18 ms·

Org-Mode Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text (2018)

518 points by funkaster 7y ago

hollasch 7y ago
If you haven't seen it yet, check out Markdeep: http://casual-effects.com/markdeep/ http://casual-effects.com/markdeep/. Write in any text editor, and a tiny JS boilerplate turns it into nicely-rendered HTML.
- jerguismi 7y ago
  Wow, genious idea.
- skullborg 7y ago
  The flowcharts are gorgeous.
  - lloeki 7y ago
    Check out https://mermaidjs.github.io https://mermaidjs.github.io which is less visual in plain text but much easier to write.
    - desas 7y ago
      PlantUML is a good alternative too and has a good jetbrains plug-in
      - Jach 7y ago
        I came cross PlantUML recently, it's so much more than a classic diagram tool. I was particularly intrigued by their wireframe system: http://plantuml.com/salt http://plantuml.com/salt
    - psnosignaluk 7y ago
      As we use Confluence for our collective brain, awareness of this was an unexpected bonus. Thank you.
  - baq 7y ago
    Yes they are but how to write them?
- psnosignaluk 7y ago
  Arrived to read about a markup language, discovered something properly useful. Thank you.
skookumchuck 7y ago
: Simple pre-formatted text such as for source code. : This also respects the line breaks. *bold* is not bold here. The trouble with that is you cannot easily copy/paste code to/from it, because you'll need to manually add/subtract the : prefix. Delineating the section with: ``` Simple pre-formatted text such as for source code. This also respects the line breaks. *bold* is not bold here. ``` is much more practical.
- confounded 7y ago
  They’re not mentioned in the article, but org-mode does have syntax for source blocks (a little uglier than Commonmark/Github-flavor markdown’s blocks in my opinion, but it does the same thing and works well).
  - walkingolof 7y ago
    And you can execute that code too with Babel ———> https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/ https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It may seem uglier if you use it first time: #+BEGIN_SRC lisp (format t "Hello world!~&") #+END_SRC but it has two things going for it. One, it's consistent with other blocks, like BEGIN_QUOTE, BEGIN_EXAMPLE, BEGIN_VERSE, etc. (n.b. all four have a default shorthand that gets tab-expanded; <s. <q, <e and <v, respectively) , and with arbitrary user-defined blocks like BEGIN_whatever. Two, while #+BEGIN_SRC may seem only an unnecessarily verbose way of writing ```, things change when the block starts to look like this: #+NAME: advanced-block #+BEGIN_SRC lisp :package my-package :var foo=123 :var bar=asdf :noweb yes :exports both :eval never-export <<preamble>> (format t "Hello ~A!~&" <<some-other-block(param=3.14)>> ) #+END_SRC AKA. a named source block (so I can reference it elsewhere) of Lisp executing in selected Lisp package, with org mode variables injected into it, using noweb syntax (literate programming) for injecting other code blocks[0], which when exporting the document to a different format (say, PDF) will export both code and results of its evaluation, but will not automatically evaluate the code. This feature makes Org Mode essentially a kind of better Jupyter, with automatic support for any and all possible language that you can plug into Emacs, simultaneously. -- [0] -- here, it'll paste the literal contents of #+BEGIN_SRC block with #+NAME: preamble at the beginning, and then paste the results of executing a block with #+NAME: some-other-block, with value 3.14 for its :var param, at the end
enitihas 7y ago
Org mode is simply awesome and the only reason I open emacs these days. I still haven't managed to find a software, free or paid, which has the same amount of flexibility.
- black-tea 7y ago
  Org-mode and magit were the reasons that I had to use emacs. Ended up falling in love with emacs itself, though.
  - db48x 7y ago
    Magit does make pretty good bait.
- jeromenerf 7y ago
  Pretty much the same. Emacs with evil vim like bindings to edit .org files. I do a fair share of code within .org files though and it’s fine. People complain a bit too much about productivity and context switching.
kemitchell 7y ago
Last I checked, and admittedly it's been a while, parsing full org-mode syntax outside Emacs itself is a nightmare. It's essentially cloning whatever version of org-mode you have in mind. Not that org-mode's any less for it. I'm no longer a daily user, but I was, for quite some time, to organization a particularly chaotic episode of my work life.
setr 7y ago
>org-mode is standardized Last I looked into it (mainly with interest for vim), few if any parsers/tooling exist for it outside of emacs; as I recall, people claimed that it apparently has sufficient (undocumented/poorly specified) quirks in the emacs implementation that 100% reproduction is difficult; similar to implementing vim-mode for editor plugins In which case, its only as standardized as the one implementation; which is exactly how standardized markdown started with (the perl implementation)
- terhechte 7y ago
  Came here just to say that. I had a static blog written in org-mode and converted it over to markdown a couple of weeks ago because there's no good way of converting org-mode to html except by running emacs. So for each article, getting a html representation requires firing up emacs. That's insane. If there were good (and fast!) js, c, python, etc libraries to fully support parsing org-mode to AST and HTML, only then would it be a viable solution for markup.
  - rakoo 7y ago
    If you're turning markup formatted files into html there is pandoc (https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/) for that
  - Naac 7y ago
    Did pandoc not convert org files to HTML correctly?
    - ekns 7y ago
      Pandoc only handles a subset of org-mode markup. IIRC last time I tried this (long ago) there were a number of gaps in things like org-mode tables. At the limiting case, the (common or uncommon) elisp extensions (e.g. org-babel) will likely never be processed by third-party tools.
      - disgruntledphd2 7y ago
black-tea 7y ago
I've used org-mode both as an organiser and as a simple markup language. It is fantastic for both and far superior to any other that I've used. I will actually write using org-mode and export to formats for others, often using pandoc (which I invoke using the keyboard from emacs, of course). One weird thing about markdown and other formats is they don't have a title. So people use heading 1 as their title which is strange and wrong. I simply love being able to type up a document in an environment I'm comfortable in and then exporting it to whatever format is required at the end: html (document or slideshow), pdf, or even MS Turd. I have stylesheets set up for each that actually make my documents look more professional and consistent than people who use those things directly.
- mickael-kerjean 7y ago
  Org-mode is a god sent. I also have quite some customisation when it comes to export. Do you mind sharing what your exports looks like? Mine for pdf: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/application/pdf/docs/tasks-projects.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/application/pdf/... and html: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/html/docs/tasks-projects.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/html/docs/t...
enriquto 7y ago
The day org-mode will reach the masses is when the tutorials about it do not even mention the word emacs. Until then, it will inevitably be seen as a thing useful only for emacs users.
- sdwisely 7y ago
  I don't know that is bad. Without Emacs, org-mode is just weird markdown. The way it can quickly link between different types of unrelated content just doesn't make sense outside Emacs.
  - afiori 7y ago
    > just doesn't make sense outside Emacs That is the entire point. If I can only use it inside emacs then I will only use it inside emacs.
  - enriquto 7y ago
    > Without Emacs, org-mode is just weird markdown. So, are you saying that the title of the article is bogus? Or that emacs is the only reasonable editor?
    - zeveb 7y ago
      > Or that emacs is the only reasonable editor? Given the options, I think that a decent argument can be made that emacs is the best editor, and that it's unreasonable to use anything that the best — so yeah, one might argue that emacs is the only reasonable editor. I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but I wouldn't instinctively disagree.
      - wowtip 7y ago
        My take is Emacs is the best integrated text processing environment available. But I am not sure it would beat VI/VIM as an text editor. I don't think most Emacs users could match a good VIM user in text editing speed, but then Emacs can do many other tasks that are hard to replicate in VIM, while being a more than good enough editor. It is not so much which editor is better, rather what are the user's expectations. To me this is obvious and has been probably been said a 1000 times before, but sometimes when reading threads about text editors, you would not think so.
zaarn 7y ago
The article title is missing a footnote: "Only if you use EMacs, as Org-Mode is impossible to implement outside of EMacs". Source: tried once as someone who never used org-mode or emacs. Did not go well.
- mickael-kerjean 7y ago
  I built a complete web app for org-mode: https://demo.filestash.app/s/hnorg https://demo.filestash.app/s/hnorg ho and it's open source https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
  - julienchastang 7y ago
    Hey, this looks pretty nice! Could you elaborate a bit here on what this is?
lifthrasiir 7y ago
After considering two or three dozens of different "lightweight" markup languages (i.e. not flavors) and designing a few (plus at least three failed attempts to improve Markdown), I'm now almost convinced that Scribble [1] or Perl POD [2] have one of the best possible designs. Not that they are optimal, but they are definitely heading at the correct direction. They are extremely generic: every Scribble syntax is prefixed `@`, every POD construct is either `letter<...>` or `=word`. And yet they are surprisingly unobstructive and readable enough. Compare with BBCode, which is also pretty generic but too annoying. They are readily extensible and need no special one-off syntaxes for most things. Yes, using asterisks or underscores for emphasis is handy, but how about strike-throughs? Underlines? Non-emphasis italics (e.g. species name)? Language tags? Abbreviations? Do they nest? Do they work in any context? Why not adding some harmless options to the existing constructs? Syntax extensibility should be one of the foremost concerns of markup language design and they got it right. Edit: I should stress that these concerns are only valid for writings. For casual comments, less is better (ideally no-follow links and verbatim texts should suffice). [1] https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ [2] https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html
- perlgeek 7y ago
  I'm a big fan of Perl myself, but when writing POD, I occasionally stumble about the C<...> for inline code. The problem is that you have to take care that there is no > in the inline code, and if there is, you have to switch to C<< ... >>. With Markdown's `...`, this happened far less often to me.
  - lifthrasiir 7y ago
    You are right that it is suboptimal. (I do think that Scribble's choice of braces is not too bad in this regard.) On the other hand, I can't readily type backquotes in my mobile phone or recent macOS [1] so there is a trade-off :-) [1] Annoyingly enough, macOS Sierra and later maps a backquote to a Won sign in Korean keyboard layouts.
    - 7y ago
byproxy 7y ago
Makes me think of a comment I posted not too long ago (and it's responses) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474623 Reasonable for text...for most text that's skeuomorphic with regards to the printed word (in most senses). But... what is there for that which is beyond? A response to the linked comment mentions TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Anything else? Is it too vast a problem in that we should make due with solutions that cover 90% of use-cases? Ah, but does that limit potential future development as people mold themselves to the constraints placed on them by the tools and what those tools allow? Just thinking out loud, per usual.
narrator 7y ago
I like Wikitext[1] which is Mediawiki's markup. Mediawiki is the software that runs Wikipedia. I have a personal Mediawiki that I use for taking notes and it works a lot better than org-mode in that it is easy to make tables, nicely formatted outlines , hypertext, etc. Chrome has a plugin that lets you edit textboxes in emacs too so you can use a real text editor instead of just chrome textboxes. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples
jopsen 7y ago
Actually, looks very reasonable :) But adopting trumps perfection, hence, GFM is probably the most reasonable choice for new applications today.
01100011 7y ago
Maybe I'm just old but I miss the old MoinMoin syntax. A lot of markups are so complicated (mediawiki) I'd rather just write HTML. For my personal notes I now just use vim and a custom syntax file to give color to special names and headings. I've used markdown before but it seemed like different tools treated the language slightly different.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  I do the same for my personal notes. Something like (the actual contents differ because I take notes in my native tongue): if exists("b:current_syntax") finish endif syn match diaryHashtag "\w\@<!#[A-Za-z]\+" syn match diaryInlineCode "`[^`]\+`" syn match diaryLineMarker "^[ \t]*\%([0-9]\+\.\|[*-]\)\S\@!" syn match diaryInlineMarker "=>\|\S\@<!(\?\%(i\{1,3}\|iv\|vi\{0,3}\|ix\|x\))\S\@!" syn match diaryInlineDate "\<\%(today\|yesterday\|tomorrow\|\%(\%(next\|last\)\s\)\=\%(mon\|tue\|wed\|thu\|fri\|sat\|sun\)\|20\d\d-\d\d\%(-\d\d\)\=\)" syn match diaryInlineTime "\<\%(\d\d\=:\d\d\|morning\|afternoon\|night\)" hi default link diaryHashtag String hi default link diaryInlineCode Delimiter hi default link diaryLineMarker Statement hi default link diaryInlineMarker Statement hi default link diaryInlineDate Comment hi default link diaryInlineTime Comment let b:current_syntax = 'diary' But this system is entirely unusable for longer and potentially public writings.
  - pcnix 7y ago
    I used something similar, along with a few additions to add timestamp as a column on the left etc. I've since switched over to org-mode though, I find that the agenda integration and a couple of org-journal plugins make for easy task management. I'd really like an alternative that lets me handle this on mobile, so far I've tried termux and the github edit file interface, and neither are as satisfactory.
lloeki 7y ago
While reading the thing I could not help but feel like what I'd call "sensible markdown" is both very close and bijective to org syntax. The trouble comes when I need to define what is "sensible markdown" which is a thing I never attempted to do, but pragmatically works very well. It seems like it's CommonMark + GFM (for tables, checklists, and syntax-aware fenced code blocks mostly) + MarkdownLint[0], the latter enforcing stringent rules that makes Markdown very consistent and portable as well as prune the nonsensical stuff (like double space before newline or underline headings). It's fantastic to use with VScode[1] or vim-ale. Some pet peeves: I really don't ever get the argument about Markdown URLS. Being able to do both [](url) vs [][ref] is awesome (the latter I liberally use when writing long form docs). If one finds it so annoying one would make the mistake like three times and then it'd be burned into one's brain due to selective pressure. Or just use [][ref] style (which is more readable anyway since you don't have the URL right in the middle of a sentence). Also, very personal thing but my brain seems to hate /italics/ as it branch predicts into parsing that as a regex. What drives me nuts though is all the variants and ad hoc syntaxes like JIRA's or this very board's, which sit right in the uncanny valley of nonsense. [0]: https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint [1]: https://github.com/DavidAnson/vscode-markdownlint https://github.com/DavidAnson/vscode-markdownlint
- zwp 7y ago
  > ad hoc syntaxes like JIRA's Gak, yeah, I empathize. JIRA was a pain point for me too. I take comprehensive notes using org-mode (including all of my false turns, dead ends and "explore this later"s) and when I need to paste something into a ticket I export via ox-jira.el and copy/paste what I need. It works much better than the author's modest README might lead you to believe, and of course it's hackable. https://github.com/stig/ox-jira.el https://github.com/stig/ox-jira.el
- mickael-kerjean 7y ago
  > bijective to org syntax To date, I haven't seen a flavor of Markdown that has a comment feature. I use it extensively to hide all my notes that don't have a place in the final exported document people will read.
exabrial 7y ago
So markdown. But standardized. Again.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  Org mode predates markdown.
ggm 7y ago
What we need is more time machines so we can go back in the past and make even more future choices. Because just splitting amongst the choices we have is so .. limiting. I do kind of wish we only had one markdown flavour. Maybe why we only have one org mode is because of its lack of ubiquitousness? If it had an electron windows version would it be the same? The commensurate note is, everything here (Bar one) says it's a stalking horse for Emacs
anbop 7y ago
I refuse to use a plain text editor for my personal notes. Bold, italic, underline, text highlighting... these are all things that help me organize text and draw my attention to certain areas. Asterisks simply don't do the same job, visually.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  Luckily for you Emacs lets you set the faces (emacs's name for syntax highlighting) however you want it. You get the best of both worlds: convenient keyboard interface and marked up text in the editor.
- kqr 7y ago
  Emacs Org supports three different settings in terms of this: - Show styling sigils and keep text plain; - Show styling sigils AND style the text; - Hide styling sigils and style the text. In my experience, the middle option really hits the sweet spot.
- mruts 7y ago
  ..which is why you wouldn’t use org-mode? Org-mode does all of those things and more: inline images, tables, latex, etc.
JonAtkinson 7y ago
The authors argument that Markdown should be discarded because there are several competing implementations isn't valid. For many years (even now), we have several competing implementations of HTML, yet the HTML document is the dominant presentational document format (and UI layout language). It hasn't done anything to hurt adoption. The fact that Markdown does have a common subset of features, and that Markdown is widely interoperable with a vast amount of products is why it wins. As far as I can tell Org-Mode markup is used within Emacs and really nowhere else.
- tamrix 7y ago
  And so soon we'll get org-mode to markdown transpilers.
  - mickael-kerjean 7y ago
    We've been having it since quite a few years, it's called export and it looks like this: - original org: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/org/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/org/emacs.o... - markdown: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/markdown/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/markdown/em... - html: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/html/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/html/emacs.... - pdf: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/application/pdf/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/application/pdf/... - more fancy plain text: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/plain/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/plain/emacs... there's more builtin and with plugin you can say extend the github markdown to cope with jekyll, hugo, ...etc
    - joaomsa 7y ago
      This looks really nice, do you have plans to implement text search of note contents? No matter how methodical I get with tags and hierarchies, nothing beats search for recall.
      - 7y ago
xamde 7y ago
AsciiDoc! As nice as org-mode syntax, but with "=" instead of "*". Also, has code blocks so copy&paste is nicer. Also, has one giant document explaining everything.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- geogra4 7y ago
  I agree. My experience with asciidoc is that it's much more comprehensive and straightforward than trying to manage all the competing markdown implementations while still maintaining legible syntax and a full feature set
- sandGorgon 7y ago
  agreed and much more compatible with pandoc and https://asciidoctor.org/ https://asciidoctor.org/ bunch of bindings - https://github.com/asciidoc https://github.com/asciidoc , etc. Also Oreilly publishing officially supports Asciidoc for Atlas publishing - http://docs.atlas.oreilly.com/writing_in_asciidoc.html http://docs.atlas.oreilly.com/writing_in_asciidoc.html
- kqr 7y ago
  Are you saying Org does not have code blocks?
- tmm84 7y ago
  My first love was AsciiDoc and it still is. I never got into markdown as much as AsciiDoc because it did what I wanted which was to generate documentation for software. However, when keeping track of stuff I am working on, snippets of possible code and completion status, etc. then Org-Mode has my attention. I have tried doing the same in markdown but most themes don't handle TODO as gracefully as ones targeting org-mode.
blablabla123 7y ago
Org mode is great, at work I use it since half a year to keep myself organized. For instance when I'm debugging something, I can keep notes and clues or the sometimes not avoidable request that just won't fit into the issue tracker.
wzdd 7y ago
Might be time to plug my very orgmode-esque Vim plugin: https://github.com/nfd/disorganiser https://github.com/nfd/disorganiser I recently came to the same conclusion as the article but was dismayed by the performance of the popular Vim plugin (and wasn't ready to switch to emacs), so I wrote a very, very minimal implementation which is enough to get me headings, folding, tables (including formula solving, the syntax for which is currently left as an exercise for the reader), unordered lists, dates, and various other things. It's very much a work in progress (in particular, the syntax files expect a graphical Vim) but it's definitely improved my note-taking. Requires Python 3 support.
tpaschalis 7y ago
It does look nice, and I'd be more than happy to put some effort and use Org-Mode, instead of Markdown, if only - There was a standardized release outside emacs which would consistently provide the same results. - There was an easy way to render documents (like the Perl script markdown has) - There was serious support for plugins for my editor for easy rendering to pdf/html/whatever.
fourier_mode 7y ago
Once I played with tables in org-mode, I never turned back to markdown. I am not sure if there is another markup tool which looks at tables as good org-mode does.
- joseph8th 7y ago
  Agreed. Sadly ox export for markdown doesn't render markdown tables. Of course, as the OP argues, that's a little like exporting PDF to EPS.
IshKebab 7y ago
Unconvincing. Markdown surely has way better tool support. The lack of standardisation is probably the best argument, but I suspect that is mostly not a problem for Org mode simply because barely anyone uses it. If it were as popular as Markdown you'd find plenty of non-standard extensions and slightly different implementations.
lucideer 7y ago
> Org-Mode Makes Sense Outside of Emacs ... goes on to name one tool (pandoc) that parses Org-Mode (and also parses Markdown. I would in fact guess pandoc is used much more often for the latter than the former). > Org-Mode Has Excellent Tool Support > this is not an article about Emacs ... goes on to describe the "tool support" in Emacs. Sorry, but the paragraph title here really implies we're going to be talking about a range of tools, not just Emacs. And then to conclude: > With this blog article I wanted to point out the usefulness of Org-mode even when you are not using Emacs as an writing tool. Can anyone point me to where exactly in the article the author has done this? Org-Mode is great if you use Emacs. Try installing the Org-Mode addon in your non-Emacs IDE of choice, and you'll hit the same "partially implemented/not-yet-supported/etc." issues you would using an obscure markdown parser. In this regard, Markdown is much more "standardised" than Org-Mode—a standard exists for both, but the level of adherance to that standard in terms of the total number of parsers out there is undoubtedly higher for Markdown.
- bad_user 7y ago
  I don't really like opinions such as yours, because you're nitpicky. This article actually doesn't give it justice, because Org-Mode is more than an alternative to Markdown because it specifies formatting for time-based tasks, so you can specify deadlines and you can also track the time you work on those tasks. You can use Org-Mode for task management in a way that other formats are not suitable. Examples of tooling: 1. GitHub can render Org-Mode files (in gists, etc) 2. you can find task management tools for iPhone / Android that can work with Org-Mode, one example being: https://beorgapp.com/ https://beorgapp.com/ 3. in a text editor all you really need is syntax highlighting, but yes, you can find plugins for many editors, not as evolved as Emacs's, but acceptable, e.g. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/itemdetails?itemName=tootone.org-mode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/itemdetails?itemName=to... Speaking of apps like no. 2, show me TODO apps that synchronize text files to Dropbox, using your format of choice that's not Org-Mode. Is tooling really a reason for why you're not using Org-Mode, or is it because you're too conservative to try it?
  - agentwiggles 7y ago
    Tooling is definitely at least part of why I don't use org, and I use emacs as my primary editor. I love the concept of org, but getting it synced and using it on mobile were not trivial, and features that I'd expect from any similar solution were all painfully manual. I wanted to love org, but I just haven't found a way to make it work for me, and tooling is certainly part of the problem.
crispyambulance 7y ago
The author claims, several times, that "many" people use org-mode outside of emacs. I am skeptical of that. The whole point of an abbreviated mark-up is to RENDER that mark-up into something else. The "many" people who use org-mode outside of emacs are just a subset of pandoc commandline users (and perhaps some other tool which I am not even aware of). I guess it depends on what one considers to be "many"?
LoSboccacc 7y ago
> consistent, intuitive, standard about that, just found some random online editor and entered this: https://i.imgur.com/Mcyi3kS.png https://i.imgur.com/Mcyi3kS.png not what I'd call intuitive. maybe is that particular editor implementation? but then I'd have an issue with the other half of the post, where he talks down markdown dialects.
sondr3 7y ago
As much as it pains me, org-mode is no better than Markdown when it comes to standards or implementations. There's basically just one de facto implementation of it, and it has no specification or standard. There are parsers out there, but all of them are lacking one or more of the parts that make org-mode so great. Markdown shines with its simplicity, org-mode shines with its extensibility. Want to use it like a Jupyter Notebook? No problem. Want to use it as a spreadsheet? No problem. Want to write academic papers and export it to LaTeX? No problem. Want to use it outside of Emacs? Well... I've been looking for and at solutions for using org-mode as the markup language for a static site generator, and none of the ones I find do what I want. org-mode has a builtin exporter that can build whole websites, but it is very barebones. The only real solution I know of is Hakyll with Pandoc, which is what I'm playing with right now. I wish we had something like CommonMark for org-mode, but the overlap of people who use org-mode and don't use Emacs is probably extremely small, so it's not like there will be competing implementations outside of Emacs.
- kqr 7y ago
  Sorry, probably missing something obvious: what prevents you from using Emacs instead of pandoc to convert Org to HTML in whatever pipeline you have going already?
  - lucideer 7y ago
    That's beside the point. If the argument is: "Emacs has better standardisation than Markdown" (which is what the article purports), that argument is invalid if it depends on always using a single implementation. That's not how standards work. i.e. If your answer to anyone's problem using Org is "what prevents you from using Emacs", then that ain't standardisation.
    - kqr 7y ago
      I think we're in violent agreement. The submitted article mischaracterises the level of standardisation around the Org format. My comment was written with the intention of seeing if I could help with the specific problem the GP mentioned, since it seemed like the GP had overlooked a possible solution. I should have been more clear about that, sorry.
CivBase 7y ago
This looks very similar to markdown. I wonder how org-mode distinguishes itself. > Org-Mode is Standardized > the very widely used markup language named Markdown has many flavors to choose from I believe the XKCD about standards applies here.[0] The problem with Markdown is only real if you treat Markdown as a single language instead of a family of languages. You don't need to support multiple Markdown compilers. Just pick a particular flavor of Markdown to support for your project. I usually go with GitHub's. Besides, having a standard doesn't stop others from adding unofficial features on top of that standard. If this happens to take off, maybe I'll be using GitHub Flavored Org-Mode in the future. [0] https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
agentultra 7y ago
I really, really, really like org-mode. I've used it for more than a decade. I've written self-published books with it. I use it for capturing ideas. For writing Reveal presentation slides. My database of links. I use it as a lightweight kanban board for personal projects. I use it for generating technical documentation mixing graphs, code, and prose. But most of that isn't possible without Emacs. As a markup format I wish it was more widely used. The promise of org-mode is that text is the best format for storing your data in. However to properly read more than the surface markup language of org-mode requires a significant amount of software. And very few editors or software packages exist outside of emacs work with it. And so lacking any other features of org-mode it's markup language isn't any more impressive or useful than any other and is more of a matter of preference. It would be nice if more software packages supported the org-mode markup syntax but I wouldn't say it's the most "reasonable," even given the arguments in this article.
zelly 7y ago
I use org-mode often. It's a very intuitive way of structuring notes because most things are hierarchical in nature and lend themselves well to infinitely nested lists. It really pairs well with The LISP Way™️. I use it to make flashcards (csv format for Anki) out of my notes. The front side is the hierarchy of a headline to its parents, and the back is the text below the headline. e.g., * Python3 ** I/O *** modes - 'r' open for reading (default) - 'w' open for writing, truncating the file first - 'x' open for exclusive creation, failing if the file already exists - 'a' open for writing, appending to the end of the file if it exists - 'b' binary mode - 't' text mode (default) - '+' open a disk file for updating (reading and writing) ...makes a flashcard like: -------------- -------------- | Python3 | - 'r' ... | | :: IO | . | | :: modes | . | | | . | -------------- -------------- source for undocumented spaghetti code: https://github.com/hackharmony/org-to-anki-csv/blob/master/org-to-anki.el https://github.com/hackharmony/org-to-anki-csv/blob/master/o... However I would say that there are much better markup languages out there. (Or better yet, don't use a markup language at all and use richer formats. We're not in the PDP11 era anymore.) It's good if you need version control though.
- BeetleB 7y ago
  Just as an FYI, Org mode has a flashcard software (org-drill). (Broken on Org 9.x - not sure if they fixed it - you may need to use 8.x).
  - zelly 7y ago
    I tried that but it didn't have all the features I wanted. Specifically, I wanted to be able to make a list of subheadings as a flashcard (the front side being the headlines above). There's a lot of information you can encode in just the hierarchy for free.
asciimov 7y ago
I've always wanted to learn org-mode and emacs. Can anybody recommend a good tutorial? Also, should I learn pure emacs or go the spacemacs route? My background is in vim.
- zeveb 7y ago
  Coming from vim, I'd suggest spacemacs, following along with whatever docs they have. Coming from anywhere else, I'd just start with the emacs tutorial (C-h t) and then move on from there. I personally think that there's a lot to like about the vi text-manipulation commands, but that spacemacs does a bit too much out of the box. I just use Prelude:-)
- dillon 7y ago
  Vim user here. I use Vim for pretty much everything, but I do have Spacemacs installed purely for two modes: 1. Org-Mode 2. Regex Mode org-mode is just too good not to use. I use it for interview notes, writing documentation for other teams and non-technical staff, my blog, and probably other stuff I can't think of right now. The part where I heavily disagree with the author of this article is when he says you don't have to use emacs for org-mode. My, personal, belief is you're missing out of some of the power if you opt for Vim + Pandoc. The exporters in emacs support a lot more features (that I do use) than Pandoc does. If you can get away with just Pandoc then great, but I opted for Spacemacs (coming from Vim).
- zaiste 7y ago
  Another, long-time Vim user here. I recommend Emacs Doom [1]. It was built especially with Vim users in mind. [1]: https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
013a 7y ago
> Org-Mode Is Standardized Let's be totally clear about this: If Org-Mode were actually popular, it too would have twelve variants. It is not popular.
rini17 7y ago
Such free-style formats are easy and addictive, but you eventually hit some well-hidden sharp corners. For example I missed some deadlines without any warning from emacs nor any indication with syntax higlighting when I had: * TODO stuff text <- no text should be here!! DEADLINE: <date> Not to mention I am vim user and ANY vim compatibility layer for emacs eventually goes infuriatingly against my muscle memory.
nitwhiz 7y ago
This is just markdown..
sevensor 7y ago
Having written my dissertation in markdown, and having not tried org-mode, I'm intrigued. The thing about multiple markdown implementations is a bit of a red herring. The subtly different problem with markdown is not multiple implementations, but a syntax with too many alternative ways of doing the same thing. Section headers, tables, raw HTML, raw LaTeX -- it's kind of a mess. Multiple flavors make this worse by supporting subtly different variants of the alternative syntaxes, but the core of the problem is that the original specification was "whatever this perl script does," and that leads to weird corner cases. The appealing case for org-mode is consistent syntax. At least that's what it looks like from a distance. Like I said, I haven't tried it.
- maga_2020 7y ago
  what do you think about Org2Blog [1] (it supports math notation as well as integrated publishing from orgmode to wordpress) ? I would like to minimize my learning curves, so wanted to get a performant blogging service installed on a 2.50$ Vultr instance, and keep using Emacs for blogging with something that includes math typesetting. org2blog seems to be fit closest to what I am looking for (but I would prefer something other than wordpress if I have a choice). [1] https://github.com/org2blog/org2blog https://github.com/org2blog/org2blog
mruts 7y ago
org-mode with latex yasnippet expansions is the best note taking method I’ve ever used. Inline images, tables, ans latex. So seemless.
burtonator 7y ago
I'm surprised how many people use org-mode. At least on Hacker News... a Lot of the Polar users mention org-mode as one of the other tools they're using.
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
I can't help but think this is a bit more of an apples-to-oranges comparison than it's being treated as in this post. Org's introduction (chapter 1.1 of its manual) begins, * Org is a mode for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, and project planning with a fast and effective plain-text markup language. It also is an authoring system with unique support for literate programming and reproducible research.* Whereas the introduction to Markdown from its original author begins simply, Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. These are both lightweight markup languages, sure, but they're designed for different domains. What makes Org-mode interesting isn't ultimately its markup language; look at all the comments here talking about tasks and tags and such. What makes it interesting is its implementation. Markdown, conversely, was explicitly intended as an HTML preprocessor. You can do anything in Markdown that you can do in HTML for the simple reason that if you can't do it in Markdown, you can literally use HTML. That's not what Org-mode is for. I think the thesis of this article is basically "Org-mode's specific choices with respect to markup syntax are better than Markdown's." And, well, fine; I'm not entirely sure I agree, but I'm not sure it really matters. What does matter to me is that Markdown (a) works very well for what I want in practice and (b) works everywhere I want it to. If I was one of the folks who lived in Emacs, the chances are Org-mode would handily hit both of those points for me. But I'm not. And as lucideer noted in his comment, just because it's possible to use (a subset of) Org-mode's markup outside Emacs doesn't mean it offers any particular advantage over, well, Markdown.
Aardwolf 7y ago
Another one that doesn't respect line breaks What is the reason why all those lightweight markup languages don't preserve plain text line breaks by default without special formatting? It would be much easier to use if they did, if I hit enter in plain text it's for a reason I like BBCode, and that one preserves your line breaks too
ninju 7y ago
> Org-Mode Is Standardized (until it isn't) I'm assuming all of the variations of Markdown that were created were created without knowledge of the original Markdown creator. Is the OP going to monitor all open source projects and block people from creating an improvement of Org-Mode
- ternaryoperator 7y ago
  >(until it isn't) There is only one version of Org-Mode, with its own reference implementation, and it's been that way for years. >I'm assuming all of the variations of Markdown that were created were created without knowledge of the original Markdown creator. Not so. Daring Fireball was repeatedly asked to participate in advancing, changing, standardizing MD, but chose not to. He was well aware of the variants emerging. >Is the OP going to monitor all open source projects and block people from creating an improvement of Org-Mode That's not how reference implementations work. The only thing that matters are variants that get enough traction.
ogre_codes 7y ago
It fills most of the same niches as a tool which is currently extremely widely used (Markdown) without having any major benefits over it. Probably the single biggest improvement I see is the link syntax which I find bothersome in Markdown for the reasons the author suggests (parens first or brackets first). Aside from that, tooling for Markdown is massively better with dozens of tools supporting Markdown parsing and authoring. Yes there are a lot of sub-versions of Markdown, but if you know the basic markdown features you can use any of them.
- submeta 7y ago
  > ... without having any major benefits over it. How about tables?
  - ogre_codes 7y ago
    Fair point. Though I would suggest that one of the strengths of Markdown is the fact that the basics are simple and easy to understand and it leaves more advanced concepts to specific implementations. So there are implementations for everything from code comments (https://www.hackingwithswift.com/example-code/language/how-to-add-markdown-comments-to-your-code https://www.hackingwithswift.com/example-code/language/how-t...) to Script Writing (https://fountain.io https://fountain.io) which have features specific to their respective domains. Markdown itself doesn't have a huge featureset but the sub-markup languages which inherit from it do. Edit: What I find more confusing about Markdown is actually incomplete implementations like what's used by HN.
pwinnski 7y ago
I sometimes think that Org-mode suffers in the same way that SGML lost to HTML, SOAP lost to XML-RPC, Atom lost to RSS, XML lost to JSON, and so on. What some people see as the over-simplicity of Markdown is exactly what leads to it being implemented "everywhere." The simpler format often ends up being more widely used precisely because of its simplicity, not despite it.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  The analogy breaks down because the complexity in org-mode is completely optional. You don't have to use or even know of all of org-mode's features in order to use it. You could use a tiny subset of features and still have a valid org-mode file which is as simple as any other markdown format. In fact, that's exactly how most people use it. But if they want more power, it's there. What's more likely to be the reason for org-mode's lack of adoption is that most people don't use emacs.
otterpro 7y ago
Previously in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321850
celadevra_ 7y ago
Org-mode syntax is no better than that of AsciiDoc, or arguably Markdown. But I can assign keywords and unique id to sections, include sections from another file, generate indexes and sitemaps in fully customizable manners, incorporate other programming environments. What markup languages can do that? Org-Mode syntax is an interface to a powerful writing/authoring environment. To dismiss it as a `markup language' is not a good way to advocate its adoption. Something similar can be said to ways people appreciate the power of Emacs.

518 points by funkaster 7y ago

If you haven't seen it yet, check out Markdeep: http://casual-effects.com/markdeep/ http://casual-effects.com/markdeep/. Write in any text editor, and a tiny JS boilerplate turns it into nicely-rendered HTML.

jerguismi 7y ago
Wow, genious idea.
skullborg 7y ago
The flowcharts are gorgeous.
- lloeki 7y ago
  Check out https://mermaidjs.github.io https://mermaidjs.github.io which is less visual in plain text but much easier to write.
  - desas 7y ago
    PlantUML is a good alternative too and has a good jetbrains plug-in
    - Jach 7y ago
      I came cross PlantUML recently, it's so much more than a classic diagram tool. I was particularly intrigued by their wireframe system: http://plantuml.com/salt http://plantuml.com/salt
  - psnosignaluk 7y ago
    As we use Confluence for our collective brain, awareness of this was an unexpected bonus. Thank you.
- baq 7y ago
  Yes they are but how to write them?
psnosignaluk 7y ago
Arrived to read about a markup language, discovered something properly useful. Thank you.

skookumchuck 7y ago

: Simple pre-formatted text such as for source code. : This also respects the line breaks. *bold* is not bold here. The trouble with that is you cannot easily copy/paste code to/from it, because you'll need to manually add/subtract the : prefix. Delineating the section with: ``` Simple pre-formatted text such as for source code. This also respects the line breaks. *bold* is not bold here. ``` is much more practical.

confounded 7y ago
They’re not mentioned in the article, but org-mode does have syntax for source blocks (a little uglier than Commonmark/Github-flavor markdown’s blocks in my opinion, but it does the same thing and works well).
- walkingolof 7y ago
  And you can execute that code too with Babel ———> https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/ https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It may seem uglier if you use it first time: #+BEGIN_SRC lisp (format t "Hello world!~&") #+END_SRC but it has two things going for it. One, it's consistent with other blocks, like BEGIN_QUOTE, BEGIN_EXAMPLE, BEGIN_VERSE, etc. (n.b. all four have a default shorthand that gets tab-expanded; <s. <q, <e and <v, respectively) , and with arbitrary user-defined blocks like BEGIN_whatever. Two, while #+BEGIN_SRC may seem only an unnecessarily verbose way of writing ```, things change when the block starts to look like this: #+NAME: advanced-block #+BEGIN_SRC lisp :package my-package :var foo=123 :var bar=asdf :noweb yes :exports both :eval never-export <<preamble>> (format t "Hello ~A!~&" <<some-other-block(param=3.14)>> ) #+END_SRC AKA. a named source block (so I can reference it elsewhere) of Lisp executing in selected Lisp package, with org mode variables injected into it, using noweb syntax (literate programming) for injecting other code blocks[0], which when exporting the document to a different format (say, PDF) will export both code and results of its evaluation, but will not automatically evaluate the code. This feature makes Org Mode essentially a kind of better Jupyter, with automatic support for any and all possible language that you can plug into Emacs, simultaneously. -- [0] -- here, it'll paste the literal contents of #+BEGIN_SRC block with #+NAME: preamble at the beginning, and then paste the results of executing a block with #+NAME: some-other-block, with value 3.14 for its :var param, at the end

enitihas 7y ago

Org mode is simply awesome and the only reason I open emacs these days. I still haven't managed to find a software, free or paid, which has the same amount of flexibility.

black-tea 7y ago
Org-mode and magit were the reasons that I had to use emacs. Ended up falling in love with emacs itself, though.
- db48x 7y ago
  Magit does make pretty good bait.
jeromenerf 7y ago
Pretty much the same. Emacs with evil vim like bindings to edit .org files. I do a fair share of code within .org files though and it’s fine. People complain a bit too much about productivity and context switching.

kemitchell 7y ago

Last I checked, and admittedly it's been a while, parsing full org-mode syntax outside Emacs itself is a nightmare. It's essentially cloning whatever version of org-mode you have in mind. Not that org-mode's any less for it. I'm no longer a daily user, but I was, for quite some time, to organization a particularly chaotic episode of my work life.

setr 7y ago

>org-mode is standardized Last I looked into it (mainly with interest for vim), few if any parsers/tooling exist for it outside of emacs; as I recall, people claimed that it apparently has sufficient (undocumented/poorly specified) quirks in the emacs implementation that 100% reproduction is difficult; similar to implementing vim-mode for editor plugins In which case, its only as standardized as the one implementation; which is exactly how standardized markdown started with (the perl implementation)

terhechte 7y ago
Came here just to say that. I had a static blog written in org-mode and converted it over to markdown a couple of weeks ago because there's no good way of converting org-mode to html except by running emacs. So for each article, getting a html representation requires firing up emacs. That's insane. If there were good (and fast!) js, c, python, etc libraries to fully support parsing org-mode to AST and HTML, only then would it be a viable solution for markup.
- rakoo 7y ago
  If you're turning markup formatted files into html there is pandoc (https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/) for that
- Naac 7y ago
  Did pandoc not convert org files to HTML correctly?
  - ekns 7y ago
    Pandoc only handles a subset of org-mode markup. IIRC last time I tried this (long ago) there were a number of gaps in things like org-mode tables. At the limiting case, the (common or uncommon) elisp extensions (e.g. org-babel) will likely never be processed by third-party tools.
    - disgruntledphd2 7y ago

black-tea 7y ago

I've used org-mode both as an organiser and as a simple markup language. It is fantastic for both and far superior to any other that I've used. I will actually write using org-mode and export to formats for others, often using pandoc (which I invoke using the keyboard from emacs, of course). One weird thing about markdown and other formats is they don't have a title. So people use heading 1 as their title which is strange and wrong. I simply love being able to type up a document in an environment I'm comfortable in and then exporting it to whatever format is required at the end: html (document or slideshow), pdf, or even MS Turd. I have stylesheets set up for each that actually make my documents look more professional and consistent than people who use those things directly.

mickael-kerjean 7y ago
Org-mode is a god sent. I also have quite some customisation when it comes to export. Do you mind sharing what your exports looks like? Mine for pdf: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/application/pdf/docs/tasks-projects.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/application/pdf/... and html: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/html/docs/tasks-projects.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/html/docs/t...

enriquto 7y ago

The day org-mode will reach the masses is when the tutorials about it do not even mention the word emacs. Until then, it will inevitably be seen as a thing useful only for emacs users.

sdwisely 7y ago
I don't know that is bad. Without Emacs, org-mode is just weird markdown. The way it can quickly link between different types of unrelated content just doesn't make sense outside Emacs.
- afiori 7y ago
  > just doesn't make sense outside Emacs That is the entire point. If I can only use it inside emacs then I will only use it inside emacs.
- enriquto 7y ago
  > Without Emacs, org-mode is just weird markdown. So, are you saying that the title of the article is bogus? Or that emacs is the only reasonable editor?
  - zeveb 7y ago
    > Or that emacs is the only reasonable editor? Given the options, I think that a decent argument can be made that emacs is the best editor, and that it's unreasonable to use anything that the best — so yeah, one might argue that emacs is the only reasonable editor. I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but I wouldn't instinctively disagree.
    - wowtip 7y ago
      My take is Emacs is the best integrated text processing environment available. But I am not sure it would beat VI/VIM as an text editor. I don't think most Emacs users could match a good VIM user in text editing speed, but then Emacs can do many other tasks that are hard to replicate in VIM, while being a more than good enough editor. It is not so much which editor is better, rather what are the user's expectations. To me this is obvious and has been probably been said a 1000 times before, but sometimes when reading threads about text editors, you would not think so.

zaarn 7y ago

The article title is missing a footnote: "Only if you use EMacs, as Org-Mode is impossible to implement outside of EMacs". Source: tried once as someone who never used org-mode or emacs. Did not go well.

mickael-kerjean 7y ago
I built a complete web app for org-mode: https://demo.filestash.app/s/hnorg https://demo.filestash.app/s/hnorg ho and it's open source https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
- julienchastang 7y ago
  Hey, this looks pretty nice! Could you elaborate a bit here on what this is?

lifthrasiir 7y ago

After considering two or three dozens of different "lightweight" markup languages (i.e. not flavors) and designing a few (plus at least three failed attempts to improve Markdown), I'm now almost convinced that Scribble [1] or Perl POD [2] have one of the best possible designs. Not that they are optimal, but they are definitely heading at the correct direction. They are extremely generic: every Scribble syntax is prefixed `@`, every POD construct is either `letter<...>` or `=word`. And yet they are surprisingly unobstructive and readable enough. Compare with BBCode, which is also pretty generic but too annoying. They are readily extensible and need no special one-off syntaxes for most things. Yes, using asterisks or underscores for emphasis is handy, but how about strike-throughs? Underlines? Non-emphasis italics (e.g. species name)? Language tags? Abbreviations? Do they nest? Do they work in any context? Why not adding some harmless options to the existing constructs? Syntax extensibility should be one of the foremost concerns of markup language design and they got it right. Edit: I should stress that these concerns are only valid for writings. For casual comments, less is better (ideally no-follow links and verbatim texts should suffice). [1] https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ [2] https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html

perlgeek 7y ago
I'm a big fan of Perl myself, but when writing POD, I occasionally stumble about the C<...> for inline code. The problem is that you have to take care that there is no > in the inline code, and if there is, you have to switch to C<< ... >>. With Markdown's `...`, this happened far less often to me.
- lifthrasiir 7y ago
  You are right that it is suboptimal. (I do think that Scribble's choice of braces is not too bad in this regard.) On the other hand, I can't readily type backquotes in my mobile phone or recent macOS [1] so there is a trade-off :-) [1] Annoyingly enough, macOS Sierra and later maps a backquote to a Won sign in Korean keyboard layouts.
  - 7y ago

byproxy 7y ago

Makes me think of a comment I posted not too long ago (and it's responses) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474623 Reasonable for text...for most text that's skeuomorphic with regards to the printed word (in most senses). But... what is there for that which is beyond? A response to the linked comment mentions TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Anything else? Is it too vast a problem in that we should make due with solutions that cover 90% of use-cases? Ah, but does that limit potential future development as people mold themselves to the constraints placed on them by the tools and what those tools allow? Just thinking out loud, per usual.

narrator 7y ago

I like Wikitext[1] which is Mediawiki's markup. Mediawiki is the software that runs Wikipedia. I have a personal Mediawiki that I use for taking notes and it works a lot better than org-mode in that it is easy to make tables, nicely formatted outlines , hypertext, etc. Chrome has a plugin that lets you edit textboxes in emacs too so you can use a real text editor instead of just chrome textboxes. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples

jopsen 7y ago

Actually, looks very reasonable :) But adopting trumps perfection, hence, GFM is probably the most reasonable choice for new applications today.

01100011 7y ago

Maybe I'm just old but I miss the old MoinMoin syntax. A lot of markups are so complicated (mediawiki) I'd rather just write HTML. For my personal notes I now just use vim and a custom syntax file to give color to special names and headings. I've used markdown before but it seemed like different tools treated the language slightly different.

lifthrasiir 7y ago
I do the same for my personal notes. Something like (the actual contents differ because I take notes in my native tongue): if exists("b:current_syntax") finish endif syn match diaryHashtag "\w\@<!#[A-Za-z]\+" syn match diaryInlineCode "`[^`]\+`" syn match diaryLineMarker "^[ \t]*\%([0-9]\+\.\|[*-]\)\S\@!" syn match diaryInlineMarker "=>\|\S\@<!(\?\%(i\{1,3}\|iv\|vi\{0,3}\|ix\|x\))\S\@!" syn match diaryInlineDate "\<\%(today\|yesterday\|tomorrow\|\%(\%(next\|last\)\s\)\=\%(mon\|tue\|wed\|thu\|fri\|sat\|sun\)\|20\d\d-\d\d\%(-\d\d\)\=\)" syn match diaryInlineTime "\<\%(\d\d\=:\d\d\|morning\|afternoon\|night\)" hi default link diaryHashtag String hi default link diaryInlineCode Delimiter hi default link diaryLineMarker Statement hi default link diaryInlineMarker Statement hi default link diaryInlineDate Comment hi default link diaryInlineTime Comment let b:current_syntax = 'diary' But this system is entirely unusable for longer and potentially public writings.
- pcnix 7y ago
  I used something similar, along with a few additions to add timestamp as a column on the left etc. I've since switched over to org-mode though, I find that the agenda integration and a couple of org-journal plugins make for easy task management. I'd really like an alternative that lets me handle this on mobile, so far I've tried termux and the github edit file interface, and neither are as satisfactory.

lloeki 7y ago

While reading the thing I could not help but feel like what I'd call "sensible markdown" is both very close and bijective to org syntax. The trouble comes when I need to define what is "sensible markdown" which is a thing I never attempted to do, but pragmatically works very well. It seems like it's CommonMark + GFM (for tables, checklists, and syntax-aware fenced code blocks mostly) + MarkdownLint[0], the latter enforcing stringent rules that makes Markdown very consistent and portable as well as prune the nonsensical stuff (like double space before newline or underline headings). It's fantastic to use with VScode[1] or vim-ale. Some pet peeves: I really don't ever get the argument about Markdown URLS. Being able to do both [](url) vs [][ref] is awesome (the latter I liberally use when writing long form docs). If one finds it so annoying one would make the mistake like three times and then it'd be burned into one's brain due to selective pressure. Or just use [][ref] style (which is more readable anyway since you don't have the URL right in the middle of a sentence). Also, very personal thing but my brain seems to hate /italics/ as it branch predicts into parsing that as a regex. What drives me nuts though is all the variants and ad hoc syntaxes like JIRA's or this very board's, which sit right in the uncanny valley of nonsense. [0]: https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint [1]: https://github.com/DavidAnson/vscode-markdownlint https://github.com/DavidAnson/vscode-markdownlint

zwp 7y ago
> ad hoc syntaxes like JIRA's Gak, yeah, I empathize. JIRA was a pain point for me too. I take comprehensive notes using org-mode (including all of my false turns, dead ends and "explore this later"s) and when I need to paste something into a ticket I export via ox-jira.el and copy/paste what I need. It works much better than the author's modest README might lead you to believe, and of course it's hackable. https://github.com/stig/ox-jira.el https://github.com/stig/ox-jira.el
mickael-kerjean 7y ago
> bijective to org syntax To date, I haven't seen a flavor of Markdown that has a comment feature. I use it extensively to hide all my notes that don't have a place in the final exported document people will read.

exabrial 7y ago

So markdown. But standardized. Again.

BeetleB 7y ago
Org mode predates markdown.

ggm 7y ago

What we need is more time machines so we can go back in the past and make even more future choices. Because just splitting amongst the choices we have is so .. limiting. I do kind of wish we only had one markdown flavour. Maybe why we only have one org mode is because of its lack of ubiquitousness? If it had an electron windows version would it be the same? The commensurate note is, everything here (Bar one) says it's a stalking horse for Emacs

anbop 7y ago

I refuse to use a plain text editor for my personal notes. Bold, italic, underline, text highlighting... these are all things that help me organize text and draw my attention to certain areas. Asterisks simply don't do the same job, visually.

mikekchar 7y ago
Luckily for you Emacs lets you set the faces (emacs's name for syntax highlighting) however you want it. You get the best of both worlds: convenient keyboard interface and marked up text in the editor.
kqr 7y ago
Emacs Org supports three different settings in terms of this: - Show styling sigils and keep text plain; - Show styling sigils AND style the text; - Hide styling sigils and style the text. In my experience, the middle option really hits the sweet spot.
mruts 7y ago
..which is why you wouldn’t use org-mode? Org-mode does all of those things and more: inline images, tables, latex, etc.

JonAtkinson 7y ago

The authors argument that Markdown should be discarded because there are several competing implementations isn't valid. For many years (even now), we have several competing implementations of HTML, yet the HTML document is the dominant presentational document format (and UI layout language). It hasn't done anything to hurt adoption. The fact that Markdown does have a common subset of features, and that Markdown is widely interoperable with a vast amount of products is why it wins. As far as I can tell Org-Mode markup is used within Emacs and really nowhere else.

tamrix 7y ago
And so soon we'll get org-mode to markdown transpilers.
- mickael-kerjean 7y ago
  We've been having it since quite a few years, it's called export and it looks like this: - original org: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/org/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/org/emacs.o... - markdown: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/markdown/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/markdown/em... - html: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/html/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/html/emacs.... - pdf: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/application/pdf/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/application/pdf/... - more fancy plain text: https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/plain/emacs.org https://demo.filestash.app/api/export/hnorg/text/plain/emacs... there's more builtin and with plugin you can say extend the github markdown to cope with jekyll, hugo, ...etc
  - joaomsa 7y ago
    This looks really nice, do you have plans to implement text search of note contents? No matter how methodical I get with tags and hierarchies, nothing beats search for recall.
    - 7y ago

xamde 7y ago

AsciiDoc! As nice as org-mode syntax, but with "=" instead of "*". Also, has code blocks so copy&paste is nicer. Also, has one giant document explaining everything.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
geogra4 7y ago
I agree. My experience with asciidoc is that it's much more comprehensive and straightforward than trying to manage all the competing markdown implementations while still maintaining legible syntax and a full feature set
sandGorgon 7y ago
agreed and much more compatible with pandoc and https://asciidoctor.org/ https://asciidoctor.org/ bunch of bindings - https://github.com/asciidoc https://github.com/asciidoc , etc. Also Oreilly publishing officially supports Asciidoc for Atlas publishing - http://docs.atlas.oreilly.com/writing_in_asciidoc.html http://docs.atlas.oreilly.com/writing_in_asciidoc.html
kqr 7y ago
Are you saying Org does not have code blocks?
tmm84 7y ago
My first love was AsciiDoc and it still is. I never got into markdown as much as AsciiDoc because it did what I wanted which was to generate documentation for software. However, when keeping track of stuff I am working on, snippets of possible code and completion status, etc. then Org-Mode has my attention. I have tried doing the same in markdown but most themes don't handle TODO as gracefully as ones targeting org-mode.

blablabla123 7y ago

Org mode is great, at work I use it since half a year to keep myself organized. For instance when I'm debugging something, I can keep notes and clues or the sometimes not avoidable request that just won't fit into the issue tracker.

wzdd 7y ago

Might be time to plug my very orgmode-esque Vim plugin: https://github.com/nfd/disorganiser https://github.com/nfd/disorganiser I recently came to the same conclusion as the article but was dismayed by the performance of the popular Vim plugin (and wasn't ready to switch to emacs), so I wrote a very, very minimal implementation which is enough to get me headings, folding, tables (including formula solving, the syntax for which is currently left as an exercise for the reader), unordered lists, dates, and various other things. It's very much a work in progress (in particular, the syntax files expect a graphical Vim) but it's definitely improved my note-taking. Requires Python 3 support.

tpaschalis 7y ago

It does look nice, and I'd be more than happy to put some effort and use Org-Mode, instead of Markdown, if only - There was a standardized release outside emacs which would consistently provide the same results. - There was an easy way to render documents (like the Perl script markdown has) - There was serious support for plugins for my editor for easy rendering to pdf/html/whatever.

fourier_mode 7y ago

Once I played with tables in org-mode, I never turned back to markdown. I am not sure if there is another markup tool which looks at tables as good org-mode does.

joseph8th 7y ago
Agreed. Sadly ox export for markdown doesn't render markdown tables. Of course, as the OP argues, that's a little like exporting PDF to EPS.

IshKebab 7y ago

Unconvincing. Markdown surely has way better tool support. The lack of standardisation is probably the best argument, but I suspect that is mostly not a problem for Org mode simply because barely anyone uses it. If it were as popular as Markdown you'd find plenty of non-standard extensions and slightly different implementations.

lucideer 7y ago

> Org-Mode Makes Sense Outside of Emacs ... goes on to name one tool (pandoc) that parses Org-Mode (and also parses Markdown. I would in fact guess pandoc is used much more often for the latter than the former). > Org-Mode Has Excellent Tool Support > this is not an article about Emacs ... goes on to describe the "tool support" in Emacs. Sorry, but the paragraph title here really implies we're going to be talking about a range of tools, not just Emacs. And then to conclude: > With this blog article I wanted to point out the usefulness of Org-mode even when you are not using Emacs as an writing tool. Can anyone point me to where exactly in the article the author has done this? Org-Mode is great if you use Emacs. Try installing the Org-Mode addon in your non-Emacs IDE of choice, and you'll hit the same "partially implemented/not-yet-supported/etc." issues you would using an obscure markdown parser. In this regard, Markdown is much more "standardised" than Org-Mode—a standard exists for both, but the level of adherance to that standard in terms of the total number of parsers out there is undoubtedly higher for Markdown.

bad_user 7y ago
I don't really like opinions such as yours, because you're nitpicky. This article actually doesn't give it justice, because Org-Mode is more than an alternative to Markdown because it specifies formatting for time-based tasks, so you can specify deadlines and you can also track the time you work on those tasks. You can use Org-Mode for task management in a way that other formats are not suitable. Examples of tooling: 1. GitHub can render Org-Mode files (in gists, etc) 2. you can find task management tools for iPhone / Android that can work with Org-Mode, one example being: https://beorgapp.com/ https://beorgapp.com/ 3. in a text editor all you really need is syntax highlighting, but yes, you can find plugins for many editors, not as evolved as Emacs's, but acceptable, e.g. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/itemdetails?itemName=tootone.org-mode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/itemdetails?itemName=to... Speaking of apps like no. 2, show me TODO apps that synchronize text files to Dropbox, using your format of choice that's not Org-Mode. Is tooling really a reason for why you're not using Org-Mode, or is it because you're too conservative to try it?
- agentwiggles 7y ago
  Tooling is definitely at least part of why I don't use org, and I use emacs as my primary editor. I love the concept of org, but getting it synced and using it on mobile were not trivial, and features that I'd expect from any similar solution were all painfully manual. I wanted to love org, but I just haven't found a way to make it work for me, and tooling is certainly part of the problem.

crispyambulance 7y ago

The author claims, several times, that "many" people use org-mode outside of emacs. I am skeptical of that. The whole point of an abbreviated mark-up is to RENDER that mark-up into something else. The "many" people who use org-mode outside of emacs are just a subset of pandoc commandline users (and perhaps some other tool which I am not even aware of). I guess it depends on what one considers to be "many"?

LoSboccacc 7y ago

> consistent, intuitive, standard about that, just found some random online editor and entered this: https://i.imgur.com/Mcyi3kS.png https://i.imgur.com/Mcyi3kS.png not what I'd call intuitive. maybe is that particular editor implementation? but then I'd have an issue with the other half of the post, where he talks down markdown dialects.

sondr3 7y ago

As much as it pains me, org-mode is no better than Markdown when it comes to standards or implementations. There's basically just one de facto implementation of it, and it has no specification or standard. There are parsers out there, but all of them are lacking one or more of the parts that make org-mode so great. Markdown shines with its simplicity, org-mode shines with its extensibility. Want to use it like a Jupyter Notebook? No problem. Want to use it as a spreadsheet? No problem. Want to write academic papers and export it to LaTeX? No problem. Want to use it outside of Emacs? Well... I've been looking for and at solutions for using org-mode as the markup language for a static site generator, and none of the ones I find do what I want. org-mode has a builtin exporter that can build whole websites, but it is very barebones. The only real solution I know of is Hakyll with Pandoc, which is what I'm playing with right now. I wish we had something like CommonMark for org-mode, but the overlap of people who use org-mode and don't use Emacs is probably extremely small, so it's not like there will be competing implementations outside of Emacs.

kqr 7y ago
Sorry, probably missing something obvious: what prevents you from using Emacs instead of pandoc to convert Org to HTML in whatever pipeline you have going already?
- lucideer 7y ago
  That's beside the point. If the argument is: "Emacs has better standardisation than Markdown" (which is what the article purports), that argument is invalid if it depends on always using a single implementation. That's not how standards work. i.e. If your answer to anyone's problem using Org is "what prevents you from using Emacs", then that ain't standardisation.
  - kqr 7y ago
    I think we're in violent agreement. The submitted article mischaracterises the level of standardisation around the Org format. My comment was written with the intention of seeing if I could help with the specific problem the GP mentioned, since it seemed like the GP had overlooked a possible solution. I should have been more clear about that, sorry.

CivBase 7y ago

This looks very similar to markdown. I wonder how org-mode distinguishes itself. > Org-Mode is Standardized > the very widely used markup language named Markdown has many flavors to choose from I believe the XKCD about standards applies here.[0] The problem with Markdown is only real if you treat Markdown as a single language instead of a family of languages. You don't need to support multiple Markdown compilers. Just pick a particular flavor of Markdown to support for your project. I usually go with GitHub's. Besides, having a standard doesn't stop others from adding unofficial features on top of that standard. If this happens to take off, maybe I'll be using GitHub Flavored Org-Mode in the future. [0] https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

agentultra 7y ago

I really, really, really like org-mode. I've used it for more than a decade. I've written self-published books with it. I use it for capturing ideas. For writing Reveal presentation slides. My database of links. I use it as a lightweight kanban board for personal projects. I use it for generating technical documentation mixing graphs, code, and prose. But most of that isn't possible without Emacs. As a markup format I wish it was more widely used. The promise of org-mode is that text is the best format for storing your data in. However to properly read more than the surface markup language of org-mode requires a significant amount of software. And very few editors or software packages exist outside of emacs work with it. And so lacking any other features of org-mode it's markup language isn't any more impressive or useful than any other and is more of a matter of preference. It would be nice if more software packages supported the org-mode markup syntax but I wouldn't say it's the most "reasonable," even given the arguments in this article.

zelly 7y ago

I use org-mode often. It's a very intuitive way of structuring notes because most things are hierarchical in nature and lend themselves well to infinitely nested lists. It really pairs well with The LISP Way™️. I use it to make flashcards (csv format for Anki) out of my notes. The front side is the hierarchy of a headline to its parents, and the back is the text below the headline. e.g., * Python3 ** I/O *** modes - 'r' open for reading (default) - 'w' open for writing, truncating the file first - 'x' open for exclusive creation, failing if the file already exists - 'a' open for writing, appending to the end of the file if it exists - 'b' binary mode - 't' text mode (default) - '+' open a disk file for updating (reading and writing) ...makes a flashcard like: -------------- -------------- | Python3 | - 'r' ... | | :: IO | . | | :: modes | . | | | . | -------------- -------------- source for undocumented spaghetti code: https://github.com/hackharmony/org-to-anki-csv/blob/master/org-to-anki.el https://github.com/hackharmony/org-to-anki-csv/blob/master/o... However I would say that there are much better markup languages out there. (Or better yet, don't use a markup language at all and use richer formats. We're not in the PDP11 era anymore.) It's good if you need version control though.

BeetleB 7y ago
Just as an FYI, Org mode has a flashcard software (org-drill). (Broken on Org 9.x - not sure if they fixed it - you may need to use 8.x).
- zelly 7y ago
  I tried that but it didn't have all the features I wanted. Specifically, I wanted to be able to make a list of subheadings as a flashcard (the front side being the headlines above). There's a lot of information you can encode in just the hierarchy for free.

asciimov 7y ago

I've always wanted to learn org-mode and emacs. Can anybody recommend a good tutorial? Also, should I learn pure emacs or go the spacemacs route? My background is in vim.

zeveb 7y ago
Coming from vim, I'd suggest spacemacs, following along with whatever docs they have. Coming from anywhere else, I'd just start with the emacs tutorial (C-h t) and then move on from there. I personally think that there's a lot to like about the vi text-manipulation commands, but that spacemacs does a bit too much out of the box. I just use Prelude:-)
dillon 7y ago
Vim user here. I use Vim for pretty much everything, but I do have Spacemacs installed purely for two modes: 1. Org-Mode 2. Regex Mode org-mode is just too good not to use. I use it for interview notes, writing documentation for other teams and non-technical staff, my blog, and probably other stuff I can't think of right now. The part where I heavily disagree with the author of this article is when he says you don't have to use emacs for org-mode. My, personal, belief is you're missing out of some of the power if you opt for Vim + Pandoc. The exporters in emacs support a lot more features (that I do use) than Pandoc does. If you can get away with just Pandoc then great, but I opted for Spacemacs (coming from Vim).
zaiste 7y ago
Another, long-time Vim user here. I recommend Emacs Doom [1]. It was built especially with Vim users in mind. [1]: https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs

013a 7y ago

> Org-Mode Is Standardized Let's be totally clear about this: If Org-Mode were actually popular, it too would have twelve variants. It is not popular.

rini17 7y ago

Such free-style formats are easy and addictive, but you eventually hit some well-hidden sharp corners. For example I missed some deadlines without any warning from emacs nor any indication with syntax higlighting when I had: * TODO stuff text <- no text should be here!! DEADLINE: <date> Not to mention I am vim user and ANY vim compatibility layer for emacs eventually goes infuriatingly against my muscle memory.

nitwhiz 7y ago

This is just markdown..

sevensor 7y ago

Having written my dissertation in markdown, and having not tried org-mode, I'm intrigued. The thing about multiple markdown implementations is a bit of a red herring. The subtly different problem with markdown is not multiple implementations, but a syntax with too many alternative ways of doing the same thing. Section headers, tables, raw HTML, raw LaTeX -- it's kind of a mess. Multiple flavors make this worse by supporting subtly different variants of the alternative syntaxes, but the core of the problem is that the original specification was "whatever this perl script does," and that leads to weird corner cases. The appealing case for org-mode is consistent syntax. At least that's what it looks like from a distance. Like I said, I haven't tried it.

maga_2020 7y ago
what do you think about Org2Blog [1] (it supports math notation as well as integrated publishing from orgmode to wordpress) ? I would like to minimize my learning curves, so wanted to get a performant blogging service installed on a 2.50$ Vultr instance, and keep using Emacs for blogging with something that includes math typesetting. org2blog seems to be fit closest to what I am looking for (but I would prefer something other than wordpress if I have a choice). [1] https://github.com/org2blog/org2blog https://github.com/org2blog/org2blog

mruts 7y ago

org-mode with latex yasnippet expansions is the best note taking method I’ve ever used. Inline images, tables, ans latex. So seemless.

burtonator 7y ago

I'm surprised how many people use org-mode. At least on Hacker News... a Lot of the Polar users mention org-mode as one of the other tools they're using.

chipotle_coyote 7y ago

I can't help but think this is a bit more of an apples-to-oranges comparison than it's being treated as in this post. Org's introduction (chapter 1.1 of its manual) begins, * Org is a mode for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, and project planning with a fast and effective plain-text markup language. It also is an authoring system with unique support for literate programming and reproducible research.* Whereas the introduction to Markdown from its original author begins simply, Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. These are both lightweight markup languages, sure, but they're designed for different domains. What makes Org-mode interesting isn't ultimately its markup language; look at all the comments here talking about tasks and tags and such. What makes it interesting is its implementation. Markdown, conversely, was explicitly intended as an HTML preprocessor. You can do anything in Markdown that you can do in HTML for the simple reason that if you can't do it in Markdown, you can literally use HTML. That's not what Org-mode is for. I think the thesis of this article is basically "Org-mode's specific choices with respect to markup syntax are better than Markdown's." And, well, fine; I'm not entirely sure I agree, but I'm not sure it really matters. What does matter to me is that Markdown (a) works very well for what I want in practice and (b) works everywhere I want it to. If I was one of the folks who lived in Emacs, the chances are Org-mode would handily hit both of those points for me. But I'm not. And as lucideer noted in his comment, just because it's possible to use (a subset of) Org-mode's markup outside Emacs doesn't mean it offers any particular advantage over, well, Markdown.

Aardwolf 7y ago

Another one that doesn't respect line breaks What is the reason why all those lightweight markup languages don't preserve plain text line breaks by default without special formatting? It would be much easier to use if they did, if I hit enter in plain text it's for a reason I like BBCode, and that one preserves your line breaks too

ninju 7y ago

> Org-Mode Is Standardized (until it isn't) I'm assuming all of the variations of Markdown that were created were created without knowledge of the original Markdown creator. Is the OP going to monitor all open source projects and block people from creating an improvement of Org-Mode

ternaryoperator 7y ago
>(until it isn't) There is only one version of Org-Mode, with its own reference implementation, and it's been that way for years. >I'm assuming all of the variations of Markdown that were created were created without knowledge of the original Markdown creator. Not so. Daring Fireball was repeatedly asked to participate in advancing, changing, standardizing MD, but chose not to. He was well aware of the variants emerging. >Is the OP going to monitor all open source projects and block people from creating an improvement of Org-Mode That's not how reference implementations work. The only thing that matters are variants that get enough traction.

ogre_codes 7y ago

It fills most of the same niches as a tool which is currently extremely widely used (Markdown) without having any major benefits over it. Probably the single biggest improvement I see is the link syntax which I find bothersome in Markdown for the reasons the author suggests (parens first or brackets first). Aside from that, tooling for Markdown is massively better with dozens of tools supporting Markdown parsing and authoring. Yes there are a lot of sub-versions of Markdown, but if you know the basic markdown features you can use any of them.

submeta 7y ago
> ... without having any major benefits over it. How about tables?
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  Fair point. Though I would suggest that one of the strengths of Markdown is the fact that the basics are simple and easy to understand and it leaves more advanced concepts to specific implementations. So there are implementations for everything from code comments (https://www.hackingwithswift.com/example-code/language/how-to-add-markdown-comments-to-your-code https://www.hackingwithswift.com/example-code/language/how-t...) to Script Writing (https://fountain.io https://fountain.io) which have features specific to their respective domains. Markdown itself doesn't have a huge featureset but the sub-markup languages which inherit from it do. Edit: What I find more confusing about Markdown is actually incomplete implementations like what's used by HN.

pwinnski 7y ago

I sometimes think that Org-mode suffers in the same way that SGML lost to HTML, SOAP lost to XML-RPC, Atom lost to RSS, XML lost to JSON, and so on. What some people see as the over-simplicity of Markdown is exactly what leads to it being implemented "everywhere." The simpler format often ends up being more widely used precisely because of its simplicity, not despite it.

pmoriarty 7y ago
The analogy breaks down because the complexity in org-mode is completely optional. You don't have to use or even know of all of org-mode's features in order to use it. You could use a tiny subset of features and still have a valid org-mode file which is as simple as any other markdown format. In fact, that's exactly how most people use it. But if they want more power, it's there. What's more likely to be the reason for org-mode's lack of adoption is that most people don't use emacs.

otterpro 7y ago

Previously in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321850

celadevra_ 7y ago

Org-mode syntax is no better than that of AsciiDoc, or arguably Markdown. But I can assign keywords and unique id to sections, include sections from another file, generate indexes and sitemaps in fully customizable manners, incorporate other programming environments. What markup languages can do that? Org-Mode syntax is an interface to a powerful writing/authoring environment. To dismiss it as a `markup language' is not a good way to advocate its adoption. Something similar can be said to ways people appreciate the power of Emacs.