8 ms·

Unfortunately, org-mode is only a portable format if you stick to bare-bones org-mode; if you start using any of the "power-features" unique to org-mode you're

by platz 6y ago

Unfortunately, org-mode is only a portable format if you stick to bare-bones org-mode; if you start using any of the "power-features" unique to org-mode you're stuck. And if you restrict yourself to markdown-compatibilty, why not just write in markdown?

tgbugs 6y ago
While I might have been concerned about this at one point in time, emacs and gcc are some of the most ported pieces of software in existence. That said, there have been some discussions about trying to work toward a specification for how things like org-babel should work so that other platforms can replicate the behavior inside of emacs. However, as others have stated elsewhere in the comments, once you accept emacs into your life there isn't really much incentive to spend time standardizing interfaces for things that can be handled more informally and as needed by the users. As a result those efforts need some internal incentive (like better or clearer documentation) to have development time allocated to them.
iLemming 6y ago
- Markdown is not consistent across the platforms that support it. If I wake you up at 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets? - Extensibility. e.g.: I got tired of manually typing description of links when I insert a link to a GitHub issue, I just wrote a tiny snippet that automatically retrieves the title of that issue. - Literate programming. For example: I can have a python snippet that when I evaluate, results would be piped it into another snippet in SQL that retrieves data from postgress, and then I can send a http request to a remote API based on what's in DB, and then use that to build a chart. Can you do that in Markdown? - LaTeX support. I can write some complex math formulas. - Exporting. I can turn my Org-mode file(s) into a reveal.js presentation, into a book, or a web-blog. - etc.
- ORioN63 6y ago
  > If I wake you up in 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets? I sure as well wouldn't. It confuses me thoroughly.
- jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
  > Markdown is not consistent across the platforms that support it. That is not true anymore. CommonMark is the formal spec everyone follows now, including most major sites out there. > If I wake you up at 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets? Well, yes. Markdown is super easy to remember. > LaTeX support. I can write some complex math formulas. On top of CommonMark you can add extensions to render LaTeX just fine (like MathExchange does, for instance).
  - iLemming 6y ago
    > That is not true anymore. GFM, ExtraMark, MultiMarkdown, MarkdownExtra, Gitlab, Taiga, Showdown, Markua, CommonMark, RMarkdown, etc., etc. I can promise you, there will be more flavors and extensions in the next 20 years. And if I'm still alive then and we don't invent anything drastically different from keyboard input, I'd probably still be using Org-mode. Among thousands of others.
    - jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
      GFM, Gitlab and others you list are CommonMark plus extensions, which is what I said. What is the problem? It is like saying JSON is useless because YAML exists, or that ISO C, C++, Fortran, IEEE 754, etc. are all useless because compilers and chip companies implement extensions.
      - iLemming 6y ago
        You're still comparing just one aspect of Org-mode with Markdown. You're trying to convince me as if I was a pro-photographer and you'd tried to convince me that .jpeg is a fine format and everyone uses it and it's more popular, even though I'd still prefer RAW. Using .markdown is not appealing for me because .org allows me to do way more. If you're not convinced, then perhaps you don't need it. But don't expect me and thousands of other users of .org to switch, we'd be like: "Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about". No offense.
      - tincholio 6y ago
- grimgrin 6y ago
  A ton of users here will be working with markdown in their repositories (docs, README, etc), and probably have the [thing](down)
- contravariant 6y ago
  > Literate programming. For example: I can have a python snippet that when I evaluate, results would be piped it into another snippet in SQL that retrieves data from postgress, and then I can send a http request to a remote API based on what's in DB, and then use that to build a chart. Can you do that in Markdown? I've found you can get pretty close if you combine it with Jupyter notebooks. When you use jupytext [1] or similar to synchronize the markdown and ipynb then it works quite nicely. Oh and as far as LaTeX / exporting is concerned, just use pandoc, you can export it however you want basically. [1]:https://github.com/mwouts/jupytext https://github.com/mwouts/jupytext
  - tincholio 6y ago
    Doesn't that require you to jump back and forth between browser and editor? also, does Jupyter support running multiple kernels in the same session? Org-babel allows you to mix and match languages freely. There's also really good support in Emacs for interacting with Jupyter, too https://github.com/dzop/emacs-jupyter https://github.com/dzop/emacs-jupyter
    - contravariant 6y ago
      Well you can edit the markdown in the regular jupyter browser. They haven't embraced plaintext in quite the same way emacs did though (so for some niceties you do need to use a browser, similar to how you need to use the emacs-gui to embed images). Coincidentally I haven't really managed to get the equation rendering right in emacs, the org-latex-preview seems quite slow. It's unfortunate that emacs isn't able to take advantage of things like KaTeX, there are historical reasons for this but still. Mixing languages seems to be possible [1], though I haven't personally used it. [1]: https://vatlab.github.io/sos-docs/doc/user_guide/multi_kernel_notebook.html https://vatlab.github.io/sos-docs/doc/user_guide/multi_kerne...
preek 6y ago
I’m successfully using organice to manage my Org files on the Go - on a phone or a different computer. https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice
- trenchgun 6y ago
  Looks neat!
preek 6y ago
Since Org is plain text, it’s a beautifully portable format. And there’s parsers for many languages like: https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser
alpaca128 6y ago
I'll have to disagree here. I'm using org-mode files even as a Vim user. Because compared to Markdown it has more basic syntax features and is fully compatible with LaTeX, making it both convenient and more powerful than Markdown. Non-Emacs parsers aren't remotely complete or correct but the same applies to the huge variety of incompatible Markdown extensions and parsers in my experience. Some support tables, some don't, some can't handle standard table of content references. And while you are right in that the interactive features of org-mode are Emacs exclusive they still are an advantage in my view: they are optional, independent of each other and documented. This means I was easily able to reproduce one of those features with some scripting in Vim while still keeping it conforming with the standard. I think .org is a fantastic format because 100% of even its most advanced features are still rooted in plain text representation of the information, while its syntax is basically a superset of LaTeX, providing convenient shortcuts of the most common elements of text documents. This makes it universally readable and powerful when needed.

by platz 6y ago

tgbugs 6y ago

While I might have been concerned about this at one point in time, emacs and gcc are some of the most ported pieces of software in existence. That said, there have been some discussions about trying to work toward a specification for how things like org-babel should work so that other platforms can replicate the behavior inside of emacs. However, as others have stated elsewhere in the comments, once you accept emacs into your life there isn't really much incentive to spend time standardizing interfaces for things that can be handled more informally and as needed by the users. As a result those efforts need some internal incentive (like better or clearer documentation) to have development time allocated to them.

iLemming 6y ago

- Markdown is not consistent across the platforms that support it. If I wake you up at 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets? - Extensibility. e.g.: I got tired of manually typing description of links when I insert a link to a GitHub issue, I just wrote a tiny snippet that automatically retrieves the title of that issue. - Literate programming. For example: I can have a python snippet that when I evaluate, results would be piped it into another snippet in SQL that retrieves data from postgress, and then I can send a http request to a remote API based on what's in DB, and then use that to build a chart. Can you do that in Markdown? - LaTeX support. I can write some complex math formulas. - Exporting. I can turn my Org-mode file(s) into a reveal.js presentation, into a book, or a web-blog. - etc.

ORioN63 6y ago
> If I wake you up in 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets? I sure as well wouldn't. It confuses me thoroughly.
jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
> Markdown is not consistent across the platforms that support it. That is not true anymore. CommonMark is the formal spec everyone follows now, including most major sites out there. > If I wake you up at 3AM would you remember the format of links? is it parentheses first or brackets? Well, yes. Markdown is super easy to remember. > LaTeX support. I can write some complex math formulas. On top of CommonMark you can add extensions to render LaTeX just fine (like MathExchange does, for instance).
- iLemming 6y ago
  > That is not true anymore. GFM, ExtraMark, MultiMarkdown, MarkdownExtra, Gitlab, Taiga, Showdown, Markua, CommonMark, RMarkdown, etc., etc. I can promise you, there will be more flavors and extensions in the next 20 years. And if I'm still alive then and we don't invent anything drastically different from keyboard input, I'd probably still be using Org-mode. Among thousands of others.
  - jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
    GFM, Gitlab and others you list are CommonMark plus extensions, which is what I said. What is the problem? It is like saying JSON is useless because YAML exists, or that ISO C, C++, Fortran, IEEE 754, etc. are all useless because compilers and chip companies implement extensions.
    - iLemming 6y ago
      You're still comparing just one aspect of Org-mode with Markdown. You're trying to convince me as if I was a pro-photographer and you'd tried to convince me that .jpeg is a fine format and everyone uses it and it's more popular, even though I'd still prefer RAW. Using .markdown is not appealing for me because .org allows me to do way more. If you're not convinced, then perhaps you don't need it. But don't expect me and thousands of other users of .org to switch, we'd be like: "Sorry, but you don't know what you're talking about". No offense.
    - tincholio 6y ago
grimgrin 6y ago
A ton of users here will be working with markdown in their repositories (docs, README, etc), and probably have the [thing](down)
contravariant 6y ago
> Literate programming. For example: I can have a python snippet that when I evaluate, results would be piped it into another snippet in SQL that retrieves data from postgress, and then I can send a http request to a remote API based on what's in DB, and then use that to build a chart. Can you do that in Markdown? I've found you can get pretty close if you combine it with Jupyter notebooks. When you use jupytext [1] or similar to synchronize the markdown and ipynb then it works quite nicely. Oh and as far as LaTeX / exporting is concerned, just use pandoc, you can export it however you want basically. [1]:https://github.com/mwouts/jupytext https://github.com/mwouts/jupytext
- tincholio 6y ago
  Doesn't that require you to jump back and forth between browser and editor? also, does Jupyter support running multiple kernels in the same session? Org-babel allows you to mix and match languages freely. There's also really good support in Emacs for interacting with Jupyter, too https://github.com/dzop/emacs-jupyter https://github.com/dzop/emacs-jupyter
  - contravariant 6y ago
    Well you can edit the markdown in the regular jupyter browser. They haven't embraced plaintext in quite the same way emacs did though (so for some niceties you do need to use a browser, similar to how you need to use the emacs-gui to embed images). Coincidentally I haven't really managed to get the equation rendering right in emacs, the org-latex-preview seems quite slow. It's unfortunate that emacs isn't able to take advantage of things like KaTeX, there are historical reasons for this but still. Mixing languages seems to be possible [1], though I haven't personally used it. [1]: https://vatlab.github.io/sos-docs/doc/user_guide/multi_kernel_notebook.html https://vatlab.github.io/sos-docs/doc/user_guide/multi_kerne...

preek 6y ago

I’m successfully using organice to manage my Org files on the Go - on a phone or a different computer. https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice

trenchgun 6y ago
Looks neat!

preek 6y ago

Since Org is plain text, it’s a beautifully portable format. And there’s parsers for many languages like: https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser

alpaca128 6y ago

I'll have to disagree here. I'm using org-mode files even as a Vim user. Because compared to Markdown it has more basic syntax features and is fully compatible with LaTeX, making it both convenient and more powerful than Markdown. Non-Emacs parsers aren't remotely complete or correct but the same applies to the huge variety of incompatible Markdown extensions and parsers in my experience. Some support tables, some don't, some can't handle standard table of content references. And while you are right in that the interactive features of org-mode are Emacs exclusive they still are an advantage in my view: they are optional, independent of each other and documented. This means I was easily able to reproduce one of those features with some scripting in Vim while still keeping it conforming with the standard. I think .org is a fantastic format because 100% of even its most advanced features are still rooted in plain text representation of the information, while its syntax is basically a superset of LaTeX, providing convenient shortcuts of the most common elements of text documents. This makes it universally readable and powerful when needed.