3 ms·

What level of emacs knowledge does org mode require such that it is actually useful to me and can do stuff Microsoft onenote cannot?

rgoulter 7y ago
Depends what your use-cases are. If you want good, painless syncing between devices, and good mobile use: this would require quite some effort to get org-mode as good as OneNote's. Org-Babel is an example of something that org can do but OneNote can't. (e.g. showing the results of code blocks in the same markup file). It would be straightforward to make use of this without very much Emacs knowledge, but the Emacs UX isn't great out of the box. Or maybe some other feature of org-mode might be useful to have with your notes. https://orgmode.org/manual/index.html https://orgmode.org/manual/index.html e.g. I like the org-agenda. I haven't used exporting org files into PDF or presentations, but I could see it being useful for people who use it. You'd be fine getting on without needing to learn much Emacs (beyond a relevant tutorial for the feature), not counting aforementioned Emacs default configuration. -- I think the momentum of "I can do a bunch of different things in org" comes incrementally, rather than starting using several features of org.
mikekchar 7y ago
I love org mode, but to be honest I think the killer feature of org mode is that it is implemented in the same editor I use for programming. In fact, I had moved from Emacs to Vim several years prior, but moved back to Emacs simply for org mode (and luckily Evil is good enough that I don't really miss Vim at all). Additionally, everything is ascii. There aren't different editors for different kinds of objects because there aren't different kinds of objects. Even tables are just arbitrary pipes, dashes and pluses. I can hack together something that looks kind of like a row in a table, say, "Emacs, please format that to look pretty" and then carry on hacking away. Dates are just text until I tell Emacs, "Oh, please make that date tomorrow". And then it's just text again. I can do crazy things like write some code in one and think, "Oh I need to remember to check that constant to see if it's right". Then I hit a button and I've got a TODO with either a link to the line of the code, or even a link with the context of the code so that stays valid if the line moves. When I am going through my TODOs, I press a button and my TODO list pops up. I press another button and it jumps to my code. I edit it. Rinse and repeat. It's all just normal text in my normal text editor. I don't think there is anything at all like it.
- animalnewbie 7y ago
  Thank you. Well written.

rgoulter 7y ago

Depends what your use-cases are. If you want good, painless syncing between devices, and good mobile use: this would require quite some effort to get org-mode as good as OneNote's. Org-Babel is an example of something that org can do but OneNote can't. (e.g. showing the results of code blocks in the same markup file). It would be straightforward to make use of this without very much Emacs knowledge, but the Emacs UX isn't great out of the box. Or maybe some other feature of org-mode might be useful to have with your notes. https://orgmode.org/manual/index.html https://orgmode.org/manual/index.html e.g. I like the org-agenda. I haven't used exporting org files into PDF or presentations, but I could see it being useful for people who use it. You'd be fine getting on without needing to learn much Emacs (beyond a relevant tutorial for the feature), not counting aforementioned Emacs default configuration. -- I think the momentum of "I can do a bunch of different things in org" comes incrementally, rather than starting using several features of org.

mikekchar 7y ago

I love org mode, but to be honest I think the killer feature of org mode is that it is implemented in the same editor I use for programming. In fact, I had moved from Emacs to Vim several years prior, but moved back to Emacs simply for org mode (and luckily Evil is good enough that I don't really miss Vim at all). Additionally, everything is ascii. There aren't different editors for different kinds of objects because there aren't different kinds of objects. Even tables are just arbitrary pipes, dashes and pluses. I can hack together something that looks kind of like a row in a table, say, "Emacs, please format that to look pretty" and then carry on hacking away. Dates are just text until I tell Emacs, "Oh, please make that date tomorrow". And then it's just text again. I can do crazy things like write some code in one and think, "Oh I need to remember to check that constant to see if it's right". Then I hit a button and I've got a TODO with either a link to the line of the code, or even a link with the context of the code so that stays valid if the line moves. When I am going through my TODOs, I press a button and my TODO list pops up. I press another button and it jumps to my code. I edit it. Rinse and repeat. It's all just normal text in my normal text editor. I don't think there is anything at all like it.

animalnewbie 7y ago
Thank you. Well written.