VimOrganizer : An Emacs' Org-mode clone for Vim | Hacker News Reader

VimOrganizer : An Emacs' Org-mode clone for Vim

vim.org

29 pointsyitchelle20 comments

Installation guide is here: https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer/blob/master/INSTALL.tx...

It kills me that you can't use this plugin fully without Emacs:

"FINALLY, install Emacs. Not necessary for basic outlining, agenda searches, and other basic stuff, but it is necessary to do exports to html and PDF (which you will definitely want) as well as other advanced stuff."

Anyone know what this "advanced stuff" is?

Yes. Babel requires emacs. Quote from the article:

<quote> VimOrganizer also lets Vim users access Org-babel, a subproject of Org-mode that allows execution of source-code blocks in org-format documents. Uses for Org-babel range from writing technical research papers to simply using a VimOrganizer document as a "language-scratchpad". Over twenty languages are supported, including C, R, Lisp, Python, Perl, Ruby, and others. VimOrganizer calls out to a running Emacs server for Org-babel processing; functionality and speed are essentially the same as when editing with Org-mode in Emacs. </quote>

BTW, I love both org-mode and vim. My solution is to use a vim mode in emacs. My preferred one is "evil" (I recently switched from viper+vimpulse, which is also good). Evil lives here: http://gitorious.org/evil/pages/Home

How well-made is "evil"? Do you ever have any issues with it because it's not really vim?

Everything I want is there: text objects, visual mode, windows commands, macros, everything from ex that I use. Try it, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

The only two issues I've noticed are:

1) '\c' does not work for case insensitive search 2) I had to install an extra packages to get 'g;' (goto-last-change) and 'C-r' (redo) to work.

As far as Vim goes, it is pretty stellar. Pretty much everything I tried is there and works as expected. There are even some Vim plugins that have been recreated for Evil (i.e. surround).

As far as Emacs goes, well, it has less problems than any other Vim emulation mode, but it still does not play well with everything. It is workable though.

I agree EVIL is pretty good, feels much better to me than Viper/Vimpulse. One issue with any Vim emulation in Emacs is the need to create vim-like keybindings for add-ons, like Org-mode. If you don't do this, and if you use many Emacs add-ons, you'll enter Emacs ctrl-key hell despite having decent Vim emulation.

Below is newsgroup thread with basics of adding Vim-style keybindings to Emacs/EVIL for Org-mode. I chose to make these sample bindings same as those I use in analogous functions in VimOrganizer. (I'm the author of VimOrganizer.)

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/52815/focus=5281...

He had me up until that and this: Thus, to make full use of VimOrganizer you will want to have an Emacs' server running alongside.

I'm the main developer of VimOrganizer. I'm sure other people have had this reaction, but it mostly results from not fully understanding what Org-mode is and how it works. Org-mode is many things to many people, with a feature set that's deep and wide, and even many Org-mode users don't know everything it does, barely scratch the surface.

Regarding the issue of running an Emacs server alongside VimOrganizer: Would you rather a tiny Vim project try to duplicate all of Orgmode's functionality when (1) only a small percentage of Org-mode directly involves editing text, (2) many of the major Org-mode features are basically batch operations that export and/or evaluate an entire file at a time, and (3) Emacs is lightweight and functions well as a server for Org-mode batch operations, and (4) Vim's stated philosophy is to co-exist and interoperate with other apps in the Unix toolchain?

It's a matter of not reinventing the wheel. Org-mode is a pretty large project, probably approaching 100k lines of code. It's been around many years, heavily developed the entire time and it still presents a quickly moving target, new features and bugfixes added almost daily. What sense does it make to try to duplicate tens of thousands of lines of non-editing related code in a fledgling Vim project? Why not make use of Emacs/Orgmode as a server, a function it does well, and leverage the entire Orgmode project?

Although most heavy VimOrganizer uses would want to keep an Emacs server running, they don't ever need to edit a file in Emacs. At most they need to do some minor configuration in the .emacs config file, but that can be done by editing the .emacs file in Vim.

I don't get this trend of porting stuff from emacs to vim.

If I clearly understand the point of emacs's org mode, I don't get how it could go along vim considering it's a "powerful text editor" not an IDE. It just don't match the intended worflow (at least mine).

I much prefer how mutt is handling things, just taking care of emails and delegating text editing to vim.

I agree. When I need to edit text in an app, I'd much rather use the editor of my choice. For example, the mysql client will launch $EDITOR when you type \e at the prompt.

That's one of my favorite features of Pentadactyl: letting you edit the content of textboxes from any webpage in your editor of choice (I use GVIm) by simply pressing CTRL+I.

I'd be interested as to what you think the point of org-mode is. It's principally a free form note taking and outlining mode, not a todo app like you might be imagining.

edit: clarified intent

That's not entirely true. org-mode is quite flexible and serves as a lot of things, and one of them is in fact as a TODO list [1]. This becomes particularly true when you use the TODO extensions.

I am constantly surprised at the capabilities of org-mode. Some sociologists that I'm aware of actually generate their LaTeX publications through org-mode [2].

[1] http://orgmode.org/manual/TODO-Items.html

[2] http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/workflow-apps.pdf (generated through org-mode, source: https://github.com/kjhealy/workflow-paper)

I should clarify... Yes org-mode has todo features, including calendering, scheduling, etc, but listen some of the talks Carsten Dominik gives where he explains his rational: http://orgmode.org/talks.html It's core is as an flexible note-taking app with all those features as extensions to the core, just like the document links, and timestamp features.

In theory, org todos are born as notes which you later realize are actually todo items. Taken in this light, it makes sense as a text editor extension rather than an app in its own right.

I've just launched it a few times in my emacs days, it seemed pretty powerful as the documentation suggest : http://orgmode.org/guide/index.html . I may be getting something wrong, but it do not look like just "edit todo.txt + cosmetics" to me.

For example, if I understand correctly C-c a a (http://orgmode.org/guide/Weekly_002fdaily-agenda.html#Weekly...) compiles an agenda. I'd rather have a small program to do that and launch vim on each todo like mutt for writing emails than having it bundled in my editor.

Edit If I were using emacs daily, I'd gladly use org-mode :)

Eh? I have been using org-mode for years for calendaring, smart todo-lists and what not -- with all the things like deadlines, schedules, repeated items, tags, priorities etc. etc.

I use org-mode as a Getting Things Done utility + a replacement for Evernote. (Synced up via Dropbox, it works swimmingly well!)

You don't get this trend? (If there is a trend.)

So let me explain: some people have no interest in using emacs. It is not helpful to make them use emacs. Vim grows plugins for any functionality which a vim user wanted. That functionality is presumably their intended workflow.

There is no domain of forbidden functionality which Vim is simply not allowed to do, that is ridiculous.

Hey, I'm just stating my opinion, not forbidding anything.

I'm not against adding features on vim, I'm suggesting that doing it that way isn't to the vim-ish way. My opinion is that when it comes to vim, unix is the whole IDE, not just vim itself.By no way I mean I hold the truth but it doesn't mean I can't have an opinion and discuss it here !

Having emacs as a dependency for some features is ridiculous.

Great work! I would love to see a compatible org-mode for Vim!

Basically, every editor should support org-mode. It is really awesome!

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