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Comment by madballster | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of comments arguing that it's not "worth it" to spend dozens of hours to "get into org-mode" when there are "intuitive tools" such as Evernote or Trello or Todoist etc.

What some are missing is the fact that low barriers to entry sometimes turn into barriers to growth at a later stage. After (!) one has sunk thousands of hours into them. I used to keep my academic notes in Evernote and it turned into hell after about 2,000 notes and a few years of work. I couldn't find things when I needed them, it didn't support a non-linear mode of work. It became my personal black hole that swallowed up information but never gave it back.

With org-mode I have created my very own filing and research system. After years of using it and thousands of articles I find things. Quickly. Now, with org-roam, I create hubs of knowledge and ideas that I can come back to at a later point without worrying about linearity or chronology. No longer do I need to know where things are. I know what ideas are in there. If I don't like a certain workflow, I can grow, develop or change my filing and note-taking system as I see fit.

In my opinion, org-mode eliminates the risk of hitting any sort of barrier after years of sunk costs.

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Also, people forget that their favourite SaaS-du-jour probably won't be around after their "Incredible Journey" ends and there won't be a migration path, or it's going to cost too many hours to be worth it.

Emacs will be here for us in the next decades, even well after our career ends, and then some.

Besides, Org is not complicated. It has lots of features, but at its core it's just a plain text outliner with hyperlinks, keywords and timestamps.

Org is like Common Lisp in many ways. It offers you lots of paradigms to build your own workflows, but you don't need to use or understand them initially.

An it might suffer from the same PR problem Emacs has. Manuals, tutorials and guides throw all features at once without focussing on core concepts first. And it's overwhelming for newcomers.

Would really appreciate links to guides that don't suffer from this.

Sadly, I am not aware of any.

Perhaps some articles and the book in https://www.masteringemacs.org/.

At some point, I would like to write an introduction to Emacs, Org, Notmuch and friends. Their docs are great if you have been using Emacs for a long time. But if you are a newcomer, the learning curve is really steep. And it shouldn't be like that. At their core all these are conceptually simple, easy to understand, and to hack.

Emacs and friends are IMHO really worth investing time into due to the Lindy effect. They will be around when most of the current software is gone. Besides, a text-mode Lisp VM (which is what Emacs is), makes your life as a developer much more enjoyable.

I've tried org-mode a few times, but I just couldn't get over emacs and the mobile app situation.

For now I've settled on Apple Notes which works well with the iPad and pencil across all of my devices. I also use Drafts for longer form writing. The downside is that I'm trapped in Apple's ecosystem, but I'm already deeply there so I might as well embrace it.

There are now several solutions for org-mode on mobile. Organice, beorg, org-web, Orgzly etc.

They are all very nice. I really only need to capture new things on mobile for the most part, so my needs are minimal. What holds me back, however, is not supporting Google Drive for synchronization, as I use that anyway. As is, I would have to use another service like dropbox to sync mobile edits back.

Wait - I see that org-web says it does sync with Google drive, so I will try that out. Seems like I can use it by self hosting and not requiring giving google credentials out to some scary startupm (or large corporate entity I don't want to trust either).

Thanks for the tip!

Capturing is very simple since it is just plain text. For example here is a guide which uses siri on iOS to capture voice notes to your org-mode inbox: https://orgmode-exocortex.com/2020/04/30/voice-capture-org-m...

There is also a guide for android https://orgmode-exocortex.com/2020/04/28/voice-capture-org-m...

Organice does support Google Drive, Dropbox and WebDAV. (Organice is a fork of org-web)

More fundamentally, if you (anyone reading) can think of any easily usable way to sync files between devices, I think it might not be too hard to get Organice/etc. to support that as yet another backend.

Syncthing?

And if needed, we'll migrate to it. Meanwhile, any SaaS-du-jour that actually has data export does the job right now. I'm more interested in moving forward than in noodling on a system that, once it will be completed, will maybe help me make progress on my actual goals.

They also don't give me RSI, which is a welcome change from emacs.

Just remember that, just like you don't actually have a backup until you successfully restore a system from it, the SaaS-du-jour doesn't actually have data export until you use it and import it somewhere, and verify all the data you care about survived the transition.

There's nothing wrong with using alternative solutions, but your critique of Emacs is mostly FUD and a repetition of cliches. Your two points are:

1. Org-mode (or Emacs?) is not completed, by which you imply it is in some kind of premature state that it's not ready to use. like some kind of "version 0.2 beta, use at your own risk". Nothing is further from the truth. Org-mode is currently on stable release 9.3.6. It has been tried and tested for many, many years and is widely used in its niche.

The fact that it is under active development is not a shortcoming, it's a plus. Unless you're arguing by analogy that you cannot use such software as "Chrome" or "TensorFlow" because they have not yet been completed.

2. RSI - I've heard this argument multiple times, and I believe that it actually might affect some people. I, for one, have been using Emacs for well over 20 years and have never had any problems along those lines. But for those who do experience issues, there are multiple solutions around that you might want to give a try. They range from remapping of some central keys to completely different ways of inputting commands, e.g., inspired by vim.

Don't get me wrong, you can user whatever you want. But if these two points are the only reason you shy away from giving org-mode a try, do not worry and don't let them stand in your way.

I mostly refer to the fact that org-mode isn't a complete system - it lacks many integrations. It is, in every article I read, an excuse to faff about with configuring things.

In fact that's pretty much the start of every org mode article - "here's how to change your config file"

(There's nothing wrong with that - I totally enjoy it for some things. I just need a workflow now, not when I've put all the pieces together)

And the "remapping central keys"/"completely different ways of inputting commands" is exactly the faffing about I refer to as well. I know I can customize it to my heart's content. I've done that. I've written way too much elisp. I don't want to any more. I want something that works for me, as out-of-the-box as possible. Many SaaS offerings do.

It's not to say you shouldn't use org mode if it works for you. But I'm not "going to give it a try" if I have a solution that works right now. Nope. Thanks. I have things I'd rather do.

Fair enough, there's nothing wrong using something else if you've found something that works for you. But that is a different statement than what came across from your first post which was worded a bit more negatively, and sounded slightly like bashing (to me anyway).

Also note that my point about the remapping was this: I never had RSI issues with Emacs, so for me it actually works pretty much out of the box. If you experience certain problems, Emacs provides what it takes to adjust it to your specific needs. Can these other SaaS tools do that too?

It's great that not everyone has to use the same tool to get the job done. Variety rules.

I've been using DynaList, so I guess I am vulnerable to this risk. But for some reason I could not figure out a way to make org mode work across all platforms in anyway close to as seamlessly. I was able to sometimes get cross-linking across but it was still pretty clunky. if I wanted to use org mode and I wanted to send random articles and other things to it via share function or send function and a mobile phone or iPad, edited on desktop in emacs, and then search find edit etc from any mobile device, is this really a possibility?

Here were my "sunk costs" of org-mode.

1) org-mode makes a bad spreadsheet

2) No good Android interface, Orgzly is OK, but doesn't do advanced features and often crashed for me.

3) Despite lots of trying, I couldn't get "into" using the Emacs shortcut keys, which are different to every other application on Windows.

4) I like variable width fonts, and variable width fonts don't seem to work with various bits of org mode (for example tables)

I'm sure you love org-mode, and that's great, but plenty of people over the years have tried and failed to love emacs, and lost a whole lot of time in the process.

For 3 -- I've always been a vim user, and I know maybe 3-4 native Emacs hotkeys, thanks to evil-mode. Also Spacemacs/Doom emacs provides a reasonable layer of bindings outside org-mode

1) Is there any note taking application that makes a good spreadsheet? Just use a dedicated spreadsheet program.

2) I'm using Orgzly and yeah, it's OK. For me, OK is all I really need here since I mostly need org-mode when I'm infront of a computer. When I'm away all I really need it for is quickly adding things to do.

3) Definitely takes getting used to. I started using org-mode a couple years ago as a vim user.

I've also lost a lot of time trying different apps such as Evernote, OneNote, and Trello. And setting everything up to integrate between them. Eventually I decided on markdown files for notes, but the TODO and tag integration of org-mode is what made me switch.

It should be possible to use monospaced fonts only for tables.

They're syntax highlighted in a distinct way and that should be all you need.

This is the fundamental tradeoff of emacs, basically: it's nearly always possible to get exactly what you want, in exchange for an unreasonable amount of effort.

I've actually found, that for me org mode spreadsheets (table with formulas) make a lot of sense and I like having them together with all other stuff I put in an org mode file. I appreciate a lot, that it is still all plain text.

Once one gets the hang of using those spreadsheets and has written oneself a few examples, from which one can always copy or look things up, I think they are pretty amazing. Perhaps this is exactly the time you do not wish to spend on it, which is fine. Just saying, that for many purposes those spreadsheets work very well. There is after all GNU Calc behind them and if you want a complete programming language in form of Elisp as well. Power they do not lack, that is for sure.

> 4) I like variable width fonts, and variable width fonts don't seem to work with various bits of org mode (for example tables)

Same. I use mixed-pitch[1], a package on MELPA[2]

  M-x package-install mixed-pitch

will take care of Org tables and more. Doesn't attack the problem minimally, but comes with sensible choices; it's been basically a drop-in-and-forget activation snippet.

[1]: https://gitlab.com/jabranham/mixed-pitch

[2]: https://melpa.org/#/mixed-pitch

1) org-mode makes a good spreadsheet 2) Not being Android user myself, I have only heard good things about Orgzly from Emacs people around. What features exactly are you missing? 3) you can use any keys you want with Emacs. I have my own setup that I am using along with the Vim key bindings/text objects. 4) pretty much everything else works well with fonts and colors; tables yeah, tend to keep simple formatting.

Emacs is not ideal. But it is the most flexible and configurable piece of software in the world - and org-mode is the best outliner ever created.

Thanks, I hope this will be useful for other people!

1) When I google for some advanced operations (like multi-column sort), the advice seemed to be export as CSV and do it in openoffice.

2) While orgzly is a good attempt, if you google around you will find lots of limitations (it's too long since I've used it), as it is a reimplementation of org-mode so can't hope to be feature complete.

There are packages you can install to make the copy/cut/paste keys and a few others more Windows-like.

M-x cua-mode should work out of the box

cua conflicts with org, so you can't use them both together (I've been told, and googling suggests this is true)

There are a few key binding collisions, but otherwise they can be used together.

So now you are telling a noob who just wants to get some task done to start resolving key binding collisions.

The noob probably won't even be aware of the collisions if they're a new emacs user. The org-mode keybindings will override the cua-mode bindings. Afaik, it's only shift+arrow keys.

A noob can pick up emacs, type M-x cua-mode M-x org-mode and have a simple to use outliner which recognizes most of the keyboard shortcuts they're familiar with.

Ah fair enough then

This sort of resonates with me.

I use emacs extensively, but I started using omnifocus years ago and that is what I still use. The features for me are: just about perfect sync across devices. self-hosted data. enough sorting and prioritizing features.

But I will say around ios 7 timeframe they drank the apple Koolaid and changed just about everything in the app - and most were meaningless look-and-feel changes. Just about everything else in the app was negatively impacted.

to think of putting my data - the data I run my life with - into something that will only ever improve over time is very compelling.

As a full time linux user I can't use OmniFocus anymore. But I tried it in the past, and to be honest, mastering it required no less time than I put into my unsophisticated org-mode setup.

>, org-mode eliminates the risk of hitting any sort of barrier

Ultimately, it depends on the type of user but the "barrier" may be that it's plain text. So Org Mode's data format as a desirable selling point is also its ceiling of functionality.

Yes, I store 90% of my notes in plain text. But I also store some programming notes in MS Excel because I need a datagrid as UI with dynamic calculations. I store some project notes in MS Word because I need to embed graphics along with text. I suppose I could use Org Mode as a "single source of truth" by linking to .xlsx and .docx files but I reorganize my folder structures too often to make such file links stable.

I made a previous comment why Emacs Org Mode along with everything else I tried in the last few decades to organize life is a very hard problem of "boiling the ocean": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23112843

Actually org mode can do all of those things:

* Recalculate formulas a la excel: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro...

* Actually you can go way further than cloning basic excel functionality. For example, you can write inline code to generate or retrieve some data, feed that into a graphing program, and then inline the resulting chart back into the org file. https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html

* Display inline images: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17621495/emacs-org-displ...

Just because it's possible in theory doesn't make it a good idea. In org-mode, anything that isn't plaintext is quite painful to set up and to maintain, at least until you've memorized two dozen arcane key chords. I would love for Emacs to get a Notion-like UI (still with plaintext underneath obviously) one day but until then, I'm okay with people using the best tool for the job, which isn't a text editor.

(I'm an enthusiastic org-mode user, by the way.)

In practice, I've used org tables (as a minor mode) even before I've started to use org mode regularly -- so much I've liked it (use case: manual entry of smal tables with occasional formulas)

I find inline pictures very helpful when Org Babel is used as analog of Jupyter notebooks (plantuml diagrams, pandas plots).

I honestly tried to use org-mode tables and formulas to record and process student grades and it was a huge failure. I am very comfortable with emacs, but this particular aspect of org-mode took 10x the time a simple spreadsheet software would have taken. And I don't see this time decreasing with repeated usage.

I am back to using org-mode for other stuff.

Org-mode documents can include graphics[0] and (formula-driven) spreadsheets[1].

[0]: https://orgmode.org/org.html#Images

[1]: https://orgmode.org/org.html#The-Spreadsheet

Yes but I use MS Excel features like pivot tables and MS Word graphics features like drawing arrows as overlays on top of screenshots to annotate them.

The other limitation of out-of-the-box Org Mode "plain text" architecture is that it limits collaboration of letting other users edit my file because fine-grain locking is not as straightforward as with a db file like SQLite. My "master todo list" is easier to manage if I can let my significant other can enter items for me instead of me doing all the manual data entry myself.

I do understand that since Emacs has Lisp, it can ultimately do anything if you really want to customize/extend/research it.

These are actually not that hard to do in org-mode, if you are willing to use babel and push the pivot out to something like pandas. :D

That said, no, I don't actually think it is a replacement for spreadsheets. Especially not if you are already fluent in them.

Come to think of it, someone should write pivot tables for Emacs. Could be an alternate mode for opening CSV files (which then could also be used when editing code snippets in Org Mode).

(EDIT: In the meantime, I guess you could shell out to https://www.gnu.org/software/datamash/manual/datamash.html.)

https://www.gnu.org/software/datamash/manual/datamash.html Fixed link

On the topic of commandline spreadsheets; I'm a huge fan of sc(1), a cute curses-based spreadsheet calculator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sc_(spreadsheet_calculator)

I'm not sure what you are describing. Note that doing this with python and org is already pretty easy. Or R. No, you don't fully open the csv in org. But, that usually seems a feature. The firehose that is large csv is typically best as a related file.

I'm thinking of the middle-sized use cases. A table with couple hundred to couple thousand rows. Small enough that you can load it into Emacs without a performance penalty, but too large to pivot by hand. Personal and freelance business budgeting come to mind.

However, at this point I'm OK with shelling out to external tool for data wrangling.

That is still easy with pandas/babel. Just set the table as an input for the snippet, and then you can output a pivoted table. (That make sense?)

Yes, it does, and is probably the best option for most people.

> by linking to .xlsx and .docx files but I reorganize my folder structures too often to make such file links stable.

Linking implies too many manual operations to keep things tidy when moving headings around. Try Org attachments[1].

- Basically, a heading has an attachment directory, whose name is by default generated by Org, and optionally inherited from some level in the outline hierarchy.

- Any attachment is represented by a heading with the :ATTACH: tag and an ID in the :ID: property of its drawer. Actual files can be e.g. copied, moved, or symlinked.

- Attachment directories, the :ATTACH: tag and :ID: property are conveniently added by one of the attach commands, but can also be customized (`org-attach' is the dispatcher, bound by default to <C-c C-a>).

- For a given heading, run a command (conveniently, from the dispatcher) to visit the attachment directory for the heading from the configured file browser or Dired: <C-c C-a f> and <C-c C-a F>, respectively.

If it makes sense to move attachments when moving headings around, or when otherwise adding files externally to the attachment directory, there is `org-attach-sync' (<C-c C-a z>):

  Synchronize the current task with its attachment directory, in case you added attachments yourself.

[1]: https://orgmode.org/manual/Attachments.html

Further explanation: When moving headings around, one can choose to also move the attachments along, for example, by relying on OLD-HEADING and NEW-HEADING's respective attachment directories. Changes to these directories can include external modifications (e.g. addition of files produced by a spreadsheet app). `org-attach-sync' makes sure these changes are propagated to the Org file (and/or its memory representation).

When referencing one of the attached files within the heading, one can use the `attachment' link type, which points to files resolving to the attachment directory[1]. The format is [[attachment:FILE-IN-ATTACHMENT-DIR][DESCRIPTION]] and can be easily inserted with completion by `org-insert-link'.

For more complicated attachment linking scenarios it might be better to configure the attachment directory to be absolute (`org-attach-id-dir').

Conclusion: The use of Org attachments and the attachment: link type stabilizes links to files.

[1]: https://orgmode.org/manual/Attachment-links.html

You hit the nail on the head. A well designed system has coherent building blocks. When you scale that up, you don't end up with a rat's nest. Funny you should mention Evernote. I'm building https://histre.com/ as the said coherent alternative to it (among other reasons), as Evernote truly turns into a hoarder house after a while.

I'm a big org-mode user as well, and that solves most of the "write stuff down for later" needs for me.

> In my opinion, org-mode eliminates the risk of hitting any sort of barrier after years of sunk costs.

Nah, it moves the barrier, but it's still there. There always are barriers. In case of org-mode it's the limitations of emacs and time you need to invest into forging them into whatever system you seek, which often is not even possible with emacs.

Sometimes getting emacs to do what you want can take a ridiculous amount of time.

However, if there's something you really cannot do in emacs, my advice would be to try praying, because at that point nothing else can help you.

Or just start a rich environment, like a browser, or excel. Interface-wise there are many things that emacs can't do. Feature-wise there is even more missing because of lacking manpower.

But that's okay. Every job it's right tool.

https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm

Chrome in emacs? No problem. Excel on linux on emacs? No problem, just run Excel on Windows on VirtualBox on emacs.

(in case you missed it from my first comment, I'm being facetious)

That's not "in emacs". Still seperate process and environment and limited to no integration into emacs.

If you do stuff like this, at least use https://github.com/manateelazycat/emacs-application-framewor... for some better level of integration. Though, still seperate and limited.

I think they were being completely facetious. That said, I also think requiring it be "in process" is unnecessary. One of the most powerful features of org is babel, which clearly pushes out the execution to the external tools.

> That said, I also think requiring it be "in process" is unnecessary.

No, this is important for integration. Integration is the main benefit you have while using emacs.

> One of the most powerful features of org is babel, which clearly pushes out the execution to the external tools.

Yes, but it has very limited interaction with them. The whole interface is in emacs. Emacs is doing many of this embedded fire n' forget-style interactions. That doesn't make them richful.

In this, I just disagree. Yes, I agree that emacs main strength is that everything is programmable. No, I don't mind that I have to reach out to other computers/programs for some things to happen.

If anything, I think I dislike the other tools so much because they do fall into the trap of requiring all things be in process. I think that is a huge reason that they don't focus as much on the serialization of their data in a friendly way.

That is to say, if other programs worked harder (or at all) at making themselves programmable, their programs could force a form of stability that is unheard of in many of them. And then I could happily control them from emacs. :D

Why would you commit important work to some online service?

When I visit evernote.com, I see the obvious fails: "sign up", "log in".

You gotta own the data, so that no matter how bad the program turns out to be, you have some a nice local file sitting on your hard drive from which you can ferret it all out somehow.

I'm a Vim guy but with Spacemacs it was easy to get into Emacs. The spacebar action to see following actions (whatever it's called) really helped me figure out what the keyboard shortcuts were for various commands, or it just told me the exact name of said command.

There isn't a single piece of software that has replaced as many other tools, or simplified or otherwise benefited me as much as Emac+OrgMode.

OrgMode is what I now use for:

- journalling

- time-tracking

- project management

- various almost-literate-programming tasks

- calendaring, to a very extensive degree

I could probably spend a good few paragraphs explaining how making a note in my 'knowledge base' file can be given a due date so it shows up in my calendar, etc., but I'll just say that Emacs+OrgMode has effectively replaced:

- iCal

- Twitter

- DayOne (personal journalling)

- Toggl

- Journler

- OmniFocus

- Reminder/whatever-app-is-on-my-android-phone

- and probably a few more

> low barriers to entry sometimes turn into barriers to growth at a later stage

I don’t happen to agree with this in the specific case of org-mode, but it’s a useful generic insight.

That's great but is there anything that has the best of all worlds? Low barrier to entry and maintenance of a fast workflow after years of notes?

i have >5yr years of daily/weekly org'd notes, several dozen files i refile into (made easy by using symbols as first letter in categories and a catg naming convention that grew up along with the setup) and some days i totally forget that i'm 'in a program', because its easy. sure i get lost cause i forget i wrote some code here or there, but it just works.

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