As much as I like spacemacs/emacs, org mode truly is one of the best things about that editor, and its amazing to see it gaining some real momentum with those outside that ecosystem. This should do wonders for org mode, but more than that, give a lot of people scared off by emacs the chance to use the amazing org mode features.
org mode is literally the only reason I have spacemacs installed. If this is at the same quality bar I may move to VSCode completely.
[edit]
It's missing a lot of the keybindings that made org mode so fast to use so not 100% there yet. Still awesome project and hope it gets continued investment like VIM mode for VSCode.
I'm not even scared off, but I won't use Emacs because it doesn't have tabs. I know about the alternatives presented, but I just want tabs. I find it funny that the kitchen sink "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping" Emacs doesn't have a built in tab implementation while the supposedly small Vim has one :)
Spacemacs with a properly setup evil bindings and a consistent bindings for all the packages and the Org mode, magit, helm, swoop modes/features are all just simply amazing and game changing.
For anyone who thinks infinitely nested lists sounds like a good way to organize things, but would prefer an online, less editor-centric (but still keyboard friendly) tool, I recommend workflowy.com (or their more recent competitor dynalist.io who add more rich content support if that is your thing).
I've been using Workflowy for years to organize my work, both for tasks and for mental maps and note-taking. I've found that it maps extremely well to the recursive nature of my mental map of an application and it subcomponents, tasks and subtasks, and so on. And overall I find that collapsible nested lists have all the benefits of a classic 'mind map' but without the constraints and 'easier to read than edit' nature of a bubble visualization.
For me the whole point of org-mode is that the stuff in it is to valuable to trust with a vendor that stores it in a proprietary format that cant be extracted in a meaningful way if the service/company folds.
I'll chime in with a thumbs up for checkvist.com (no affiliation, happy user). I discovered workflowy.com first but moved across as I was seduced by "try without registration", the export options - text, markdown, OPML - and the keyboard shortcuts.
I love Workflowy. The Broadband Mechanics guys had an excellent web-based outliner. It disappeared and I've always wondered if Workflowy was built from that.
Forgive my ignorance but what makes org mode better than markdown? Whenever I see it demonstrated it seems to be just another way of marking up content in plain text. Is there more to it?
If you're looking at it purely as an interchange format for pretty documents, no. However, once you think about actually using it, the tooling for the format is fantastically more powerful. A small selection of some of the standouts:
Emacs' better understanding of the structure gives you much better editing; I have chords for operations like "move this item up/down" and "promote/demote this item", plus excellent folding, jumping, and a measure of intellisense-like functionality.
org-babel can do anything that even looks like literate programming. I make regular use of both its notebook functionality (like ipython) and its more traditional features (compile to a documentation part and a code part), and its integration with emacs lets you do things like pop out to edit a code block in its native mode as if it were a little tiny file.
org-agenda and org-todo use the format's support for rich semantic metadata to do anything you could want from a calendar, bug tracker, organizer, note-taker, or list manager. You can tag your items with indexed keywords, arbitrary and even simultaneous to-do workflows, and arbitrary (and I do mean arbitrary, it's emacs and everything can be an elisp snippet) to-do deadlines and recurrences. And all that data isn't just a wash; a wealth of options exist for slicing and dicing your data in any number of ways, high-level overview or detailed statistics.
And on top of all that, you can render org-mode documents to nearly any markup under the sun! I regularly compose documents in org, using all of this power, and export to markdown or html to publish.
Yes. Org Mode. I.e. the huge, extremely versatile, extensible and powerful (and complicated at times) Emacs package that uses (and defines) this format.
As a way of marking text up, it's not much different from everything else. But combined with org mode, it's probably the most hacker-friendly system for managing todos, events, habits, information, and multiple-format publishing - and all of that in simple plain text.
Personally, I use org mode for blog posts on my new site, for managing my todos, meetings, notes, brainstorms and personal wiki. People also use it as a better (self-hosted!) equivalent of Jupyter notebooks, for literate programming, and plenty of other cool things.
So, TL;DR: it's not the format that's the magic, it's the software around it.
EDIT:
Oh, and tables. Org mode has the single most productive plaintext interface for manipulating tables. It can even work as a basic spreadsheet in a pinch.
Org-mode's syntax isn't necessarily better than markdown's. The selling point of Org is that it is extremely extensible and synergizes well with the rest of the Emacs ecosystem. Tools like org-export, org-babel and the org-agenda - examples of the power of Org-mode - could in theory be implemented for markdown within any other editor. Until that happens, though, Org-mode continues to be better.
Markdown is for writing human-readable text. Org-mode is for organizing many kinds of information (dates, tables, checklists...) in structured documents, while letting the user decide what that structure actually is. Both can be used for writing README files, but their feature sets are very different on the whole.
Other people have pointed out that most of the power comes from using Emacs.
However, speaking as someone who used to use Notepad++ and Markdown, and now uses Emacs and org-mode, I do think .org is a slightly better markup syntax.
I can't quite put my finger on it. For some reason, Markdown seems great for a page or two, but gets irritating if I try to write longer documents. Possibly it's just a matter of editor support for treating it as a tree and letting you move bits around.
For one, other markdowns haven't really stuck to a standard, so there are many slightly varied markdown variants and it gets annoying keeping up with them.
Another reason I prefer orgmode is the built in exporting functions are second to none. Customize the css and export to html, or my favorite is to export to latex+pdf, because everyone knows latex makes the most beautiful documents.
As an aspiring data scientist (transitioning senior sysadmin), the code snippets function and the ability to evaluate and execute code makes it the ideal data science notebook.
The power of lisp stands on its own.
Org mode task tracking, todo, GTD functions are also very awesome functions just markdown doesn't have.
That's just a few reasons, but orgmode isn't orgmode if it's in visual studio EEE version or whatever the duck new bullshit ms is doing imnsho.
I tried learning and using org mode. In my case it doesn't make it better than markdown, it's faster to use if you know the keyboard shortcuts, it's more structured if you want to export content and it provides more functionalities. But for a simple list or an agenda markdown is fine, so I personally went back to markdown like that I can do things from ST.
I have never really used org-mode in anger but it's markdown in the context of an editor to which you have access to the primitives of in lisp with lots of attached features.
We always need another way to mark up plain text content. The current dozens or so of mostly incompatible solutions is clearly not enough for the world.
I've been running my life on VimWiki[0] and calendar.vim[1] for over a year now, and while I'm sure hardcore org-mode users will scoff at its shortcomings, it's been perfect for me. I don't know why it isn't more widely used.
As a long time vim user, could I persuade you to try spacemacs in evil mode? I always liked the idea of the superior emacs ecosystem, but couldn't leave the brilliant vim command language. I found that this gives a good balance.
Or just accept that emacs is objectively better software and switch to it? Evil mode is by far the most complete/true to vim vim emulation that exists, as far as I know.
Are “checkboxes” like [ ] and [x] understood by the real org mode or would I need to define say [_] and [x] as TODO keywords if I wanted highlighting of that sort of syntax? (It’s been ~20 years since I was a heavy emacs user, looking forward to finally getting to play with Org Mode or at least an alpha of it)
[+] [-] hyperhopper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vvanders|8 years ago|reply
[edit]
It's missing a lot of the keybindings that made org mode so fast to use so not 100% there yet. Still awesome project and hope it gets continued investment like VIM mode for VSCode.
[+] [-] oblio|8 years ago|reply
I'm not even scared off, but I won't use Emacs because it doesn't have tabs. I know about the alternatives presented, but I just want tabs. I find it funny that the kitchen sink "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping" Emacs doesn't have a built in tab implementation while the supposedly small Vim has one :)
[+] [-] weaksauce|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tandav|8 years ago|reply
Another fundamental thing is narrow to subtree (C-x n s/w in org-mode or just click in workflowy)
So this is just .org syntax highliter with some snippets and shortcuts.
.org markup language is much less common than markdown, and this is bad. Nobody wants to learn 2 similar languages with conflicting syntax.
[+] [-] m12k|8 years ago|reply
I've been using Workflowy for years to organize my work, both for tasks and for mental maps and note-taking. I've found that it maps extremely well to the recursive nature of my mental map of an application and it subcomponents, tasks and subtasks, and so on. And overall I find that collapsible nested lists have all the benefits of a classic 'mind map' but without the constraints and 'easier to read than edit' nature of a bubble visualization.
[+] [-] _lbaq|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NickBusey|8 years ago|reply
It's definitely not done yet, but I've been using it as an effective replacement for Workflowy for almost a year now.
[+] [-] darrenf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spraak|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mncharity|8 years ago|reply
And for anyone who thinks hierarchies are an "OMG, you're joking, right?!?" inadequate way to organize thinking... :)
... any recommendations for an Org-ish app with good support for non-hierarchical full graphs, with flexible link and node types?
Writing one is on my todo list, for project management of long-term opportunistic projects, in VR, but in the meantime...
[+] [-] criddell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aleksei|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roryisok|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saulrh|8 years ago|reply
Emacs' better understanding of the structure gives you much better editing; I have chords for operations like "move this item up/down" and "promote/demote this item", plus excellent folding, jumping, and a measure of intellisense-like functionality.
org-babel can do anything that even looks like literate programming. I make regular use of both its notebook functionality (like ipython) and its more traditional features (compile to a documentation part and a code part), and its integration with emacs lets you do things like pop out to edit a code block in its native mode as if it were a little tiny file.
org-agenda and org-todo use the format's support for rich semantic metadata to do anything you could want from a calendar, bug tracker, organizer, note-taker, or list manager. You can tag your items with indexed keywords, arbitrary and even simultaneous to-do workflows, and arbitrary (and I do mean arbitrary, it's emacs and everything can be an elisp snippet) to-do deadlines and recurrences. And all that data isn't just a wash; a wealth of options exist for slicing and dicing your data in any number of ways, high-level overview or detailed statistics.
And on top of all that, you can render org-mode documents to nearly any markup under the sun! I regularly compose documents in org, using all of this power, and export to markdown or html to publish.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|8 years ago|reply
Yes. Org Mode. I.e. the huge, extremely versatile, extensible and powerful (and complicated at times) Emacs package that uses (and defines) this format.
As a way of marking text up, it's not much different from everything else. But combined with org mode, it's probably the most hacker-friendly system for managing todos, events, habits, information, and multiple-format publishing - and all of that in simple plain text.
Personally, I use org mode for blog posts on my new site, for managing my todos, meetings, notes, brainstorms and personal wiki. People also use it as a better (self-hosted!) equivalent of Jupyter notebooks, for literate programming, and plenty of other cool things.
So, TL;DR: it's not the format that's the magic, it's the software around it.
EDIT:
Oh, and tables. Org mode has the single most productive plaintext interface for manipulating tables. It can even work as a basic spreadsheet in a pinch.
[+] [-] dangom|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hemospectrum|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GlennS|8 years ago|reply
However, speaking as someone who used to use Notepad++ and Markdown, and now uses Emacs and org-mode, I do think .org is a slightly better markup syntax.
I can't quite put my finger on it. For some reason, Markdown seems great for a page or two, but gets irritating if I try to write longer documents. Possibly it's just a matter of editor support for treating it as a tree and letting you move bits around.
Also, the tables in org-mode are really good.
[+] [-] arca_vorago|8 years ago|reply
Another reason I prefer orgmode is the built in exporting functions are second to none. Customize the css and export to html, or my favorite is to export to latex+pdf, because everyone knows latex makes the most beautiful documents.
As an aspiring data scientist (transitioning senior sysadmin), the code snippets function and the ability to evaluate and execute code makes it the ideal data science notebook.
The power of lisp stands on its own.
Org mode task tracking, todo, GTD functions are also very awesome functions just markdown doesn't have.
That's just a few reasons, but orgmode isn't orgmode if it's in visual studio EEE version or whatever the duck new bullshit ms is doing imnsho.
[+] [-] MikusR|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] zimablue|8 years ago|reply
For example a calendar and a simple spreadsheet.
[+] [-] tomsthumb|8 years ago|reply
More obvious nesting structure
It manages many structures for you so you don’t have to type the text
Time tracking
Agenda mode and associated task states and due dates
[+] [-] ryandrake|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] based2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tambourine_man|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aleksei|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pault|8 years ago|reply
[0] https://vimwiki.github.io/ [1] https://github.com/mattn/calendar-vim
[+] [-] shanusmagnus|8 years ago|reply
https://github.com/WuTheFWasThat/vimflowy
Love this. Developer is really cool and responsive, too.
[+] [-] Y_Y|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s4vi0r|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yodon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dotdi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bzg|8 years ago|reply
In GNU Emacs, Org is both a plain text format and a set of tools to edit .org files: it's nice to see both implemented outside Emacs!
[+] [-] luord|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] alvil|8 years ago|reply
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