4 ms·

And you're hardly alone in doing Magic Things in org-mode. Org-mode is like the storied elephant being groped by blind men, all finding a different piece of ana

And you're hardly alone in doing Magic Things in org-mode. Org-mode is like the storied elephant being groped by blind men, all finding a different piece of anatomy, and each concluding that the elephant is something different. Org-mode is a best-of-breed outlining application. It's a dead-simple workflow management and time tracking application. Org-mode is a better Markdown than Markdown integrated with a multi-format publication generation capability. Org-mode is a literate programming environment facilitating reproducible research that allows embedding code inside documentation, but unlike some alternatives supports a zillion languages and lets you pass values between them. I haven't found anything that I like as well as org-mode for any of those individual tasks, much ALL of them. Org-mode somehow does all these things and manages simplicity. It's all plain text that I never have to fret compatibility or corruption.

throwanem 11y ago
> Org-mode is a better Markdown than Markdown integrated with a multi-format publication generation capability. It can even export to Markdown! (And I'll only author in Markdown under duress anymore.) It's funny that you chose the phrase "Magic Things". Before I settled on the "superpower" metaphor, I was going to talk about the times when I've done things with Emacs, in and out of Org-mode, that have made my colleagues say things like "wow, that's really cool" or "holy shit how did you even just do that". I opted not to because I figured it would sound like bragging, on the one hand, and on the other because you can do things in Emacs that really do have to be seen to be believed. But "magic" is the word I was going to use. (It's not always an advantage, either. I've had people show contempt for things like Org-mode tables, on the assumption that because they're rendered in text, they can't possibly be anything other than text, and I must be wasting insane amounts of time making columns line up and the like. I used to work for one of those people. I'm really glad I don't work for him any more.)

throwanem 11y ago

> Org-mode is a better Markdown than Markdown integrated with a multi-format publication generation capability. It can even export to Markdown! (And I'll only author in Markdown under duress anymore.) It's funny that you chose the phrase "Magic Things". Before I settled on the "superpower" metaphor, I was going to talk about the times when I've done things with Emacs, in and out of Org-mode, that have made my colleagues say things like "wow, that's really cool" or "holy shit how did you even just do that". I opted not to because I figured it would sound like bragging, on the one hand, and on the other because you can do things in Emacs that really do have to be seen to be believed. But "magic" is the word I was going to use. (It's not always an advantage, either. I've had people show contempt for things like Org-mode tables, on the assumption that because they're rendered in text, they can't possibly be anything other than text, and I must be wasting insane amounts of time making columns line up and the like. I used to work for one of those people. I'm really glad I don't work for him any more.)