Bye bye iCal, welcome org-mode

https://khinsen.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/bye-bye-ical-welcome-org-mode/

by codeup • 16 years ago

82 33 16 years ago

khinsen.wordpress.com

tomstuart• 16 years ago

I'm surprised to see this article cite sync as a major problem. I find iCal's CalDAV support to work very well, and if you're competent enough to use Emacs then you should also be able to set up your own install of Darwin Calendar Server (or just use Google Calendar) to sync against.

jolan• 16 years ago

Ditto, I use DAViCal. It's opensource and works well:

http://davical.org/

_ouxp2• 16 years ago

I have used self-hosted Darwin Calendar Server & more recently, Google Apps for a client that needs iCal syncing. Somehow we seem to have more problems with CalDAV syncing (e.g. timeouts during sync, unavailability) with Google Calendar than we ever did on DCS. It seems like, and probably is, an afterthought for Google.

[edit: ActiveSync, now supported in iCal, seems to work pretty well]

_ouxp2• 16 years ago

Also, The Vim Outliner http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=517

sigzero2• 16 years ago

The VimOrganizer is trying to be as close to org-mode as it can be: https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer

qjz• 16 years ago

I currently use Remind: http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind

It's not a plug-in, so you can use any text editor (or install a GUI frontend). It has a powerful date scripting language that can be complex, but flexible enough to meet almost any need. Most events can be entered simply on one line of text and it will handle the sorting, so you can organize entries however you want (even including them from other files). Multiple output formats are available. I publish my calendar to my web site in HTML and PDF, while a cronjob emails a text version to me twice a day.

The only downside is that I end up managing the calendar for the whole family. I feel uneasy publishing my calendar to the cloud, but I'm considering using shared Google Calendars so everyone can manage there own schedules.

rwl7• 16 years ago

Ah, wow, the "Microsoft Policy" and "Apple Policy" are awesome. Glad to see a free software project that says, on its front page, that it would "prefer" you compile and run the software on "a platform that is not controlled by a free-software-hostile corporation."

albertzeyer3• 16 years ago

Except that it just works fine on Mac and is as easy to compile there as on any other Unix/POSIX system.

I found their attitude against Apple highly annoying. When I clicked on the source download link (in Chrome), I just got this message:

  Please do not run Remind on Mac OS

Downloading via wget worked though.

Then I started ./configure and I got this:

  az@74-112 1130 (remind-03.01.10) %./configure

  **********************
  *                    *
  * Configuring REMIND *
  *                    *
  **********************


  Please don't use Apple products.  This script will continue in 30 seconds
  if you insist on compiling Remind on Mac OS X.

How stupid is this?

The compilation went just fine.

gaoshan• 16 years ago

I thought this looked intriguing but since I am on a Mac I cannot even download their informational pdf... they block even that attempt to find out more. Pretty stupid on their part as now I'm not only not interested, I'm annoyed.

rwl7• 16 years ago

The article doesn't mention one of the best features of Org: the "capture" interface [1]. This makes it possible to quickly file a new entry in the appropriate Org file, using a custom template, without interrupting your workflow.

[1] http://orgmode.org/manual/Capture-_002d-Refile-_002d-Archive...

kahawe• 16 years ago

Maybe I missed it but how/where can you sync all that with your phone then? At least in the past, this is where the whole Apple "PIM" suite was really shining for me: effortless syncing with mobile and smart phones without installing additional tools. And I agree, an easy, built-in option to sync several Macs would be great.

Oh and complaining about iCal's interface is really moaning at a rather high level.

At work I have to use Outlook for email, contacts, team calendar and our team todos and I cannot stop wondering how this thing is used by anyone let alone tech un-savvy people.. so I thank the FSM for the noodley goodness and simplicity that iCal is for me.

And I wish Google Mail would finally allow me to update entries from iCal and offer syncing the todo list. Then I would be completely happy.

rwl7• 16 years ago

For iPhone, there's MobileOrg: http://mobileorg.ncogni.to/

For Android, there's MobileOrg Android: https://github.com/matburt/mobileorg-android/wiki/

Both can be set up to sync Org files via DropBox.

aerique• 16 years ago

I find MobileOrg's workflow clumsy to work with. I wish it would just allow me to browse a directory in my Dropbox and leave the syncing to Dropbox itself.

yummyfajitas2• 16 years ago

Is there a tutorial or something for MobileOrg? I just installed it, but I feel like I must be missing some functionality (e.g., how to get my agenda).

agentultra2• 16 years ago

I use org-mode extensively. It integrates so well into the Emacs experience. There's just nothing like it.

When I start working on a project, I use todo lists with notes, links, and tags to manage my tasks. I use org outlines to structure my work flow and organize my thoughts. I use the remember front-end to quickly capture notes on the fly. When I finish a task I just flick out the key stroke to clock out. Afterwards I can check a nicely formatted table to view my hours, paste it into an email within emacs and use org mode to reformat it into an HTML/multipart email with a properly formatted HTML table that I can send to my co-workers or clients to review.

For intense bits of code I use the literate programming features of org-babel.

Also, it has great export features. It can tangle, organize, and mine your org files for the information you want and export to a number of different formats. It's quite amazing.

I'd go as far to say that org-mode is practically a killer feature of emacs and one really good reason for switching to emacs if you don't use it already.

But I might be biased... :)

abhiyerra• 16 years ago

I switched to Emacs after 10 years of Vim because of it. It is quite amazing how good it is.

dlsspy3• 16 years ago

Woah. I had to check the username and date because I swear I wrote that. I was closer to 15, though.

dlsspy3• 16 years ago

I use ical to pull my exchange and google calendars down, then a bit of applescript to update org-mode: https://github.com/dustin/snippets/blob/master/applescript/i...

It's gross, but it means I can see everything I care about in one place. :)

Bye bye iCal, welcome org-mode

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