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Org tutorials

orgmode.org

41–50 of 79 posts

Re: Org tutorials

#41
post #5

Orgmode got me through college, research, and at work, it really is the perfected markup language that can do a lot more than just being a markup language. The extensibility and out of the box export to other formats makes it immediately useful for at least 80% of common tasks. It has ingrained itself so deeply into my muscle memory that I built out a whole website builder [1] and extended the language to support all…

> Orgmode got me through college, research, and at work, it really is the perfected markup language that can do a lot more than just being a markup language. The extensibility and out of the box export to other formats makes it immediately useful for at least 80% of common tasks.

With regards to your 80% claim, do you happen to know an extension that works well with pasting images from clipboard?

Over the years, my professional note taking has become extremely reliant on quickly pasting images (most often screenshots from papers or quick-and-dirty plots I made myself) from clipboard directly into the notes. The friction of doing this in vanilla org-mode is the only reason I'm not doing everything in org-mode.

Re: Org tutorials

#42

I hear so many people rave about orgmode on HN, all of them emacs users. This seems obvious since it is an emacs feature after all, but if orgmode is so good, has it not been implemented outside of emacs? Is there a standalone orgmode implementation that non-emacs users should look into?

I think it's kind of the other way around.

Emacs is a universal lisp environment, and org-mode is a lightweight markup language that works well with it.

You can port the markup language, but it's a heavy lift to port the lisp way of thinking to another language.

Re: Org tutorials

#43
post #5

Orgmode got me through college, research, and at work, it really is the perfected markup language that can do a lot more than just being a markup language. The extensibility and out of the box export to other formats makes it immediately useful for at least 80% of common tasks. It has ingrained itself so deeply into my muscle memory that I built out a whole website builder [1] and extended the language to support all…

> Orgmode got me through college, research, and at work, it really is the perfected markup language that can do a lot more than just being a markup language. The extensibility and out of the box export to other formats makes it immediately useful for at least 80% of common tasks. With regards to your 80% claim, do you happen to know an extension that works well with pasting images from clipboard? Over the years, my p…

I use org-download (https://github.com/abo-abo/org-download) for pasting images.

Re: Org tutorials

#44

I hear so many people rave about orgmode on HN, all of them emacs users. This seems obvious since it is an emacs feature after all, but if orgmode is so good, has it not been implemented outside of emacs? Is there a standalone orgmode implementation that non-emacs users should look into?

The reason is that elisp org-mode is huge and re-implementing it without elisp is a great undertaking.

I started an implementation in javascript that I integrated in an obsidian plugin [0]. But the plugin has a long way to go before reaching feature parity with emacs orgmode.

[0] https://github.com/BBazard/obsidian-orgmode-cm6

Re: Org tutorials

#45
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the point? Without emacs all you're left with is another markup language.

What makes org mode tied to emacs ? I really need to try org mode to understand it. If only I had time...

As a very practical example: You take notes in org-mode, and as you do in many modern note-taking apps, you use copious links between notes.

But org-mode is inside Emacs, and Emacs is (can be) also your email client. So your notes can link to emails. Emacs is also your calendar. So your notes can link to events.

You can extend this to almost anything if you like Emacs enough. Your notes link to source code files (or your notes contain code, which can be executed from your notes). Emacs is also your git front end, so you could link to commits.

Re: Org tutorials

#46
post #6

To people using org mode, how does it help you more than Markdown? Genuinely curious because I tried at some point and it felt too heavy. Maybe because I am a vim user instead of eMacs?

`org-mode` used with Emacs is the tinkerer's dream playgound. Apart from the basic markdown stuff, there are so many wild things you can do. For example, org code blocks are not just the basic markdown code blocks that show formatted code. Org code blocks can actually be executed and can show the output of the code, inline. So you can write code blocks (that may include data found in variables/tables/etc elsewhere in the org file), then "refresh" your org file and all the inline outputs of the code blocks will be updated.

Re: Org tutorials

#47
post #3

I'm on my seventh year of using org-mode for my task management. My system has slowly evolved over time but I'm pretty much still using the same single text file to manage everything. My main getting-things-done org-mode file is now at 6k lines long. Before org-mode, I was always downloading different software to manage tasks and notes. The tool churn was very degrading to my productivity but I feel that commercial i…

I try it regularly and I was running an org-mode based task management for a year and some months in between, but man, I do not have time and patience for sync conflicts in 2025. It can work but I have to be very cautious, and iCloud sync being a bit mysterious does not help. But I've also recognized that I don't have very complex projects, that GTD tools do not matter since their contents are transient by nature and that Apple Reminders is basically good enough. As a bonus it allows me to share Lists/Projects with my wife.

Re: Org tutorials

#48
post #5

Orgmode got me through college, research, and at work, it really is the perfected markup language that can do a lot more than just being a markup language. The extensibility and out of the box export to other formats makes it immediately useful for at least 80% of common tasks. It has ingrained itself so deeply into my muscle memory that I built out a whole website builder [1] and extended the language to support all…

I have on gripe, that is the mixture between org structure and org document heradings. I know, they are the same, and such a distinction doesn't exist. You can start a "document" at any place in the org hierachy. I would rather prefer a distintion between these two concepts.

How would the distinction work?

Re: Org tutorials

#49
post #22
post #5

Orgmode got me through college, research, and at work, it really is the perfected markup language that can do a lot more than just being a markup language. The extensibility and out of the box export to other formats makes it immediately useful for at least 80% of common tasks. It has ingrained itself so deeply into my muscle memory that I built out a whole website builder [1] and extended the language to support all…

> As of 2025-02, there is no formal Org-mode syntax definition. is very far away from perfection

[deleted]

Re: Org tutorials

#50
post #32

I wish there's something like Obsidian with the same support for org-mode that Emacs has. A few pros: - Organize notes in org-mode is much quicker - The best support for lists (and I do list most of the times) - Tags and properties - Perfect integration with agenda - Great TODOs support - Code blocks with highlights, execution and results

What specific features / functions are most compelling for lists? Of course moving a tree around with different header levels. But anything specifically great with lists?
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