Linux @lemmy.ml rar @discuss.online 1y ago

Just tried Org-mode today

Always heard about org mode but was intimidated by emacs when I could barely manage vi/vim (sorry guys). Installed a plugin for org-mode for Sublime Text today and... shit, why didn't I try this sooner?

I have thousands of text files with horrible organization, thrown around multiple directories, no common naming scheme, no hierarchy, no unified notation, just ramblings and a barely marginal attempt at organization using === as title markers. I have links and ideas buried deep and I didn't want to use a third party tool "just for managing text".

Well, my eyes are open, and thus I'm euphoric, enlightened by its brilliance. I must rewrite all my stuff in org-mode.

33 comments

Welcome to emacs, you're here forever.
- Actually I left 🫣🫣 After using it for a few years. I couldn't get a hang of it on Android, and I ended up switching to caldav for tasks and markdown for notes.
  
  Currently testing out https://silverbullet.md
  
  I did enjoy orgmode for a long time, but I got too old for init.el ..
Org mode changed my fucking life! I looked into using emacs as a simple markdown editor when I was doing a creative writing course and discovered org mode. 4 years later and I never leave emacs, everything is done through emacs and org mode. I even use it as my window manager (exwm). I bought an old chromebook to turn into an emacs machine and it's so good. It's an operating system and I don't like using a computer without it.

Some things for you to look into that I now can't live without:

Elfeed

Org-capture and capture templates

Dired

EXWM

Syncthing (not a part of emacs but means I don't have to use closed source cloud backups)

I passionately love emacs. At first I thought all they shortcuts and keybindings were a bit insane but they are second nature to me at this point. Emacs has also saved me lots of money that I would have spent on silly writing apps and aids.
- the thing that stops me from putting my whole life in emacs is how many things block the main render thread... jfc emacs needs a multithreaded rewrite. I still use emacs for /almost/ everything though.
  
  fun fact: you can browse lemmy from emacs
  
  Yep I read about that when I first looked into exwm and it is a problem. I'm lucky though, I only really use emacs and firefox so it's not a big deal for me. I wouldn't want to be using exwm if I was doing some serious multitasking and using video editing software or something. I don't know if there are plans for a multithread rewrite of emacs but I hope it happens.
  
  I'm going to set up lem.el at some point! I currently use elfeed to see lemmy posts from the communities I'm most interested in and firefox to comment or just browse about. I actually saw this post from inside elfeed originally.
I use org mode extensively, and yeah, gotta admit it's nice.

My biggest gripe is the amount of typing it still takes to annotate stuff. I often find it hard to keep up e.g. taking live notes in a class settings.

For instance, starting a new document and typing:

#+BEGIN_TITLE Class XYZ Notes #+END_TITLE

Then later on I wanna insert a code segment, and, gotta:

#+BEGIN_SRC javascript $var = "ooh, cool code, bro."; #+END_SRC

(yeah, C-c C-, s works, but I gotta remember that exists, and then also ewww generates in lowercase -- uppercase that shortcut output!)

And then I find I want a table, so lots of "|"s

There's probably better faster shortcuts for lots of this, but like everything in emacs, it's finding and learning them. Typically I need some downtime to do that, which doesn't happen if I'm e.g. trying to take notes quickly.

Anyway, despite this, I gotta agree org mode is really helpful. Happying org'ing to you!

-- Pat
- You can do #+TITLE: titletext instead for titles at least, also I guess the table stuff is reasons to do emacs because you only need to do the first | and then pressing tab/enter like excel does the rest
- You can use yasnippet or tempel with tempel-collections to create blocks from templates without having to write them all by yourself (https://github.com/mattiasdrp/pokemacs/blob/main/init.org#tempel for example)
- C-h m
  
  explains the current major mode, I use it to look for useful functions all the time.
- Thanks for the encouragement. I suppose I can make a macro or a temporary marker to replace them for proper syntax like you described when I'm in a hurry? I first have to transform some of the notes I'm using to org-mode syntax first so I can get used to this.
- Reading the docs it feels close to markdown, but most markdown implementations have a much simpler format for code blocks with syntax specified:
```javascript
$var = "ooh, cool code, bro.";
```
  
  Will turn into:
  
  $var = "ooh, cool code, bro.";
  
  (Though lemmy-ui doesn't seem to support syntax highlighting.)
- For the tables you can do 'M-x org-table-create' which then asks you for dimensions and makes it for you.
  
  I think org-capture might help you with the other stuff, you can set up templates and access them by pressing 'C-c c' and get it all inserted in whatever org file and under whatever heading you want.
There used to be an awesome vi tutorial page at the University of Hawaii but it's no longer there. You might find it archived on the internet archive way back though.
- There's also the game to help learn vim.
  
  https://vim-adventures.com/
  
  Huh! That's pretty cool. I've bookmarked the site to check it out later. Thanks!
- https://web.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html maybe?
  
  That's the one! I learned vi with that website. Turned me into a big fan.
  
  Just out of curiosity, do you know of a good resource for learning awk, sed, and grep?
What?
- You're getting downvotes, but I also have no idea what's going on in this post.
  
  You could have just done a little search https://orgmode.org/
I think that's the one.
- Many thanks, will check that one.

33 comments