notes tools) is that file attachments are in your file system. One Drive's sync backend is very good and smooth, so it's easy to grab a PDF if I want to attach it to an email or view it from my phone or tablet.

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#42

Post by BeetleB »

Rochus wrote: post #37
BeetleB wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found a similar problem with Org mode when it comes to writing elisp code to handle org documents - it's almost all based on text parsing vs nodes. So simple automations I can program in a node based editor like the Leo Editor took a lot of effort in Org mode. As an example, if you want the body (text) of a node, you have to get the substring from the beginning to the end. There wasn't (probably still isn't) an API…

I implemented my own NoSql database for Crossline which supports an efficient storage and traversal of outline items (see https://github.com/rochus-keller/Udb ). Even if there was a dedicated API in Emacs/Org-mode it's still file based text buffer interpretation and management behind the scenes.

Nah - the only pain would be in loading/saving. The idea would be that all this information would be in memory and updated live. So when you use node based APIs, it doesn't need to do any parsing. It would have a node object, and the body would be an attribute, and subnodes would be links to other nodes, etc. Only when saving/loading would it then need to convert (serialize) to a text representation.

This is how the Leo editor does it - it's in Python and it can handle a fairly large number of nodes before any slowdown is noticeable.

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#43

Post by AlanYx »

BeetleB wrote: post #42
Rochus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I implemented my own NoSql database for Crossline which supports an efficient storage and traversal of outline items (see https://github.com/rochus-keller/Udb ). Even if there was a dedicated API in Emacs/Org-mode it's still file based text buffer interpretation and management behind the scenes.

Nah - the only pain would be in loading/saving. The idea would be that all this information would be in memory and updated live. So when you use node based APIs, it doesn't need to do any parsing. It would have a node object, and the body would be an attribute, and subnodes would be links to other nodes, etc. Only when saving/loading would it then need to convert (serialize) to a text representation. This is how the…

If you're trying to do non-parsing automations in org, take a look at vulpea. It's roughly the same engine that powers the current version of org-roam. A good example application of this is the vino wine database: https://github.com/d12frosted/vino

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#44

Post by BeetleB »

AlanYx wrote: post #43
BeetleB wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah - the only pain would be in loading/saving. The idea would be that all this information would be in memory and updated live. So when you use node based APIs, it doesn't need to do any parsing. It would have a node object, and the body would be an attribute, and subnodes would be links to other nodes, etc. Only when saving/loading would it then need to convert (serialize) to a text representation. This is how the…

If you're trying to do non-parsing automations in org, take a look at vulpea. It's roughly the same engine that powers the current version of org-roam. A good example application of this is the vino wine database: https://github.com/d12frosted/vino

Thanks, but is there something like that for plain org? I use org-roam for a few limited use cases. Most of my org stuff is not related to notes, and I don't put it in org-roam.

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#45

Post by Arubis »

xenodium wrote: post #38
Arubis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your work is contributing to the org-mode renaissance; users of the world appreciate you! Now if I could just get multi-platform sync working correctly (iCloud doesn't play nice with Linux)...

Hey, that's nice to hear. Have you seen some of the syncing alternatives? https://plainorg.com#cloud-providers Mileage varies across iOS providers, but some users have reported being fairly happy with either WorkingCopy or Syncthing/MöbiusSync which would work on Linux. I'm on iCloud though.

I'll probably give MöbiusSync another shot; my first experience with it was heavy on battery usage and notifications, light on functionality.

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#46

Post by AlanYx »

BeetleB wrote: post #44
AlanYx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're trying to do non-parsing automations in org, take a look at vulpea. It's roughly the same engine that powers the current version of org-roam. A good example application of this is the vino wine database: https://github.com/d12frosted/vino

Thanks, but is there something like that for plain org? I use org-roam for a few limited use cases. Most of my org stuff is not related to notes, and I don't put it in org-roam.

vulpea is designed to be usable under plain org; it's a separate package from org-roam.

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#47

Post by ParetoOptimal »

kkleindev wrote: post #35
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have smooth scrolling in Emacs? Yes, but one of the smooth scrolling modes was too slow for me and I use `pixel-scroll-precision-mode` which requires Emacs 29. > How do you sync your work with your smartphone? I use syncthing for this and Orgzly, emacs in termux, and organice. I bet most would prefer and could get away with just using organice.

Last time I checked organice didn't support offline editing on mobile. If that worked it would likely also be my weapon of choice!

Looks like it still doesn't:

https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice/issues/730

You might be able to run something with WebDAV support and use that?

Maybe sabre or caddy plus WebDAV plugin?

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#48

Post by lytefm »

ParetoOptimal wrote: post #31
kovek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have smooth scrolling in Emacs? How do you sync your work with your smartphone?

> Do you have smooth scrolling in Emacs? Yes, but one of the smooth scrolling modes was too slow for me and I use `pixel-scroll-precision-mode` which requires Emacs 29. > How do you sync your work with your smartphone? I use syncthing for this and Orgzly, emacs in termux, and organice. I bet most would prefer and could get away with just using organice.

Orgzly work good enough with nextcloud/WebDav for me. Possibly easier to set up than syncthing for non-techies.

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#49

Post by zelphirkalt »

Rochus wrote: post #11

Org Mode tries to be an outliner. Outliners are the right tool for the job from my experience (> 30 years) since you can create and use context to reduce redundancy and makes it easier to find and to understand things again retrospectively. I had a look at Org Mode many years ago when switching from Windows to a Linux laptop which meant that I needed an alternative for Ecco Pro. But I quickly reached the limits with…

Org mode does not "try to be an outliner", it does much more than that. It can do that in 2-3 key presses, which fold the content under each heading.

> CrossLine is an outliner with sophisticated cross-link capabilities in the tradition of the well-respected Ecco Pro.

This is the minimal description in the repository you link to. It does not contain anything, that Org mode does not bring to the table. Org more has sophisticated inter-document linking as well as citations and footnotes. All one needs to write a scientific paper in it and export to tex/latex.

What features exactly is org mode missing for you? I know you wrote, that you tested 10 years ago. Perhaps the picture has changed a lot since then.

Also I understand, that ones own tool often is like a second skin, perfectly matching, what one needs.

Re: I use Org Mode for personal logging/journalling

#50

Post by xenodium »

Arubis wrote: post #45
xenodium wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, that's nice to hear. Have you seen some of the syncing alternatives? https://plainorg.com#cloud-providers Mileage varies across iOS providers, but some users have reported being fairly happy with either WorkingCopy or Syncthing/MöbiusSync which would work on Linux. I'm on iCloud though.

I'll probably give MöbiusSync another shot; my first experience with it was heavy on battery usage and notifications, light on functionality.

More discussion in the space:

https://www.reddit.com/r/plainorg/comments/rerf1i/whats_the_...

https://www.reddit.com/r/plainorg/comments/qfrf87/please_sha...

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