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Comment by smartmic | Hacker News Reader

Two things though. I think org-mode syntax is not the most ergonomic and beautiful. In facts, that's the reason I stick more to Markdown when writing. Second, the problem I see here is that they want to change the source text into a formatted one. Basically introducing WYSIWYG from behind through the knee, but the source is still plain text. Can be done, but comes with challenges and side-effects (there is a reason Enriched Text[^1] never took off - although Richard Stallmann still dreams to have more WYSIWYG capabilities in Emacs)

[^1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/En...

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I think this misses the point of org-mode. Markdown is even one of its outputs. Org-mode lets you write in an environment that is aware of the semantic meaning and structure of your content, from headlines, latex, diagrams and lists to blocks that can execute code or make web requests, tables that can have spreadsheet calculations not to mention the time tracking features. I can understand wanting a simpler text format to focus on writing, but there are many editing tasks such as writing a blog or making project and study notes that really benefit from a more capable environment.

It's also very opinionated about that structure, to the extent that it'll get in the way of WYSIWYG'ing the content.

I've driven myself half-mad just saying "These two outline blocks are too close together" and adding some newlines only to have the header-collapse hide those newlines and squash the two outline headers back together.

What do you use for writing markdown? Any recommendations?

I use org mode very lightly, mostly just collapsing information I don’t want care about as I’m writing and making formatted tables. I’ve thought about exploring markdown and other editors but I haven’t really seen evidence it would be much of a gain.

My main authoring tool is then Emacs Markdown Mode (https://jblevins.org/projects/markdown-mode/). For data entry, it comes with some bells and whistles similar to org-mode, like C-c C-l for inserting links etc.

I seldom export my notes for external usage, but if it is the case, I use lowdown (https://kristaps.bsd.lv/lowdown/) which also comes with some nice output targets (among the more unusual are Groff and Terminal). Of cource pandoc (https://pandoc.org/) does a very good job here, too.

notably, the above mode lacks the single feature the grandparent uses: collapsing sub headings. In addition, it requires an external tool to export

org of course can be exported into many formats without an external tool, including several plain text formats and HTML, and is also understood by pandoc

For most of my writing (journal entries, notes), I have never needed the collapsible subheading and export functionality because I write primarily for myself. If I think a note is ready to be published on my blog, I will still rewrite, edit, and polish it in a separate file. Mostly also in Markdown, because the structure of such articles does not go very deep (I am not a fan of many levels of headings) and my static site generator handles the export to HTML in a fully automated way. No need to export anything manually.

I use Org but markdown-mode can hide subsections too:

  markdown-mode supports outline-minor-mode as well as org-mode-style visibility cycling for atx- or hash-style headings. There are two types of visibility cycling: Pressing S-TAB cycles globally between the table of contents view (headings only), outline view (top-level headings only), and the full document view. Pressing TAB while the point is at a heading will cycle through levels of visibility for the subtree: completely folded, visible children, and fully visible.

(Quote from the link shared by parent.)

oh, my apologies. I both use this mode and searched for the above functionality on the above link "to be sure" before commenting, but I guess I missed it.

In my feeble defense, it's hard to confirm a feature is missing T_T;;

I'm actually really glad you wrote that comment because I've been writing my blog in markdown for years and I had no idea you could collapse headings

I'm curious what makes you consider it non-ergonomic? For the things both support, I don't remember that many differences. Org shines, though, for all of the other things it also supports. In a real sense, it is more in the same realm as jupyter than it is markdown.

I think that's really the key thing, and I didn't realize it until only recently: org-mode fits a Jupyter mental model better than a Markdown (or outliner, etc.) mental model.

It's great for what it is, but what it is doesn't 1-to-1 map to much else.

I think this makes sense. If you are viewing it as marking up a static document, then a ton of the affordances in org-mode make little sense. Most of it is about interacting with a lot of data that happens to be represented in plain text.

For a lot of us, that focus on the plain text is important. As it helps keep us focused on all of the other affordances that we have grown accustomed to in emacs. As soon as you move things into a binary format, you are likely giving up on a lot of the other tools you have. There can be reasons to do this, of course, but for most data that you interact with at a personal level, most of those reasons have been overcome by the power of the personal computer.

I think org-mode has several fairly orthogonal use cases, including literate programming (your Jupyter reference), outlining, markup, task management, spreadsheets, and many more. And the community has done an amazing job of implementing all of these really well, each for itself, while still maintaining a working ecosystem. But I only use a small subset of that when I use org mode. The amount of metadata that needs to be included in a full-blown org-mode document seems to be increasing, and I feel more and more like I am writing a specification with verbose syntax (and personally, I find "#+BEGIN ... #+END" blocks or similar keywords unappealing).

Literate programming is rather distinct from notebook style, though? I can see surface comparisons, but they are very different.

I can see not finding the markup appealing, but that is why you would export for viewing? And, outside of moving some of that to a binary format, I don't know how you could get this level of stuff in band? I suppose you could strictly hide it in view? Would probably still want the markup in data.

None of which is answering what makes it non ergonomic? Basic text with an actual table format is about what I'd hope for it to be. What is off?

Links are different. Everyone seems to redo that idea. Rst files, I still always get wrong on first tries.

> I think org-mode syntax is not the most ergonomic and beautiful.

Which parts about it? I actually agree with the sentiment, to my taste there are some aspects of org-mode which are better than Markdown, and some which are worse, and on balance Markdown wins the contest.

I have a project which is attempting to meld the benefits of both, so I'm interested in what you see as org-mode's pain points.

I'd advise not worrying about the benefits others see to either, if you are wanting to meld them. Instead, meld the parts that you like above and beyond anything else.

My reasoning is that the main advantage of Markdown is the crowd using it. It is not an unknown quantity to a lot of folks. Similarly, the biggest "pro" of org-mode is that it has all of the power of emacs. Which, is oddly its biggest con to the crowd that doesn't like it.

I would prefer to say that the biggest "con" of org-mode is that, as the name suggests, it's tightly coupled to emacs. Implementations of the syntax for other environments are necessarily partial. org-babel might be the best literate programming system there is (it's up there), but I don't want emacs as my compiler.

> I'd advise not worrying about the benefits others see to either, if you are wanting to meld them. Instead, meld the parts that you like above and beyond anything else.

I'm not worried at all ^_^ but I don't mind learning from others either.

Totally fair, I think. My assertion would probably be restated best as "don't expect straight forward answers to the direct question of what is the best of each." I do specifically called out that network effects were the biggest pro of Markdown, and oddly the biggest con of org-mode. But, my main point in doing that is that I doubt most of the fans of either would list that.

Obviously some of us would, such that I could easily be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. :D

See my answer above(or elsewhere in the thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40044417

You can change anything you find "not the most ergonomic". Emacs is fully customizable.

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