Getting Organized with Org Mode

http://correl.phoenixinquis.net/2014/11/25/getting-organized-with-org-mode.html

by correlr • 12 years ago

186 44 12 years ago

correl.phoenixinquis.net

andyl• 12 years ago

I've had my eye on OrgMode for awhile - it looks awesome. But I use Vim. Is there anything on Vim that compares to OrgMode?

phowat• 12 years ago

There is a clone (https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer) but it seems a little abandoned to me right now.

ecspike2• 12 years ago

VimOrganizer also REQUIRES a Emacs install for most interesting things.

https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer/blob/master/INSTALL.tx...

freshhawk3• 12 years ago

It's also buggy as hell and has seemingly random keybindings chosen (and hard coded unfortunately).

catern• 12 years ago

Put simply: No, and there probably never will be. I was in the same situation, and eventually I just switched to Emacs. The switch is pretty easy with evil-mode, and spacemacs might make it even easier.

guns• 12 years ago

http://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode

I suppose an Emacs user will find it anemic, but I use it happily every day.

gexla• 12 years ago

Use Emacs for Orgmode and VIM as an editor.

Derbasti• 12 years ago

Note that org mode is not just an outliner. Org mode is also a spreadsheet, a time tracker, a taggable and searchable database of arbitrary information, a literate programming system that can run code in dozens of languages and exchange data between them, and a document authoring system that supports a number of different backends such as HTML, LaTeX, and ODF.

There are Vim extensions for parts of this, but org mode is more than the sum of its parts. It is a universal information management system, developed with the express goal of being transparent and extensible. It really is a marvellous piece of software.

doublextremevil• 12 years ago

You can use evil-mode[0] in Emacs to have the best of both worlds

[0] https://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home

solistice2• 12 years ago

I'd just bite the bullet and install emacs. You don't need to move all your text editing work there immediately, doing [Alt]-x org-mode in a new buffer and playing around with features such as headlines (type * ) or todo's (type TODO in a headline) should be enough to get started. You can always refine your workflow in Org further, so there really isn't a minimum amount of things you need to know or learn.

edwintorok• 12 years ago

There is also https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki for writing notes and https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner for outlining.

stewbrew• 12 years ago

I actually like the viki and vikitasks plugins a lot. Unfortunately, its html/pdf/docbook converter doesn't work with current versions of ruby.

nodivbyzero• 12 years ago

I do exactly the same. Trying to replace Hansoft with Org-mode. And I'm super happy with my progress

agentultra• 12 years ago

I use org-mode rather extensively in my own day-to-day work. I really like the table support! I create my time-sheets from my task lists and format it for HTML export.

I even publish books with it.

It's really powerful.

ecspike2• 12 years ago

I've written articles and scripts with it.

In grad school, its support for LaTeX was clutch in Algorithms class where all the assignments were laden with mathematical symbols.

tptacek2• 12 years ago

With a very little bit of tinkering, org-mode is pretty great for code auditing. I have a keybinding set to add bookmarks to code, and some simple tools for easily adding out-of-band notes/comments. That, plus org-mode's native todo/prioritization.

Ixiaus2• 12 years ago

Using it for code auditing is a great idea. I use it heavily as my "issue tracker / task manager" for projects tool w/ bookmark capturing for issues (that combined with git-blame-mode is pretty amazing).

zeroDivisible• 12 years ago

Any chance that you can write a little bit more about this? I've dug my old Emacs config files some time ago and now when evil-mode gives such an awesome alternative to Vim (at least at my skill level), I'm using Emacs for most of my daily text editing.

I've used org-mode previously and even though I didn't had a chance to dig into it, I've seen a lot of potential there.

tptacek2• 12 years ago

I'm working on a blog post about it now (unfortunately, I've been doing that for about 3 months now).

philjackson3• 12 years ago

It's not nearly as powerful as Org itself, but I've knocked up an org-a-like at http://yipgo.com that might interest people.

Ixiaus2• 12 years ago

I like the design. I'm working on a similar service to bring org-mode to more people other than Emacs geeks (similar to how Slack brought IRC to a wider audience).

Current productivity tools fall quite short in comparison.

philjackson3• 12 years ago

To give you a kick start; things I would consider for Yipgo 2.0:

* Lots of people understandably don't trust an unknown company/person with their potentially secret TODO lists - add dropbox/drive support from the offset. Also means emacs/vim users can hack the files directly.

* "Normal" people like the agenda and wish they could interact with the items from it - defeats the point, but after yipgo was on lifehacker, I picked up a new type of non-technical user who now make up the majority of my users.

* Make sure it's mobile friendly (turns out the editor I chose doesn't work properly on Android, or at all on IOS).

* Possibly a Yipgo 3.0 thing, but people editing at the same time, ala docs, would be great (something I've wanted).

Actually, if you want to get in touch to see if we can combine forces drop me a mail, phil at apiaxle.com. I'd quite like to monetize the service if possible.

solistice2• 12 years ago

Org-mode can be used without being an emacs geek though. The wife of the friend of mine who first showed me emacs and org uses it as a self-management / note-keeping application, and whilst she might be at least slightly geeky, she's not really a tech person.

Once I found out how much you can really do with it, I went on a prosetylizing spree and got a couple of friends as well as my little brother into it. Whilst they're somewhat tech inclined, they're by no means emacs geeks, but they got into it after me showcasing and explaining at least some of the features.

Personally, i think that the only thing that's really essential in getting people into it is a tutorial level to it, similar to interactive tutorials for programming languages (I recall a marvelous ruby one from a year or two back, but I'm unable to find it). Org-mode already scales beautifully regarding complexity, and i think the main thing that turns people away from it is that the manual is a literal textbook and only silly people study it back to back. Or that they're using vim and don't want to switch to emacs, but that's not likely the group of people you're targeting.

ehurrell• 12 years ago

That's great, looks really slick! I know you've posted what you'd consider for 2.0, if you are taking suggestions my ideal non-emacs org would be iOS compatible and sync with webDAV/Dropbox.

tomjen32• 12 years ago

I have always wanted to use org mode, but it comes down to that I use more than one computer and might want to share my todos with people who are not emacs geeks: how do you guys handle these things?

lmedinas• 12 years ago

Org mode files are plain text so your friends will see beautifully organized text files.

freshhawk3• 12 years ago

Haha, no they won't. They'll see weird stars everywhere and a confusing and weirdly indented chunk of text (they aren't using a monospaced font and their edi^H^H^Hword processor mangled the line wrapping).

At least that's been my entire experience. I wish that weren't true however, and it's not like other text markup formats are any better.

LiveTheDream• 12 years ago

You can export org mode files as HTML, PDF, LaTex, even iCalendar. Try C-c C-e to see options.

frankzinger2• 12 years ago

Another useful export format is ODT (and probably ODF).

tomjen32• 12 years ago

Ah but I would have to manually copy them between computers, right?

unsignedint• 12 years ago

I had to deal with this situation in multiple levels. I manage an anime convention, involving many levels of people -- some wants them on calendar, some wants as a file like PDF, while I also wanted to provide web access to those info, and Org-mode fits nicely with this situation. (and I was a sole user of Emacs/Org-mode.)

As it's just a text data, Git worked great to keep it up to date.

Only thing is that I haven't yet to find the good way to handle automatically managing mutual links (auto generating link from A to B, when I link from B to A -- I'd actually like to know if there's any suggestions.), which would make this process much clean!

http://hideki.hclippr.com/2012/04/17/whitepaper-org-mode-at-...

40pdev• 12 years ago

Question: is it worth learning Emacs in order to use Org mode?

bigbugbag• 12 years ago

Learning is emacs is not a destination it is a journey.

The good news is you don't have to learn emacs to benefit from org-mode, give it a try. Print yourself the reference cards for emacs[1] and org-mode[2], go through the tutorial that shows up when you first launch emacs and you'll know enough to start using org-mode and make your own opinion.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/refcard.pdf [2]: http://orgmode.org/orgcard.pdf

PS: if you have vi/vim experience/preference you can put some evil in your emacs: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil

morazow• 12 years ago

I also use org-mode, mostly for writing documents. Customizing embedded code, referencing the lines and in the end publishing to beautiful pdf, html, markdown is really awesome.

Getting Organized with Org Mode

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