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Comment by johnbellone | Hacker News Reader

The last few days I have been getting my teeth back into org-mode. It was originally one of the best parts about using Emacs over vim. Since I have to carry around a mobile device (or tablet) it's become much less useful to me. In fact to get the same experience I have been using a bullet journal[1] for a year or two now.

I want to love org-mode, but I spent the better part of a week using it to write a deck only to find out it's a huge pain to export to PPT. I know this is off topic as the post is about org-trello, but org-mode as a whole needs to take what org-trello does awesome and integrate with mobile/cloud services more!

I would love to hear from a hardcore org-mode user. I haven't found someone I could talk to and pick their brain.

[1]: http://www.bulletjournal.com

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Have you come across Orgzly?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly

I found it last week while trying to get started on Org Mode and being frustrated by the poor mobile apps. So far Orgzly has been pretty good.

(No link whatsoever to the developers BTW, just a user)

That looks pretty cool. I had a play with orgs agenda a while back, but the lack of integration with devices made it less useful than it could have been.

Unfortunately I'm not an Android user, but this looks really awesome. I'm up for a new device soon and if this works as advertised I may make the leap. Thanks!

I started using orgzly last week. I like it so far. I hope the next version includes note folding.

Did someone finally made an usable app for org-mode? Thanks for linking!

I've used org-mode to publish books, pocket mods, invoice clients, run tabletop games, organize links and snippets... while text is supposedly the universal interface in the Unix world it does have limitations when it comes to sharing information across devices. I carry my laptop with me so this isn't a problem for me but I know it's there and not yet solved.

A mobile org-mode client with cloud sharing would go a long way.

MobileOrg[1] was good for a while—it had Dropbox and WebDAV support—but it hasn’t had an update in a couple of years and is badly in need of a new maintainer.

[1] https://github.com/MobileOrg/mobileorg

Dropbox support was cool, but I recall MobileOrg being buggy to the point of making it completely useless, not to mention pretty bad UI. This project really needs some love.

It is cool to support Dropbox, but I never make it work since it's buggy.

Recently someone has made a new client called Orgzly[1] which is actually really well designed. Sync works well enough for me over Dropbox, though I'd really rather use ssh. I guess overall there's a little impedance mismatch between Org-mode plaintext and mobile interfaces but overall I think it works well.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly

I absolutely see the value in writing journals, agendas and even books using org-mode. It naturally feels like an outline, and with the integrated TODO feature I'm able to check off parts of the document without exporting it to the final form. There is just that gap when I go mobile.

Maybe I should put-up or shut-up and hack on something!

Relaying an on-topic comment from a hellbanned user[1]:

Please check my hobby, I hope to start writing on it again this summer: https://github.com/berntb/attorg

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492289

Thanks for doing that. I hate how people can not have any idea that they've been banned. I wonder what he was banned for.

Until something better comes along, use GitHub. It'll render org files.

I've created a couple short-cuts on my iPad:

bex #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE

eex #+END_EXAMPLE

There's also mOrgAnd:

https://github.com/hdweiss/mOrgAnd/wiki

Just out of curiosity, is Power Point really a critical component of your use? Don't get me wrong, there are advantages to using PowerPoint. But the big goal is to prepare information with a computer and then to present that information in various forms. In terms of the big goal, PowerPoint compatibility can be an XY problem. It's one possible means [and perhaps the best means] to the end. There are alternatives...and all this was a round about way to point out Racket's SlideShow library.

http://docs.racket-lang.org/slideshow/index.html

Yes, it absolutely is.

What makes PowerPoint the priority in your workflow?

https://github.com/yjwen/org-reveal/ is also pretty nice for exporting from org-mode to a shiny HTML5 presentation

I used to think I had the same problem. I tried to make sure everything I used could be used in a full-fledged way on my phone. But eventually I realized: This isn't a problem with org-mode, it's a problem with the shitty state of software on mobile devices. And laptops are a good enough way to keep org-mode with me at all times. So I just gave in and used it.

I use org-mode every single day for scheduling and programming. The problem I've got with org-mode is that it is the most unstable project I've ever seen that wasn't considered to be in beta status.

Not only do they change things all the time, making old documentation useless, they'll break things and provide no documentation. For example, I used to use Beamer export for presentations. Then they changed to the new exporter without giving any explanation of how to use it.

I now use Pandoc for things like presentations. It just works for the most part. And importantly, there's actually documentation, as opposed to scraps scattered around the internet that might sort of do what you need if they're sufficiently recent.

I've also been using the bullet journal format for the better part of a year. It's a phenomenal way to stay organized and keep information at hand. It makes quick capture easy and I don't have to worry about losing where I put it later.

If you think in lists or bullet points and have had success with mindmaps then give the bullet journal a try.

Regarding the Power Point thing you might want to check out Beamer. It is a extension for publishing presentations from org mode. http://orgmode.org/worg/exporters/beamer/tutorial.html

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