6 ms·

Org tutorials

189 points by dargscisyhp 1y ago

hodanli 1y ago
i like logseq as somewhat modern iteration of org-mode
- account-5 1y ago
  What lead you to choose that over say obsidian, notion, Joplin, and the many others that pretty much do the same thing?
  - innocentoldguy 1y ago
    I switched from Obsidian to Logseq because Logseq has better block-level support, better embedded image previews, and more functionality out of the box without having to rely on plugins Why not Notion or Joplin? I like Logseq's outline format better than Joplin's long-form note taking format, and I just don't like Notion at all for purely subjective reasons.
  - jcynix 1y ago
    Orgmode is more than just a note keeping tool, it is a complete and complex toolbox. I can use tables like a spreadsheet, include source code snippets, etc. Joplin is fine, especially for shared note keeping. We store its notes on a private WebDAV server and everyone in the family can access these notes from their laptops or mobile devices. But the editing capabilities of Joplin are dismal. Try to swap lines (on a smartphone, no mouse), change the same term in a number of notes, or do some more complex editing operations. These are easily done in emacs/orgmode, even on a smartphone or tablet ... ,at least with emacs running in Termux under Android.
  - solarkraft 1y ago
    They do not do the same thing. Logseq is an outliner (though it does have a document mode), which means a deep interaction with the document‘s hierarchy: You can zoom into blocks, collapse them (not ephemerally, it’s saved in the document) and link to them. I’d probably use Obsidian if it had those features (since Logseq is still as buggy as it was years ago), but the last time I checked it did not.
uludag 1y ago
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 interests would keep turning the churn machine: new UI changes, enshitification, monthly subscriptions, etc. It's such a refreshing feeling, sitting back, and feeling assured that for the next presumably 25 years of my career, and perhaps for the rest of my life, I can still be using org-mode, and it will always work as I learned it, but it's flexible enough to easily implement extensions.
- lycopodiopsida 1y ago
  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.
  - uludag 1y ago
    I totally understand this situation. I actually never had a good mobile set up when I was on iOS and only when switching to Android was able to finally setup something I liked using orgzly-revived, syncthing, and android Emacs. As for GTD, I never did proper GTD until about a year ago, after reading the GTD book. I don't consider my life complex by any means, but I've been surprised at the amount of projects in my life that have been reified in my system.
    - lycopodiopsida 1y ago
      I am practicing GTD since ~15 years already, but while I stick to some practices (review, inbox and so on), I have a simpler setup for projects and files, sufficient for my needs. One of the lessons is that GTD and productivity systems are not about tools - I am equally productive (or unproductive) in emacs, omnifocus, reminders. The advantage of OF and reminders is that I don't have to look after sync, workflow-wise I quickly learn to navigate around idiosyncrasies of each of them and settle on the same workflow, helping myself with scripts and glue code where I need it. This said, I still keep my long-term notes in denote, because it works and I don't trust Apple Notes for long-term stuff (missing built-in export).
thecsw 1y ago
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 kinds of nice QoL things for my website [2]. Something that as the other commenter here noted—I can rely on orgmode for many decades to come. [1] https://github.com/thecsw/darkness https://github.com/thecsw/darkness [2] https://sandyuraz.com https://sandyuraz.com
- eviks 1y ago
  > As of 2025-02, there is no formal Org-mode syntax definition. is very far away from perfection
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - nanna 1y ago
    > As of 2025-02, there is no formal Org-mode syntax definition. Confusingly, you seem to have taken this from Karl Voit's website, without referencing having done so? https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/ https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/ And then taken the sentence out of context. His point is that even though there isn't a formal Org-mode syntax definition, there is an informal one in that all of the Org mode syntax elements are part of the Emacs Org-mode implementation. The latest Org-mode implementation /is/ the spec. This is in comparison with Markdown where there are numerous syntax definitions and no implementation which includes all elements and everything is a mess.
    - eviks 1y ago
      > taken the sentence out of context > This is in comparison with Markdown This context is irrelevant, I'm not discussing how bad markdown is, but how great org mode is. > The latest Org-mode implementation /is/ the spec. You're just conflating the terms, that's not what a spec is, and having one has benefits that living impls don't have
Nesco 1y ago
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?
- stevekemp 1y ago
  First of all "emacs" rather than "eMacs". But to answer your main question, markdown is used for writing text which can then be converted to HTML, PDF, etc, etc. It's used just to format things. org can be used in that way, and it might feel better/worse depending on what you feel about the choices used for various formatting styles. However the big gain of org is that you can use it to format dynamic tables, handle todo-lists, have deadlines, recurring tasks, etc, etc. It makes no sense to compare org-files with markdown-files. It's like saying "I use notepad how does Excel help you do more?" - they do different thigns. Now, much like excel, most people don't do everythign with org, but they can if they want to. It is extraordinarily flexible, and can be extended with custom lisp code if necessary. I track rental properties with an org-document for each property, and I get per-year profit/loss statements in a neat format with graphs too. You can't do that with markdown.
- impulsivepuppet 1y ago
  Org mode offers so much more than just syntax. You can use org files as a calendar, a todo/issue tracker with time accounting, a diary/knowledge base (zettelkasten, org-roam), as a literate programming tool (think jupyter code notebooks but for practically any programming language with org-babel), or a publishing tool (static site generator, latex/pdf export) all at the same time. To be quite frank, Org mode is a lifestyle which existed long before Notion or Obsidian did. Saying that it has a barrier to entry is a bit of an understatement. Having said all that, quite ironically, I've migrated over to Obsidian because I started using Intellij more for work, meaning that I don't need Emacs for its other capabilities all that much.
- jcynix 1y ago
  Markdown is a markup tool, i.e. you decorate your text. Orgmode on the other hand is a complete toolbox where you can add tags to notes, filter on these tags, manage calendars, etc. You can enter tables both for formatting and spreadsheet like calculation. And you can insert snippets of code into your notes, like #+BEGIN_SRC shell ls | wc -l find . -type f -name "*foo*" #+END_SRC (or javascript, elisp, html, ... instead of shell) where the markup is changed appropriately in these regions. You can even augment orgmode with elisp code if you are so inclined.
NoboruWataya 1y ago
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?
- doctor_blood 1y ago
  What would be the point? Without emacs all you're left with is another markup language.
  - sligor 1y ago
    What makes org mode tied to emacs ? I really need to try org mode to understand it. If only I had time...
    - Torwald 1y ago
      Elisp, but not really elisp, more the environment of elisp. It's a LISP machine. Hard to explain, it's a different way of computing. Another living instance of this model of computing is a Smalltalk image. Others have written about how LISPing makes you a better coder much better than I could. Try it out!
      - codethief 1y ago
        I disagree, Elisp doesn't tie org to Emacs at all. What does tie org to Emacs is the fact that Emacs' org-mode (i.e. the mode you use to edit org files) provides a great DevEx when editing org files, including lots of convenience shortcuts. (Again, the fact that those are written in Elisp is irrelevant.)
        skydhash 1y ago
        It does. A lot of advanced options in Org have escape hatches for more code, and the fact that you configure org in Elisp and are free to hack on org provided functions due to the Elips environment add to its versality.
anthk 1y ago
Org-Mode with Hyperbole it's like doing computing in 2070, but without bullshit AI LLM's. Try it and you'll understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdgpb0TeQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdgpb0TeQo If you are a Lisp programmer, you can OFC use ob-lisp with it (and maybe there's ob-elisp to learn Elisp in a literate way). This is like a Jupyter netbook, with steroids. Org Babel: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/ https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/ Supported languages: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/index.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/index.h...
- aquariusDue 1y ago
  Hyperbole is the weirdest thing ever (in a good way), I can't exactly describe it to people either because it's a monolithic package that is made up of a number of packages (like the one for window control) but once you start using it and adopting it gradually you reach an epiphany. At that point the usefulness of Hyperbole is evident but until then nada, it seems more hassle than it's worth (though there are moments when it has bugs relating to other packages, like org, but those are quickly fixed by the maintainers in my experience). Though a downside is that you end up curating a workflow that is so tailored to you that it seems weird from the outside, if it ever leaks, i.e. weird notation in git commit messages. That's due to sprinkling implicit and explicit "buttons" (pieces of text roughtly) throughout text (source code or otherwise).
  - tra3 1y ago
    Can you share some of your use cases? Been on my radar for a while..
    - aquariusDue 1y ago
      The most straightforward would be opening URLs in various places. Sure, org-mode has something like this built-in and there's the Embark package that even has the embark-dwim command which saves you a keystroke basically, but I still prefer Hyperbole for this bit and it doesn't interfere with Embark either. Same goes for file and folder paths. There's also more fine grained stuff like opening specific commits on GitHub for example. E.g. throw a gh#rswgnu/hyperbole/5ae3550 and when you M-RET on that "button" it automagically opens it in your browser. You can insert "buttons" with labels on the fly in a buffer interactively by going through a menu like {C-h h i c} and specifying a label, its type and so on from a list of previously defined button types with their own properties. Those buttons in turn can call any command with preset arguments. I can go to a file or hunk from the Magit status buffer by pressing the aforementioned Action button (binded to M-RET or a side mouse button too in my case). I barely scratched the surface really.
silcoon 1y ago
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
- medstrom 1y ago
  Logseq has buggy syncing and imposes some odd constraints on your files if you want to keep it easy to edit the same file from both Logseq and Emacs, but in principle, it's all there! Not sure if it can execute code blocks tho.
- ubermonkey 1y ago
  After a few attempts over the years to move to emacs -- all them failures -- what finally got me to use it consistently was Org. The funny thing is I still don't use it for coding or other writing; emacs is on my computer as the org platform. I am VERY interested in Obsidian, which seems like it could definitely support an org-like system. It's _almost_ there as far as my own use cases are concerned, and the seamless sync to mobile is really enticing. But goddammit, my fingers now know how to move through org buffers pretty well, and Obsidian lags on that front, so I may be stuck. ;)
- kleinishere 1y ago
  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?
- dbmikus 1y ago
  Check out Org-Roam: https://www.orgroam.com/ https://www.orgroam.com/ It has some Obsidian-like features inside Org Mode. So, if you're looking for an easier-to-use UI, it's not it, but if you're looking for Obsidian-like linking and backlinking, it has that.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
moi2388 1y ago
I tried several times, but I just can’t get EMacs or org mode working. It’s like every single functionality only works 90%, and breaks on the last 10% required to actually be a valid alternative :(
- nanna 1y ago
  I think a hurdle one has to make to adopt Emacs is to stop expecting things to work as you might have come to expect them from other programmes. Sometimes this is for historical reasons, but the main reason is that Emacs just has it's own logic, which may seem counterintuitive at first but often has very good reasons behind it. Try to persist past through that final 10% and you may find there are reasons why they're as they are. And when you need help use the channels out there...
- everybodyknows 1y ago
  Try asking your favorite LLM. ChatGPT4o has been a godsend for adding helpful snippets of Elisp to my own ~/.emacs file.
jrm4 1y ago
Funny, I just posted a standalone question but I'll repeat it here: Anyone out there using Generative AI to modify their environment et al? Basically to attack the whole "lisp" thing? I see the potential in the power and would love to get back into it (I used Org-Mode for about a year then gave up on it) and wondering if anyone else has tried.
- Kiboneu 1y ago
  Yes! I experimented with it on my EXWM setup. After some back and forth via Aider, it made me a module to help me control and monitor tasks on my timewarrior setup, giving me a pomodoro-like indicator on my taskbar (changing colors as it approaches one hour). It was a cool experience! I had it evaluate the code via commands to the emacs daemon, without reloading EXWM (ballsy, but I was prepared for failure). EXWM is extremely flexible, but there is a high barrier of entry to using and customizing it. Having an LLM embedded to a live-evaluate desktop environment makes the interface more approachable without reducing its flexibility as much. It also allows you to create explicit controls that map to the user’s muscle memory and sub-symbolic sensing of the environment, while staying out of the way during normal usage — a different paradigm than embedding an agent as an interface in its own right to control the environment (via speech or text). Since open source software is readily modifiable, maybe soon it will unironically be the year of the linux desktop.
Scarblac 1y ago
Is there are good way to share org files between a laptop and a phone? I want to mark to-dos as done, add new ones and notes etc from both.
- dargscisyhp 1y ago
  Syncthing, maybe?
tomtomhowling 1y ago
[dead]

Org tutorials

189 points by dargscisyhp 1y ago

hodanli 1y ago

i like logseq as somewhat modern iteration of org-mode

account-5 1y ago
What lead you to choose that over say obsidian, notion, Joplin, and the many others that pretty much do the same thing?
- innocentoldguy 1y ago
  I switched from Obsidian to Logseq because Logseq has better block-level support, better embedded image previews, and more functionality out of the box without having to rely on plugins Why not Notion or Joplin? I like Logseq's outline format better than Joplin's long-form note taking format, and I just don't like Notion at all for purely subjective reasons.
- jcynix 1y ago
  Orgmode is more than just a note keeping tool, it is a complete and complex toolbox. I can use tables like a spreadsheet, include source code snippets, etc. Joplin is fine, especially for shared note keeping. We store its notes on a private WebDAV server and everyone in the family can access these notes from their laptops or mobile devices. But the editing capabilities of Joplin are dismal. Try to swap lines (on a smartphone, no mouse), change the same term in a number of notes, or do some more complex editing operations. These are easily done in emacs/orgmode, even on a smartphone or tablet ... ,at least with emacs running in Termux under Android.
- solarkraft 1y ago
  They do not do the same thing. Logseq is an outliner (though it does have a document mode), which means a deep interaction with the document‘s hierarchy: You can zoom into blocks, collapse them (not ephemerally, it’s saved in the document) and link to them. I’d probably use Obsidian if it had those features (since Logseq is still as buggy as it was years ago), but the last time I checked it did not.

uludag 1y ago

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 interests would keep turning the churn machine: new UI changes, enshitification, monthly subscriptions, etc. It's such a refreshing feeling, sitting back, and feeling assured that for the next presumably 25 years of my career, and perhaps for the rest of my life, I can still be using org-mode, and it will always work as I learned it, but it's flexible enough to easily implement extensions.

lycopodiopsida 1y ago
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.
- uludag 1y ago
  I totally understand this situation. I actually never had a good mobile set up when I was on iOS and only when switching to Android was able to finally setup something I liked using orgzly-revived, syncthing, and android Emacs. As for GTD, I never did proper GTD until about a year ago, after reading the GTD book. I don't consider my life complex by any means, but I've been surprised at the amount of projects in my life that have been reified in my system.
  - lycopodiopsida 1y ago
    I am practicing GTD since ~15 years already, but while I stick to some practices (review, inbox and so on), I have a simpler setup for projects and files, sufficient for my needs. One of the lessons is that GTD and productivity systems are not about tools - I am equally productive (or unproductive) in emacs, omnifocus, reminders. The advantage of OF and reminders is that I don't have to look after sync, workflow-wise I quickly learn to navigate around idiosyncrasies of each of them and settle on the same workflow, helping myself with scripts and glue code where I need it. This said, I still keep my long-term notes in denote, because it works and I don't trust Apple Notes for long-term stuff (missing built-in export).

thecsw 1y ago

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 kinds of nice QoL things for my website [2]. Something that as the other commenter here noted—I can rely on orgmode for many decades to come. [1] https://github.com/thecsw/darkness https://github.com/thecsw/darkness [2] https://sandyuraz.com https://sandyuraz.com

eviks 1y ago
> As of 2025-02, there is no formal Org-mode syntax definition. is very far away from perfection
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nanna 1y ago
  > As of 2025-02, there is no formal Org-mode syntax definition. Confusingly, you seem to have taken this from Karl Voit's website, without referencing having done so? https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/ https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/ And then taken the sentence out of context. His point is that even though there isn't a formal Org-mode syntax definition, there is an informal one in that all of the Org mode syntax elements are part of the Emacs Org-mode implementation. The latest Org-mode implementation /is/ the spec. This is in comparison with Markdown where there are numerous syntax definitions and no implementation which includes all elements and everything is a mess.
  - eviks 1y ago
    > taken the sentence out of context > This is in comparison with Markdown This context is irrelevant, I'm not discussing how bad markdown is, but how great org mode is. > The latest Org-mode implementation /is/ the spec. You're just conflating the terms, that's not what a spec is, and having one has benefits that living impls don't have

Nesco 1y ago

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?

stevekemp 1y ago
First of all "emacs" rather than "eMacs". But to answer your main question, markdown is used for writing text which can then be converted to HTML, PDF, etc, etc. It's used just to format things. org can be used in that way, and it might feel better/worse depending on what you feel about the choices used for various formatting styles. However the big gain of org is that you can use it to format dynamic tables, handle todo-lists, have deadlines, recurring tasks, etc, etc. It makes no sense to compare org-files with markdown-files. It's like saying "I use notepad how does Excel help you do more?" - they do different thigns. Now, much like excel, most people don't do everythign with org, but they can if they want to. It is extraordinarily flexible, and can be extended with custom lisp code if necessary. I track rental properties with an org-document for each property, and I get per-year profit/loss statements in a neat format with graphs too. You can't do that with markdown.
impulsivepuppet 1y ago
Org mode offers so much more than just syntax. You can use org files as a calendar, a todo/issue tracker with time accounting, a diary/knowledge base (zettelkasten, org-roam), as a literate programming tool (think jupyter code notebooks but for practically any programming language with org-babel), or a publishing tool (static site generator, latex/pdf export) all at the same time. To be quite frank, Org mode is a lifestyle which existed long before Notion or Obsidian did. Saying that it has a barrier to entry is a bit of an understatement. Having said all that, quite ironically, I've migrated over to Obsidian because I started using Intellij more for work, meaning that I don't need Emacs for its other capabilities all that much.
jcynix 1y ago
Markdown is a markup tool, i.e. you decorate your text. Orgmode on the other hand is a complete toolbox where you can add tags to notes, filter on these tags, manage calendars, etc. You can enter tables both for formatting and spreadsheet like calculation. And you can insert snippets of code into your notes, like #+BEGIN_SRC shell ls | wc -l find . -type f -name "*foo*" #+END_SRC (or javascript, elisp, html, ... instead of shell) where the markup is changed appropriately in these regions. You can even augment orgmode with elisp code if you are so inclined.

NoboruWataya 1y ago

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?

doctor_blood 1y ago
What would be the point? Without emacs all you're left with is another markup language.
- sligor 1y ago
  What makes org mode tied to emacs ? I really need to try org mode to understand it. If only I had time...
  - Torwald 1y ago
    Elisp, but not really elisp, more the environment of elisp. It's a LISP machine. Hard to explain, it's a different way of computing. Another living instance of this model of computing is a Smalltalk image. Others have written about how LISPing makes you a better coder much better than I could. Try it out!
    - codethief 1y ago
      I disagree, Elisp doesn't tie org to Emacs at all. What does tie org to Emacs is the fact that Emacs' org-mode (i.e. the mode you use to edit org files) provides a great DevEx when editing org files, including lots of convenience shortcuts. (Again, the fact that those are written in Elisp is irrelevant.)
      - skydhash 1y ago
        It does. A lot of advanced options in Org have escape hatches for more code, and the fact that you configure org in Elisp and are free to hack on org provided functions due to the Elips environment add to its versality.

anthk 1y ago

Org-Mode with Hyperbole it's like doing computing in 2070, but without bullshit AI LLM's. Try it and you'll understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdgpb0TeQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdgpb0TeQo If you are a Lisp programmer, you can OFC use ob-lisp with it (and maybe there's ob-elisp to learn Elisp in a literate way). This is like a Jupyter netbook, with steroids. Org Babel: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/ https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/ Supported languages: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/index.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/index.h...

aquariusDue 1y ago
Hyperbole is the weirdest thing ever (in a good way), I can't exactly describe it to people either because it's a monolithic package that is made up of a number of packages (like the one for window control) but once you start using it and adopting it gradually you reach an epiphany. At that point the usefulness of Hyperbole is evident but until then nada, it seems more hassle than it's worth (though there are moments when it has bugs relating to other packages, like org, but those are quickly fixed by the maintainers in my experience). Though a downside is that you end up curating a workflow that is so tailored to you that it seems weird from the outside, if it ever leaks, i.e. weird notation in git commit messages. That's due to sprinkling implicit and explicit "buttons" (pieces of text roughtly) throughout text (source code or otherwise).
- tra3 1y ago
  Can you share some of your use cases? Been on my radar for a while..
  - aquariusDue 1y ago
    The most straightforward would be opening URLs in various places. Sure, org-mode has something like this built-in and there's the Embark package that even has the embark-dwim command which saves you a keystroke basically, but I still prefer Hyperbole for this bit and it doesn't interfere with Embark either. Same goes for file and folder paths. There's also more fine grained stuff like opening specific commits on GitHub for example. E.g. throw a gh#rswgnu/hyperbole/5ae3550 and when you M-RET on that "button" it automagically opens it in your browser. You can insert "buttons" with labels on the fly in a buffer interactively by going through a menu like {C-h h i c} and specifying a label, its type and so on from a list of previously defined button types with their own properties. Those buttons in turn can call any command with preset arguments. I can go to a file or hunk from the Magit status buffer by pressing the aforementioned Action button (binded to M-RET or a side mouse button too in my case). I barely scratched the surface really.

silcoon 1y ago

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

medstrom 1y ago
Logseq has buggy syncing and imposes some odd constraints on your files if you want to keep it easy to edit the same file from both Logseq and Emacs, but in principle, it's all there! Not sure if it can execute code blocks tho.
ubermonkey 1y ago
After a few attempts over the years to move to emacs -- all them failures -- what finally got me to use it consistently was Org. The funny thing is I still don't use it for coding or other writing; emacs is on my computer as the org platform. I am VERY interested in Obsidian, which seems like it could definitely support an org-like system. It's _almost_ there as far as my own use cases are concerned, and the seamless sync to mobile is really enticing. But goddammit, my fingers now know how to move through org buffers pretty well, and Obsidian lags on that front, so I may be stuck. ;)
kleinishere 1y ago
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?
dbmikus 1y ago
Check out Org-Roam: https://www.orgroam.com/ https://www.orgroam.com/ It has some Obsidian-like features inside Org Mode. So, if you're looking for an easier-to-use UI, it's not it, but if you're looking for Obsidian-like linking and backlinking, it has that.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

moi2388 1y ago

I tried several times, but I just can’t get EMacs or org mode working. It’s like every single functionality only works 90%, and breaks on the last 10% required to actually be a valid alternative :(

nanna 1y ago
I think a hurdle one has to make to adopt Emacs is to stop expecting things to work as you might have come to expect them from other programmes. Sometimes this is for historical reasons, but the main reason is that Emacs just has it's own logic, which may seem counterintuitive at first but often has very good reasons behind it. Try to persist past through that final 10% and you may find there are reasons why they're as they are. And when you need help use the channels out there...
everybodyknows 1y ago
Try asking your favorite LLM. ChatGPT4o has been a godsend for adding helpful snippets of Elisp to my own ~/.emacs file.

jrm4 1y ago

Funny, I just posted a standalone question but I'll repeat it here: Anyone out there using Generative AI to modify their environment et al? Basically to attack the whole "lisp" thing? I see the potential in the power and would love to get back into it (I used Org-Mode for about a year then gave up on it) and wondering if anyone else has tried.

Kiboneu 1y ago
Yes! I experimented with it on my EXWM setup. After some back and forth via Aider, it made me a module to help me control and monitor tasks on my timewarrior setup, giving me a pomodoro-like indicator on my taskbar (changing colors as it approaches one hour). It was a cool experience! I had it evaluate the code via commands to the emacs daemon, without reloading EXWM (ballsy, but I was prepared for failure). EXWM is extremely flexible, but there is a high barrier of entry to using and customizing it. Having an LLM embedded to a live-evaluate desktop environment makes the interface more approachable without reducing its flexibility as much. It also allows you to create explicit controls that map to the user’s muscle memory and sub-symbolic sensing of the environment, while staying out of the way during normal usage — a different paradigm than embedding an agent as an interface in its own right to control the environment (via speech or text). Since open source software is readily modifiable, maybe soon it will unironically be the year of the linux desktop.

Scarblac 1y ago

Is there are good way to share org files between a laptop and a phone? I want to mark to-dos as done, add new ones and notes etc from both.

dargscisyhp 1y ago
Syncthing, maybe?

tomtomhowling 1y ago

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