6 ms·

In that sense markdown is also proprietary, since you need some editor making things easy for you to manipulate and navigate the text document(that's all emacs

by xfer 8y ago

In that sense markdown is also proprietary, since you need some editor making things easy for you to manipulate and navigate the text document(that's all emacs does; even github renders org docs).

kungtotte 8y ago
Except Markdown looks like text with some special characters to embellish it a little. It's perfectly readable and legible in any text editor. Navigation is the only thing lacking, but manipulation is as easy as manipulating text is in your editor of choice. Note: I don't know what raw orgmode files look like, maybe they're similar to Markdown.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  They are. Org format is kind of a better and more powerful Markdown. As plaintext, it looks cleaner to me. The thing is, Org format is defined by the way Org-mode in Emacs handles it. Beyond Markdown-like features (which are rather easy to parse out; the format is similar), you get things in the data format that to date are handled only by Emacs. Think of Emacs + org mode as a better Jupyter notebooks than just editor for static text documents. Consider this note I have in my org file for work tasks. ** DONE [#A] Testing prior to syncup meeting :CUSTOMER_development: CLOSED: [2018-07-13 Fri 14:04] :LOGBOOK: CLOCK: [2018-07-13 Fri 12:14]--[2018-07-13 Fri 14:04] => 1:50 :END: - [X] Baseline test for REDACTED - REDACTED NOTE - [X] Baseline test for SOMETHING ELSE If you rendered this as a static document (e.g. export to HTML), you'd see the headline "Testing prior to syncup meeting", and the bullet-point list at the bottom. The remaining things are metadata, nicely formatted by Emacs (and partially hidden; e.g. :LOGBOOK: / :END: block starts folded by default). The metadata shown are part of Org-mode's task management aspect - the todo state (DONE), date of task's finalization, time clocking (CLOCK: entries), tags (CUSTOMER_development). Together, they enable me to very efficiently mange tasks, track spent time, and autogenerate invoice data. In this sense, org format is both a nice Markdown alternative, and - when coupled with Emacs - enables very powerful interactive documents that can handle task management, time clocking, literate programming, spreadsheeting, and other tasks. I suspect Org will never be as popular as Markdown simply because, if you wanted to go beyond Markdown feature parity, you'd have to reimplement half of Emacs to handle those "advanced" aspects.
  - kungtotte 8y ago
    Oh I don't doubt the usefulness of Org-Mode, but I guess the point is the one you bring up: if you want to use Org-Mode it's Emacs or the highway. With Markdown I can use any editor from a full-featured IDE all the way down to `cat` or `ed` and all I'm giving up are some quality of life features. It's the same format at the bottom, and it has the added benefit of being ubiquitous in that nearly every editor has some basic Markdown support. I can write it anywhere and take it anywhere, not so for Org-Mode. I think I prefer the Markdown approach of keeping the file format light and plain, and building the quality of life features on top in the editor.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      To be clear: Org format is just plaintext, and you can use it mostly in the same way you use Markdown. It's nowhere near as popular, but if all you want is Markdown feature parity, then there is growing support in other editors and places. It's only when you want to go beyond Markdown that this becomes "Emacs or the highway".
      - tripzilch 8y ago
        Biggest difference for me is, that I had already been taking notes in markdown since before I heard about it. The only change for me was the welcome relief of not having to be creative any more about what headings or links should look like. Rest of the syntax I already used because that's how I've always made text files "look good". As for your orgmode example, it's not a very good example of "just plaintext" if the metadata code in between the bits of text is larger than the content of the note. I imagine that with nice syntax highlighting it becomes easier to parse in just a glance, but then it's no longer "just plaintext" in the same way that e.g. YAML isn't. It probably works very well, but to me it looks a lot like a plaintext encoding of a database record or something. It's a different use case. Not a simple note that is "basically plaintext". For instance I would not feel entirely comfortable editing your example without worrying I'd mess up the structure or produce a syntax error. Though maybe the format is really forgiving, I can't tell. What happens if you forget the :END: bit, for instance?
    - 8y ago
Walkman 8y ago
The big difference is that Markdown is way simpler, you can read it reasonably easy with Notepad even, and this is why every reasonable editor can Render it preview it, export it. Even browsers or small apps can show a HTML rendered markdown. There are even standalone Markdown editors, but there is no standalone org-mode editor.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  You can render a subset of Org mode just as easily as Markdown - they mostly differ with syntax. The problem is, Org format is not just a format for static documents - it also accounts for things you'd like to achieve with plaintext notes, and most of those "extra features" are defined in terms of their Emacs/Org-mode implementation. Which is something very hard to clone.
- orbital-decay 8y ago
  An org-mode subset comparable to Markdown isn't more complex than Markdown itself.
- Dangeranger 8y ago
  This is a silly comment. Of course you can read Orgmode in plain text, because that’s all it is. Maybe you looked at a file with a bunch of meta-data, or a file with a bunch of code blocks, but so what? Ignore the meta-data and just read the notes. They are all delimited by asterisks by their header level. Links are simple. Tables are simple, even tables with formulas are readable. Further more Markdown is a poorly defined plaintext format, which is why there are so many variants of it, and processors specific to those variants. If you don’t believe me, remember that GFM is not official markdown. Orgmode is at least well defined, so when other editors catch up and are able to implement all the features Emacs has when using it, they should behave similarly. If you want a well defined plain text format that exports to HTML/PDF/Word/RichText take a look at AsciiDoc or reStructuredText. But don’t blame Emacs for leveraging its power over a relatively simple plain text format. There are even packages these days for Vim, Sublime, Atom, Jetbrains to make good use of Orgmode without Emacs.
- dheera 8y ago
  I just use HTML directly if I need formatting. I find it wuch easier to remember its syntax than Markdown.

by xfer 8y ago

In that sense markdown is also proprietary, since you need some editor making things easy for you to manipulate and navigate the text document(that's all emacs does; even github renders org docs).

kungtotte 8y ago

Except Markdown looks like text with some special characters to embellish it a little. It's perfectly readable and legible in any text editor. Navigation is the only thing lacking, but manipulation is as easy as manipulating text is in your editor of choice. Note: I don't know what raw orgmode files look like, maybe they're similar to Markdown.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
They are. Org format is kind of a better and more powerful Markdown. As plaintext, it looks cleaner to me. The thing is, Org format is defined by the way Org-mode in Emacs handles it. Beyond Markdown-like features (which are rather easy to parse out; the format is similar), you get things in the data format that to date are handled only by Emacs. Think of Emacs + org mode as a better Jupyter notebooks than just editor for static text documents. Consider this note I have in my org file for work tasks. ** DONE [#A] Testing prior to syncup meeting :CUSTOMER_development: CLOSED: [2018-07-13 Fri 14:04] :LOGBOOK: CLOCK: [2018-07-13 Fri 12:14]--[2018-07-13 Fri 14:04] => 1:50 :END: - [X] Baseline test for REDACTED - REDACTED NOTE - [X] Baseline test for SOMETHING ELSE If you rendered this as a static document (e.g. export to HTML), you'd see the headline "Testing prior to syncup meeting", and the bullet-point list at the bottom. The remaining things are metadata, nicely formatted by Emacs (and partially hidden; e.g. :LOGBOOK: / :END: block starts folded by default). The metadata shown are part of Org-mode's task management aspect - the todo state (DONE), date of task's finalization, time clocking (CLOCK: entries), tags (CUSTOMER_development). Together, they enable me to very efficiently mange tasks, track spent time, and autogenerate invoice data. In this sense, org format is both a nice Markdown alternative, and - when coupled with Emacs - enables very powerful interactive documents that can handle task management, time clocking, literate programming, spreadsheeting, and other tasks. I suspect Org will never be as popular as Markdown simply because, if you wanted to go beyond Markdown feature parity, you'd have to reimplement half of Emacs to handle those "advanced" aspects.
- kungtotte 8y ago
  Oh I don't doubt the usefulness of Org-Mode, but I guess the point is the one you bring up: if you want to use Org-Mode it's Emacs or the highway. With Markdown I can use any editor from a full-featured IDE all the way down to `cat` or `ed` and all I'm giving up are some quality of life features. It's the same format at the bottom, and it has the added benefit of being ubiquitous in that nearly every editor has some basic Markdown support. I can write it anywhere and take it anywhere, not so for Org-Mode. I think I prefer the Markdown approach of keeping the file format light and plain, and building the quality of life features on top in the editor.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    To be clear: Org format is just plaintext, and you can use it mostly in the same way you use Markdown. It's nowhere near as popular, but if all you want is Markdown feature parity, then there is growing support in other editors and places. It's only when you want to go beyond Markdown that this becomes "Emacs or the highway".
    - tripzilch 8y ago
      Biggest difference for me is, that I had already been taking notes in markdown since before I heard about it. The only change for me was the welcome relief of not having to be creative any more about what headings or links should look like. Rest of the syntax I already used because that's how I've always made text files "look good". As for your orgmode example, it's not a very good example of "just plaintext" if the metadata code in between the bits of text is larger than the content of the note. I imagine that with nice syntax highlighting it becomes easier to parse in just a glance, but then it's no longer "just plaintext" in the same way that e.g. YAML isn't. It probably works very well, but to me it looks a lot like a plaintext encoding of a database record or something. It's a different use case. Not a simple note that is "basically plaintext". For instance I would not feel entirely comfortable editing your example without worrying I'd mess up the structure or produce a syntax error. Though maybe the format is really forgiving, I can't tell. What happens if you forget the :END: bit, for instance?
  - 8y ago

Walkman 8y ago

The big difference is that Markdown is way simpler, you can read it reasonably easy with Notepad even, and this is why every reasonable editor can Render it preview it, export it. Even browsers or small apps can show a HTML rendered markdown. There are even standalone Markdown editors, but there is no standalone org-mode editor.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
You can render a subset of Org mode just as easily as Markdown - they mostly differ with syntax. The problem is, Org format is not just a format for static documents - it also accounts for things you'd like to achieve with plaintext notes, and most of those "extra features" are defined in terms of their Emacs/Org-mode implementation. Which is something very hard to clone.
orbital-decay 8y ago
An org-mode subset comparable to Markdown isn't more complex than Markdown itself.
Dangeranger 8y ago
This is a silly comment. Of course you can read Orgmode in plain text, because that’s all it is. Maybe you looked at a file with a bunch of meta-data, or a file with a bunch of code blocks, but so what? Ignore the meta-data and just read the notes. They are all delimited by asterisks by their header level. Links are simple. Tables are simple, even tables with formulas are readable. Further more Markdown is a poorly defined plaintext format, which is why there are so many variants of it, and processors specific to those variants. If you don’t believe me, remember that GFM is not official markdown. Orgmode is at least well defined, so when other editors catch up and are able to implement all the features Emacs has when using it, they should behave similarly. If you want a well defined plain text format that exports to HTML/PDF/Word/RichText take a look at AsciiDoc or reStructuredText. But don’t blame Emacs for leveraging its power over a relatively simple plain text format. There are even packages these days for Vim, Sublime, Atom, Jetbrains to make good use of Orgmode without Emacs.
dheera 8y ago
I just use HTML directly if I need formatting. I find it wuch easier to remember its syntax than Markdown.