Emacs Org-Mode: for Notes, Project Planning, and Authoring | Hacker News Reader

Emacs Org-Mode: for Notes, Project Planning, and Authoring

orgmode.org

62 pointsmnemonik13 comments

Wow. That's similar in vein to the project I've been working on slowly on the side for about a month now: http://bulletxt.com - it currently saves your notes via browser session but I'm working on making it like pastebin and having an account system. It'll be very much like a typical text-editor with the ability to sort tasks via drag-drop, copy-paste, and share task subtrees.

I highly doubt the emacs-type will end up using my app but it feels good to see I'm not the only one who has a need for organizing nested todo lists. I can't for the life of me figure out how everyone can deal with 1-level deep task lists.

I'm looking for a new todo list tool at the moment. How would it work for a vaguely GTD style?

You would be able to create pages (tabs) and organize them. You can create tasks and subtasks within them. Press 'tab' to indent (i.e. make a subtask). And when you want a task+subtasks out of your mind & sight, click the [-] or press [`] key to hide. There will be a 'completed tasks' list for each page with some started/completion date info. I might put some deadline/highlight/bold options per task but haven't thought about it fully yet.

It will vaguely do GTD like you put it but I don't think it will be a vitalist.com or even a simplegtd.com replacement. I don't think GTD itself is perfect and wrote untodos.com a year ago with 'today/soon/whenever' sections to help sort my life but it wasn't enough. What I really wanted was a place to immediately jot down my thoughts without any hassle when I was brainstorming and later sort them when I'm in a more organized mood. Hence there is no 'save' button in bulletxt (though you will have unlimited undo.)

So I love the web app. Super simple (especially with the keyboard shortcuts). Let me know when you have a login & saved lists will ya? Email in my profile.

A few highlights not mentioned on the front page:

* render latex fragments inline (thanks to auctex)

* embed & run code (python, ruby, haskell, R, etc)

* text-mode spreadsheet (including cell functions)

* render ascii-art drawings to png (combine with M-x artist-mode)

* export via latex to pdf or html

I really enjoy using org-mode for personal notes.

However, there's a few general issues I'd like to see improved upon:

* External Collaboration (how can I get my PM to work with me on org-mode docs?) - Something like ikiwiki that works back and forth between web edits and emacs edits.

* Searching - Ideally, this would be part of the external collaboration piece. Spotlight/rgrep is ok for now, but not great.

* Easier linking/file creation - I'd love for org-mode to incorporate some of ideas/features in VoodooPad/Tomboy for easily creating new docs and linking to them. Could probably hack something together (and I have made a shortcut for file-links that uses ido-completion), but it'd be nice for this to be a central focus.

It's strange, but a simple text file always served my needs for TODO lists, even including notes and other information related to the TODOs. It is not pretty, but I do not have trouble finding my TODOs amidst the rest of the noise, since I am consistent with my left-side "start of a TODO line" and "start of a subTODO" symbols. Sometimes I think that having a neat, pretty TODO list program would be nice, but I learned that I find my text files much more portable (Notes on iPhone, a txt on Mac, txt in linux, txt on my Windows desktop).

I'm hoping someone does an android app similar to mobile-org real soon.

In the meantime, I ssh from my phone to a box that has an up-to-date copy of my .org files.

Is there something similar to it for vim?

According to a Google Tech Talk by the creator, a few people have switched from vi to emacs to get org-mode. The obvious implication is that there is nothing comparable for vi. However, the talk was in July of 2008, so maybe someone has created something since then.

Here is a link to the talk: http://orgmode.org/GoogleTech.html

I'd be one of those.

I used vi/vim for about fifteen years before playing around with org-mode (and magit and a few other tools). After that, I felt like I'd been missing out on a lot of useful stuff.

That was about a year ago. I'm still fluent in vi (which I use sometimes), but I can get far more done far more quickly in emacs.

And I track it in org-mode. :) (which also has a view of my current google and exchange calendars and automatically saves all edits in a git repo and pushes it off my box for synchronization/backup/history).

I've been working on a todo list app for vim, loosely based on org mode. It doesn't cover many of org mode's features right now, but if you want to take a look anyway, the source is at http://git.mivok.net/gitweb/?p=vimtodo.git;a=summary

In my extensive searches, there is nothing like it anywhere, running on anything. Without exaggeration, org-mode changed the way I organize my life, both at work and at home. It has a blindingly fast development pace, is already very mature, and is much more than just todo, calendar, and outlining.

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