Always heard about org mode but was intimidated by emacs when I could barely manage vi/vim (sorry guys). Installed a plugin for org-mode for Sublime Text today and… shit, why didn’t I try this sooner?

I have thousands of text files with horrible organization, thrown around multiple directories, no common naming scheme, no hierarchy, no unified notation, just ramblings and a barely marginal attempt at organization using === as title markers. I have links and ideas buried deep and I didn’t want to use a third party tool “just for managing text”.

Well, my eyes are open, and thus I’m euphoric, enlightened by its brilliance. I must rewrite all my stuff in org-mode.

    • conrad82@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      Actually I left 🫣🫣 After using it for a few years. I couldn’t get a hang of it on Android, and I ended up switching to caldav for tasks and markdown for notes.

      Currently testing out https://silverbullet.md

      I did enjoy orgmode for a long time, but I got too old for init.el …

  • pspinler@beehaw.orgEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    I use org mode extensively, and yeah, gotta admit it’s nice.

    My biggest gripe is the amount of typing it still takes to annotate stuff. I often find it hard to keep up e.g. taking live notes in a class settings.

    For instance, starting a new document and typing:

      #+BEGIN_TITLE
  Class XYZ Notes
  #+END_TITLE

    Then later on I wanna insert a code segment, and, gotta:

      #+BEGIN_SRC javascript
  $var = "ooh, cool code, bro.";
  #+END_SRC

    (yeah, C-c C-, s works, but I gotta remember that exists, and then also ewww generates in lowercase – uppercase that shortcut output!)

    And then I find I want a table, so lots of "|"s

    There’s probably better faster shortcuts for lots of this, but like everything in emacs, it’s finding and learning them. Typically I need some downtime to do that, which doesn’t happen if I’m e.g. trying to take notes quickly.

    Anyway, despite this, I gotta agree org mode is really helpful. Happying org’ing to you!

    – Pat

    • zauberin@beehaw.orgEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      You can do #+TITLE: titletext instead for titles at least, also I guess the table stuff is reasons to do emacs because you only need to do the first | and then pressing tab/enter like excel does the rest

    • rar@discuss.onlineOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for the encouragement. I suppose I can make a macro or a temporary marker to replace them for proper syntax like you described when I’m in a hurry? I first have to transform some of the notes I’m using to org-mode syntax first so I can get used to this.

    • Exec@pawb.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Reading the docs it feels close to markdown, but most markdown implementations have a much simpler format for code blocks with syntax specified:
      ```javascript
      $var = “ooh, cool code, bro.”;
      ```

      Will turn into:

      $var = "ooh, cool code, bro.";

      (Though lemmy-ui doesn’t seem to support syntax highlighting.)

    • astroturds@startrek.websiteEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      For the tables you can do ‘M-x org-table-create’ which then asks you for dimensions and makes it for you.

      I think org-capture might help you with the other stuff, you can set up templates and access them by pressing ‘C-c c’ and get it all inserted in whatever org file and under whatever heading you want.

  • astroturds@startrek.websiteEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Org mode changed my fucking life! I looked into using emacs as a simple markdown editor when I was doing a creative writing course and discovered org mode. 4 years later and I never leave emacs, everything is done through emacs and org mode. I even use it as my window manager (exwm). I bought an old chromebook to turn into an emacs machine and it’s so good. It’s an operating system and I don’t like using a computer without it.

    Some things for you to look into that I now can’t live without:

    Elfeed

    Org-capture and capture templates

    Dired

    EXWM

    Syncthing (not a part of emacs but means I don’t have to use closed source cloud backups)

    I passionately love emacs. At first I thought all they shortcuts and keybindings were a bit insane but they are second nature to me at this point. Emacs has also saved me lots of money that I would have spent on silly writing apps and aids.