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Comment by mmel | Hacker News Reader

I used orgmode for a while before importing them all into Microsoft OneNote, haven't looked back

I took my OneNote stuff into OrgMode because I think there is a higher risk of OneNote being an unreadable format in the future and/or the service being turned off.

This is exactly why I moved from Evernote to org-mode. I've been a paying user for years with thousands of notes - also important legal documents. Right now, the experience was pretty good, but how will it be in 10-40 years? I'm not going to store everything on paper, as well, just to make sure.

The org-mode experience is better, yet totally future proof, because it's just flat text files.

How did you handle importing binary data you had in Evernote into org-mode? I've got a bunch of PDFs, images and other non-text data in my Evernote workbooks that I'd need to take care of.

This is a very good question! When you come up with a great answer, shoot me a mail!

I actually moved everything that is important for the very long time by hand and started creating everything that's new in org-mode. So, yeah, there's still thousands of notes in Evernote and sometime I get back to them, but those times will become fewer and fewer in time.

I'd pay for a tool that converts the EN XML to a proper org-mode file. Even better if I could do that on a regular basis, because EN still rocks most for capturing paper into an OCR'ed PDF.

I used to keep lots of stuff in Evernote, and when I switched to org-mode, I did an HTML export from Evernote and then wrote an awful Python script to convert the HTML to org-mode. I'm pretty sure all the binary data appears as links in the exported html.

Would you be so kind as to share this Python script? I'd be happy to give it a shot^^

Sorry, not got it any more. It was a one-time use thing as once I was done with Evernote, I was done for good. It was pretty specific to my use case anyway - as most of the content was tabulated student data.

Very well, then. Thanks for taking the time to respond anyway and for making thoughtful comments on your use case of org-mode, I appreciate your comments a lot!

Try pandoc -f html -t org-mode.

org-mode has the concept of attachments which you can use for pdfs, images etc.

http://orgmode.org/manual/Attachments.html

OneNote stores the notebooks in simple files -- sharing is done through Onedrive. It's very-very unlikely that suddenly and without warning Microsoft 1) encodes your notebooks in some unreadable format 2) stops the service.

I am no stranger to Emacs or Org-mode, but with an iPad, Sony touch notebook, and an Android phone, I like using my pen inputs for quick drawings or notes vs. simply typing in Org-mode. Org-mode and Emacs are very cool though, once you use them for a while, but I usually stay in Emacs and fool around too much with tons of other stuff!

Is it worth the hassle and uncertainty ? I guess that depends on what you store in the files, my UTF-8 encoded text files read by org-mode, is easily readable and information can be extracted without (almost) any effort.

Since I store my diary, ideas, manuscripts, cv's, contacts, meeting notes and a myriad of other things, I cant simply trust anything else with the data.

I've seen many cases with distraught persons realizing all their treasured data is locked into a obsolete format on a obsolete machine that just crashed.

I generate PDFs of my important OneNote notebooks, and I backup the file. It is not a complicated file format to have to worry about not having access to it for the data in future. Plain text is great and simple, but no drawings, mindmaps, photos, vector art, etc... which I can use in OneNote. My note-taking, journaling is more rich with the multimedia content. I used to use a TiddlyWiki, but I love using my Sony Vaio Flip 15 and pen to doodle, handwrite, or make lists.

I would not be surprised, they have done both in the past.

Yeah, that's why org-mode is so great, it's future proof. My dream format would be a mix between org-mode and asciidoc.

It's a valid point, but due to accessing notes from various browsers, desktop operating systems, android phones and iPads, OneNote just makes it easier for me and how I take notes in my current computing environment compared to emacs. I tried syncing Org-Mode notes to my phone with https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.matburt.mobi... for a while, but that still didn't fix all my use cases.

OneNote is a bit idiosyncratic and I've had problems using it "right" whenever I tried it.

But then I finally read some blog posts and documentation and it clicked. I'm not looking back, either.

Even though I'm Emacs-inclined (though not living in Emacs), orgmode is too unwieldy and complicated for me, and the "killer missing feature" is quick entry and editing on my mobile phone. OneNote does that very, very well.

Mind sharing the links or names of what posts or docs helped you the most with OneNote?

https://www.eng.vt.edu/sites/default/files/pageattachments/m... was pretty helpful. I don't remember the others.

>Even though I'm Emacs-inclined (though not living in Emacs), orgmode is too unwieldy and complicated for me

I do live in Emacs, but I prefer the mouse to the keyboard for tasks that can be done both ways, and balked at learning the many dozens of keyboard shortcuts ("keys", in Emacs terminology) org mode wanted me to learn.

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