16 ms·

Org Mode's new site

430 points by cjauvin 6y ago

rsa25519 6y ago
I like it, especially the up-front demo! For a while I've been wanting to learn Org Mode, and this redesign is making it much more clear to me what Org Mode is and how I'd use it.
ancarda 6y ago
I'm sure this new website is a big improvement, but to me (not an Emacs or Org Mode user), it seems Org Mode does... everything? Kinda like Emacs? Like, that spreadsheet example seems clunky to me, why would I want to use this?
- bnj 6y ago
  I think part of it at least is being able to operate on spreadsheet-style data in a contiguous environment, building it into the document in a way that you can’t if there’s a file type divide
  - minikomi 6y ago
    To add on this - you can use it as inputs (and outputs) for org babel. Eg. A tabulated list of ENV vars to be passed to a bash script, which in turn generates a list of URLs that you can pass to a RESTclient script or python. When editing, it updates the width of columns automatically and supports tabbing through, along with re-arranging rows using common shortcuts within org mode.
- taeric 6y ago
  I do not think the intention is at all to replace spreadsheets, if that is the concern. More, this is a great way to move some data through a series of exploratory questions without having to push the data through many other tools. In large, it is Emacs taken to an extreme. With the major feature point that all cards are on the table. Meaning the file you get at the end, is just plain text. There is no need to ever worry about export of data being locked out from you. Yes, using it is currently best exemplified with Emacs. No, nothing is forcing that.
  - zelphirkalt 6y ago
    That is correct and it is a pity other editors are so far behind in all things org. It means that for people, who have not tried it and gotten used to it, there is a double obstacle to take and most will miss out on it for that reason.
- karlicoss 6y ago
  In the first appoximation you can use org-mode the same way you'd use markdown -- merely for the syntax. But indeed, it shines when you use it within Emacs because you can extend it. Even the 'vanilla' setup is very powerful -- you get the markup, datetimes, todos, scheduling, agenda, clocking, literate programming, etc. Spreadsheets.. personally, never had the need to use formulas, but they are very nice when you need.. well, to organize information in tables. For example, I'm using it with org-capture to track sleep data straight into the table, which results in a table row for each day (with an auto-generated timestamp).
  - appletrotter 6y ago
    > For example, I'm using it with org-capture to track sleep data straight into the table, which results in a table row for each day (with an auto-generated timestamp). I'm curious how one would do that. Would you mind sharing your capture template?
    - karlicoss 6y ago
      My capture templates are here https://github.com/karlicoss/dotemacs/blob/d3d26d4315868298b96cebf6bd9c5ffc25632fd8/org.el#L156-L162 https://github.com/karlicoss/dotemacs/blob/d3d26d4315868298b... , but sleep logging is in a 'private' config for some reason, so I'll just paste it here: (setq --my/extra-capture-templates '(("s" "sleep" table-line (file+headline "/path/to/capture.org" "sleep table") "| %U | %? | | | |"))) "sleep table" is the heading, under which the table is contained. So: - I press the capture hotkey (F4 for me) - then 's' which prompts me for a table line - %U automatically substitutes the timestamp - the cursor is placed at %? (second column), so I can just log whatever I need to, tab for the next column, and then finish capture
      - cauthon 6y ago
        What’s the advantage to this over a csv in excel? I track my blood pressure similarly. The entry is simple and I can read the csv into R/python whenever I want to visualize it.
- Scarbutt 6y ago
  For the same reason it is sometimes useful to put tables in Word.
- badjeans 6y ago
  Org-mode tables are super convenient for organising information. You just press | and tab and you have a new table in your text file! You can insert lines with |- tab and the columns auto expand to fill your text. The formula functionality is pretty useful too, although I rarely use it and working it out is a bit of a puzzle still.
- chapium 6y ago
  Its plain text one note/ evernote, plus a bunch of macros for formatting text.
- sasaf5 6y ago
  Imagine having small patches of spreadsheet along your document without the clutter and slowness of a GUI. Also the equation evaluator is a symbolic engine. I manage all my nutrition with it, from macronutrient count to ingredient prices.
  - taeric 6y ago
    Any chance you could share some of that? Sounds cool!
    - sasaf5 6y ago
      Something like this. There are other parts calculating the requirements. | -1 | req. | 100 | 100 | 50 | | 3 | milk | 2.92| 4.37| 3.5| | # | |-91.2|-86.8|-39.5| #+TBLFM: @>$3..$5=(@<$1..@>>$1)*(@<..@>>)
- anyfoo 6y ago
  Because when freely and quickly writing notes, being able to freely and quickly jot down a table is enormously helpful. Source: I use org-mode for project notes, and they do end up with a lot of tables.
- simtel20 6y ago
  Not specifically spreadsheets, but the org table code is also used in the feature-mode for writing gherkin tests. One of the powerful aspects of cucumber tests is the tables, and having the org tables code in the editor means that the feature mode didn't have to do anything to support tables that auto size and align and add columns etc.
- Derbasti 6y ago
  Spreadsheets can be surprisingly useful in a text document. For example, I regularly need to grade programming assignments. I do this in.a structured text document, with sub-headings per student and category, where I take notes about their work, and assign points. So far, this could be easily done in markdown, or even plain text. But then I tally up the points, and convert them to a grade based on some simple equation in a table. My colleagues need to do this in a separate Excel sheet. I can do it right in my org document.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jeromenerf 6y ago
    I do the same, and I email the student my notes, by calling the org mime function.
- tecosaur 6y ago
  My take: You're not going to be working with some 500 row monster etc. in Org, but if you just want to quickly do something like get the row-wise averages of a table, you can just do that in-place easily. The underlying math engine in Emacs is also pretty fancy, it can do stuff like symbolic algebra which I have yet to see in Excel :)
- samus 6y ago
  Org mode seems to be like Markdown in spirit - sometimes you are just writing stuff and realize that you need to do something slightly more complicated with a table than HTML and pure ASCII-art allow. Doing it in spreadsheet software entails either a workflow break or having to do over the rest of the document in a text processor.
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  I use spreadsheets in org when: - teaching classes and grading students - working on a quote / invoice for a customer (I add numeric properties to an org item, org gather them in a table, and I add columns to that to get sums, taxes, discounts, etc) - designing my woodworking and other building stuff, for cutlist and so on I am not the kind of guy that lives in emacs, I only use it for org mode, in a way that resembles a scientific notebook, mixing text, data and code. I would not force it onto anyone, but using anything else feels backwards.
- JohnL4 6y ago
  I'm with you. If I want to subtotal and subtract one subtotal from another, I'm popping over to excel. But... columnar text is a big win.
- stinkytaco 6y ago
  I have a bookmarklet in my browser for recommendations. I have org-protocol set up so when I highlight a book title and click the bookmarklet, org mode opens and prompts me for several other things (author, genre, notes, format, etc.) and then it saves all that to a table with the website I found the recommendation. The table allows me to sort different genres and go back to see why I found that title compelling in the first place. I also use org's ability to show properties as a table. When I read something I write a little review for myself and have some relevant info in the properties drawer. I can toggle a table view to see and sort all the properties.
- trey-jones 6y ago
  I use org-mode mainly just for note taking, and I've only been using it for a little over a year. In addition to notes, I do software planning and cost estimating. I prefer this to a "real" spreadsheet application, because they are mostly text, with a few important numbers. Those numbers can still easily be added to computations. Also, stubbornly, I prefer my comfortable emacs environment to the clicky unfamiliar interface of something like Google Sheets / Excel. Finally, org-export is fairly infinite in potential. I actually sync these notes to GitHub, which displays the org file as Github-Flavored Markdown -> HTML without even needing to export. The tables export very nicely, and are easily consumable in a read-only fashion by those who asked for them.
mdoms 6y ago
It's hard for me to imagine a bigger waste of time than learning this.
- clircle 6y ago
  It definitely has more features than anyone needs, but there is some real gold in this library. org-capture and org-agenda are incredibly useful to me.
- tom_ 6y ago
  Then don’t learn it!
- bachmeier 6y ago
  How valuable can your time be if you spend it writing comments like this on HN?
parhamn 6y ago
What is it particularly about open source that it cannot attract designers? Can’t they have similar skin in the game as engineers. I’m sure it would look good on a designers portfolio if they did the design/branding for a project like org mode. To be frank, the site looks a lot better but it went from 4 decades dated to 1 decade dated.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jhhh 6y ago
  Do you have a point of comparison with another site you'd like it to look more like? I think it looks fine.
  - parhamn 6y ago
    I guess if “looks fine” is the goal it definitely achieved that. There is definitely huge gap between software quality and design quality in the OSS work and I’m wondering why.
    - sgillen 6y ago
      I think probably a lot of self selection. I would guess most people get involved with open source so because the technical problems being solved are interesting. I would guess the people who choose to work on emacs don’t necessarily care about web design. I think most open source web frameworks have pretty decent design!
    - anyfoo 6y ago
      What's wrong with it? I use org-mode, and I find this site readable and useful?
    - grep_name 6y ago
      I personally think it's an aesthetic choice at this point. I actually kind of like it. I've come to associate the borderline absurdity of logos for open source projects with projects I like at this point, and I do think these kinds of logos are almost a shibboleth for certain kinds of software. I'd say it's less about not knowing how to do "better" or driving away designers and more about signaling "hey, this is NOT corporate software." I've always considered it as a community thing and a cultural quirk more than anything else. To come in and say "this unicorn is ugly, let me fix that for you" would be to misunderstand a lot of things about the context that the software exists in IMO.
Wonnk13 6y ago
I've tried to learn org-mode several times, but can never get it to "stick" with me.
- ece 6y ago
  I'm not an emacs user, but I've started using orgzly on Android through F-Droid and it's great. The sample notebook is nice, and easy to pick up on.
- jhhh 6y ago
  I've been using org mode since 2015 and for a majority of that time I didn't really customize anything besides some more TODO labels. I've changed my layout several times too as I've changed projects or roles. Since it's just text I'd just start with using headings+folding and todos. Even just that is better than a text file. You can pick up more things as you find some friction in your organization process and wonder if there's a different way to do something. I eventually found that tags didn't work much for me but properties were very useful along with a handful of capture templates.
- e19293001 6y ago
  Not if you use it daily. In my experience, I forced myself to use it everyday. And now, I can't work without it.
- jonnycomputer 6y ago
  I use, but I don't find that I really need to track daily TODO's most of the time. But when I have lots of small-tasks to manage, I turn back to it. I do think that emacs and org-mode can lend themselves to excessive yak-shaving; but if you get everything working, then maybe you can settle into it. I did use org-mode to track my pathfinder roleplaying character, which worked fine. I've tried using it for document production, but found it too restrictive. I've not tried it for literate programming, as I still find RStudio and MATLAB better for IDE's for R and MATLAB respectively.
- anyfoo 6y ago
  I tried organizing everything with org-mode, and burned out a bit on it. That however wasn't org-mode's fault, but rather my attempt at "GTDizing" everything. Now, I still use org-mode for project notes, at work or as hobby, usually (but not forcibly) one file that starts out very freely and gets more levels/organization over time. The key for me is that I don't have to adhere to some organization, I can also just jot things down without structure or reason. But I may often reach a point where organization sets in beneficially.
ropeladder 6y ago
They should mention the excellent Orgzly (org mobile app) on the install page. I don't even use org files but it was the best touch GUI for plaintext lists I could find for android.
- ajvs 6y ago
  I adore Orgzly on mobile but it's a shame there's no way to have their GUI on desktop. It's a lot more intuitive than Emacs.
  - circularfoyers 6y ago
    I do too. The dev has mentioned that he wanted to make a web app, but that's yet to happen. I did however try launching it in Anbox today and it seems to run perfectly, so that's an option.
- justaj 6y ago
  Also nice to mention is Organice: https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice It's a web SPA made for mobile devices.
- immigrantsheep 6y ago
  BeOrg as well if you're on iOS
- tgbugs 6y ago
  We had this on the features page. Not sure why it was removed, but here is the commit [0]. 0. https://github.com/tecosaur/orgmode.org/commit/54ad9895065cb541cb7fa1555c221e802dc6e1e4#diff-86e63011af7a6e5224374d4f44bab4ea185d0343cc06b75a3e136691315323c4 https://github.com/tecosaur/orgmode.org/commit/54ad9895065cb....
srinathkrishna 6y ago
It's a huge coincidence that I'm beginning to enter into the world of emacs owing to org-mode after being a vi(m) user for about 15 years now. Of course, I'm doing this with evil mode which I'd say gives the best of both worlds. vim's editor keys are much more intuitive and easy on the hands than emacs'. Hoping to eventually learn more of org-mode and use it more diligently.
- zaiste 6y ago
  I also switched from Vim to Emacs specifically for Org Mode and Magit. I found the Doom Emacs configuration to be a perfect match for my muscle memory. ;) I document my learnings about the Emacs/Doom ecosystem (including Org Mode, Magit et al) in a form of short videos on YouTube [1]. Maybe it will help in your journey... [1]: https://zaiste.net/courses/emacs-doom/ https://zaiste.net/courses/emacs-doom/
siraben 6y ago
Org mode also has a great spreadsheet system[0], making it easy to work with plaintext tables! I used Org mode in a school assignment to generate a gnuplot graph from an Org data table (which also had calculated data using formulas). This all would happen all in Org at compile time, since Org lets you evaluate code snippets[1] as well. The final result is that the table, the graph and the syntax-highlighted gnuplot code would all be put in the LaTeX document, and updating the code or data would take effect immediately when recompiling the document. There's also other cool things like a habit tracker[2] that can also show you an interactive mode where you can see your progress. [0] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro... [1] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html [2] https://orgmode.org/manual/Tracking-your-habits.html https://orgmode.org/manual/Tracking-your-habits.html
- anyfoo 6y ago
  The ability to just freely type in a table and it keeps it aligned automatically with basically ASCII art, and allows me to sort or rearrange lines or columns, is just fantastic. If I really need a "spreadsheet", I will use a dedicated software package (which is sometimes actually Matlab, because often that's what I actually need, except for finance stuff), but so so many times when jotting down notes I just need some hassle-free instant tables.
  - earthscienceman 6y ago
    I don't mean to go all Stallman on you, but MATLAB is the devil's software.
    - eigenhombre 6y ago
      Why?
      - ptman 6y ago
        Let me guess: because it is proprietary, has a terrible license management experience and there is an open source alternative: https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
symlinkk 6y ago
So it’s basically just markdown? This is what everyone has been raving about?
- dbmikus 6y ago
  Nah, not even close (but I can see someone getting that impression from the landing page). To various extents it can replace: - a task manager - an outliner - Jupyter notebooks - Evernote (and other bookmarking and note capture systems) - LaTeX, DocBook, and equivalent (although you fall back on LaTeX for math)
- anyfoo 6y ago
  No, it's much richer than markdown, and a single glance at the manual would probably have prevented this comment: https://orgmode.org/manual/ https://orgmode.org/manual/ I use markdown for documentation that I want to publish/package with something. I use org-mode for project notes and organizing.
- GlennS 6y ago
  Markdown plus some other useful stuff: + really good keyboard shortcuts + better header structure + better tables + calendar + interactive multi-language literate programming environment + some other stuff that I don't use
  - input_sh 6y ago
    Can you elaborate the better header structure?
    - jeromenerf 6y ago
      Org mode supports adding metadata to the whole document (a la pandoc, frontmatter) and any node. There are a lot of properties (dates, settings, user defined ...). With pandoc, the frontmatter metadata are only used when exporting the document. With org mode, the metadata are also used during editing, executing code, etc. The headings themselves can embed tags.
    - 6y ago
tookiwooki 6y ago
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tookiwooki 6y ago
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tookiwooki 6y ago
listen
aszen 6y ago
How closely is org syntax tied to emacs, I would love to try it but I can't just switch my text editor just to learn a markup language.
- silly-silly 6y ago
  Syntax is not at all, but you lose all the benefits of doing org-mode. If you're not in a situation to afford the switch, do not switch. This is not for you.
- tecosaur 6y ago
  You can find syntax highlighting + a bit more in a number of editors (see the bottom of the install page), but unfortunately much of the "really cool" stuff is currently only available with Emacs.
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  You don’t have to switch. You can use it as a dedicated application, like you would use your browser, spreadsheet program or notebook. I guess it’s easier if your preferred editor is vim, as emacs vim support is great.
tookiwooki 6y ago
api test
nackjicholson 6y ago
Awesome! If you're like me, you'll go through these steps. 1. Use org-mode in one file for a few years to track all of your todos. You can make a good David Allen GTD system this way. Headings for Inbox, Projects, Someday/Maybe, Tickler. 2. Discover https://www.orgroam.com/ https://www.orgroam.com/ as the best note taking and personal knowledge system you've ever seen. 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know.
- nasdack 6y ago
  > 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know. Do you use version control to backup org-mode, or opt for some Google Drive/Dropbox/Nextcloud scheme?
  - kreetx 6y ago
    Although git works great, there is some double-duty regarding history: there are both the git history of the .org files and also the.org_archive files. I wonder if people opt for one or the other and not both?
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I've been using Org Mode for close to 10 years now, and I never grokked how the archiving is supposed to be used. You can browse the archive files for your data, and the automatically added metadata give some context as to where it was located, but AFAIK you can't rebuild an old version of an .org file from the archive. So because of that, if I care about the whole structural history of an org file, I stick it in a git repository.
      - forevernoob 6y ago
        I made a thread about this on /r/Emacs, perhaps people here might chime in too: https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jiyn4n/orgmode_archiving_a_mirror_of_your_existing_org/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jiyn4n/orgmode_archi...
thespoonbends 6y ago
I think the landing page would be more effective/descriptive if it emphasised it's role as a TODO/extensible structured document. I use it as a personal planner for career and life stuff. Nothing too fancy, just TODOs with tags.
yantrams 6y ago
This has got to be one of the cleanest websites I have seen in recent times. The layout, spacing between letters and lines and the color contrast are very satisfying to the eyes. I'm sure there are thousands of websites out there with similar layouts but there is something very pleasing about this.
zenlot 6y ago
I've tried to use Org for a while. Actually had hundred of pages of notes written in its format. But it never felt right for me. You press the wrong keyboard button it tries to execute the code, you press another key - text gets reformatted, folds, unfolds, etc... It just doesn't feel text anymore and you have to know lots of complexity of the Org itself to make it useful. And all I want is just to write some text and display it. After all, just converted all .org to .md and use Hugo for displaying it in HTML. Everytime I see an article about Org, I think how nice it would be to use it and feel comfortable in it, it just never worked out for me.
- roland35 6y ago
  Yes that is my problem as well. I love my org files but it is too easy to make a mistake that can really mess up your file, such as deleting a heading line accidentally will then file everything under the heading above it!
  - weavie 6y ago
    Does undo not put it all right again?
    - draxil 6y ago
      It does :)
    - marcosdumay 6y ago
      Undo in emacs isn't on a very intuitive place. Those people are complaining that they don't want to learn a new complex UI (what it is - I have wondered in the past if it wouldn't be better for me to simply disable org-mode and edit the files as plain text). Getting using to the undo is part of it.
    - roland35 6y ago
      Yes, if I notice it I can undo obviously! The problem is when I realize the mistake a few edits later...
  - 6y ago
eps 6y ago
Org mode for life, but that's one ghastly looking unicorn to be honest. Not winning any new hearts with it.
- _pmf_ 6y ago
  Not all unicorns are pink, bigot.
- ejolto 6y ago
  Is it a play on the name where they try to make the unicorn look like an ogre?
- nightfly 6y ago
  It can be friends with the DTrace pony http://dtrace.org/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/dtrace_pony_xray.png http://dtrace.org/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/dtrace_po...
- tetris11 6y ago
  I initially joined because I thought it was a brony fan club, but I stayed for the simplicity and worryfree project planning. (None of the above is true - but its a daily driver)
asdojasdosadsa 6y ago
I have always wanted to learn Org Mode, but at the same time I have been trying to learn emacs (spacemacs) and this has been a bit complex and my interested has fallen quickly. Any ideas or resources on learning org mode? Can it be used with ex. IntelliJ? Should I learn first plain emacs then orgmode? Or should I look into other note taking tools
- mickael-kerjean 6y ago
  I made a tutorial series on emacs and org mode: https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/20/emacs-tutorial-series-episode-2/ https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/20/emacs-tutorial-series-...
- WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 6y ago
  About a year ago bit the bullet and learned emacs, mostly for org-mode because of all great reviews. I made it my primary editor for about 6 months, which forced me to become familiar with it. Now I've dropped it and I'm back to vscode and Roam as my life management system. Maybe the time I gave it was too short, but I didn't feel like org-mode or emacs made me more productive - the opposite. I spent so much time fiddling with configuration options, trying to understand elisp, finding the right emacs/org-mode packages, and so on. Yeah, these things felt productive, but in the end they were are a waste of time that got in the way of getting work done. Also, let's not talk about the time where emacs just crashed and lost several hours of work. Apparently the default config (I used Doom) didn't think it was important to handle that case. Perhaps things are different once you've use Emacs for 5+ years and are intimately with its ecosystem and packages. So, if you decide to go that route, it's a long-term investment. Don't expect any productivity gains soon. And honestly, even after using org-mode for 6 months for pretty much everything in my life, I didn't think it was that great. Yeah, it's pretty good, but I don't think it quite lives up to the religious hype it gets from some users. People are going to downvote me for saying this, but IMO org-mode is a pretty neat but outdated piece of technology with most of its following coming from people who grew up with it and have used it for 10+ years. The power comes from their familiarity with it, not from org-mode itself. It's not that great.
  - 6y ago
justaj 6y ago
I like the redesign, but how can I get rid of that annoying sticky header bar?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jeromenerf 6y ago
Nice rework. I think the design language is too simple though, Twitter bootstrap like, which doesn’t convey the rich possibilities offered by org. Org is more than roam or markdown and it’s not quite clear how for the newcomers. Maybe some nice graphical mindmap-like feature map?
- tecosaur 6y ago
  That's a nice idea! If you'd be interested in coming up with a mock-up please send it through to me. My email is on my github page, which is linked in the footer of the new website :)
  - jeromenerf 6y ago
    Ok!
tecosaur 6y ago
Designer of the revamp here. AMA :)
- defanor 6y ago
  I've noticed a few relatively minor issues, which can be rephrased/viewed as "why" questions: - The introductory text ("Org mode is for keeping notes [...]") overflows, possibly because of an enforced minimum font size (and an assumption about it that doesn't always hold true in the markup) in my case. - SVG images are embedded as objects, leading to noscript blocking them in FF, and just unnecessary spam ("Sorry, your browser does not support SVG.") in lynx. This one is more of a question, rather than just a report: why not to use the img tag (which, I think, is handled generally better) instead? Or even to leave them as texts. - "Made with by TEC" uses a relatively uncommon glyph (the font I use doesn't have that; apparently it was assigned just last year).
  - tecosaur 6y ago
    - I expect "Org mode is for keeping notes [...]" to take up about three lines. What's going wrong for you? - I agree :D this is actually something I've raised on the ML (see https://orgmode.org/list/87sga4914t.fsf@gmail.com/ https://orgmode.org/list/87sga4914t.fsf@gmail.com/) - Good to know. This should be irrelevant soon with a change to the footer content in the near future that will make it just ASCII + images
    - defanor 6y ago
      > I expect "Org mode is for keeping notes [...]" to take up about three lines. What's going wrong for you? It takes 4 lines here, but the issue is with horizontal overflow: "planning" is in the end of the first line for me, and it's cut on the last "n" (with no horizontal scroll). Below that, "developed by many others." is cut on "h" in "others". That's in FF 68, where it's also aligned to the right side, while in FF 78 it is centered. All the other elements are centered in FF 68 too. It moves to the left and becomes readable (i.e., all words are fully visible) when I remove font settings (org.css:32) and the --body-left ones, or if "display: flex" is disabled altogether, but not sure what's the exact issue. There's "overflow-x: hidden" in the CSS, which probably contributes to it. Edit: apparently it's similar to the issue reported by john-aj here.
petre 6y ago
Are there any Org Mode to HTML rendereres? Can it replace Markdown? I see it has tables which aren't a part of regular markdown aka commonmark.
- tecosaur 6y ago
  Yes on both counts :) see: https://orgmode.org/manual/Exporting.html https://orgmode.org/manual/Exporting.html
ktpsns 6y ago
Slightly off topic: To be honest, the non correct indendation in https://orgmode.org/resources/img/main.svg https://orgmode.org/resources/img/main.svg is the reason why I always change my text editor fonts in a way that for every highlight variant, the same font is used. Different font sizes, font families, etc. have the effect that the monospacing is lost.
roland35 6y ago
I love using org mode but what I would really like is a thin GUI client which would keep me from making silly mistakes (such as deleting a heading line accidentally and leaving the orphaned content under a new heading), keep things visually separate, and help organize links between headings and tags. Also an easier way to customize the agenda command without writing lisp would be more user friendly!
- olivierestsage 6y ago
  If you haven't already, you might want to add (setq org-catch-invisible-edits 'smart) to your config. It will stop you from backspacing over anything invisible, but I don't think it stops the issue of highlighting a region and deleting it. This was a problem I ran into early on while using Org, but a combination of this setting and Git helped solve it.
nivenkos 6y ago
I wish there were a comparable mode for neovim. I now use a combination of Google Keep and vimwiki, but I really liked org-mode back when I used emacs.
olivierestsage 6y ago
To anyone who's on the fence about trying Org: if organization has ever been a problem for you, I don't think you'll regret giving it a spin. I considered myself a disorganized person for all my life until I started using Org-mode, but not anymore. It's been such a relief to my overall stress/anxiety.
- st1x7 6y ago
  That's an argument for having some personal organisation system, not necessarily for org-mode. After multiple attempts of using Emacs and a couple of tries at org-mode I just decided that the time investment that I need to put in a frustrating to learn interface just isn't worth it.
  - olivierestsage 6y ago
    I take your point, but in fact my argument is for Org, specifically. I've tried tons of options, from things like Evernote to very different approaches like GTD with an all-physical tickler file. I also picked up and dropped Org/Emacs a couple of times before they really "clicked" - but once they did, they clicked for good. Obviously no system is going to be the objectively superior choice for everyone, but I think there's a very strong case to be made for Org for anyone who (a) finds the plain-text approach to this problem appealing and (b) wants agenda/calendaring functionality built right on top of the other organizational functions.
john-aj 6y ago
Looks nice, but it seems shifted to the right for me: http://img.ankarstrom.se/orgsite.png http://img.ankarstrom.se/orgsite.png I do use a browser that might not support all the latest things, but I suspect the site could be made a bit more compatible. The layout isn't that advanced.
g8oz 6y ago
Wouldn't it be great if VS Code had a full fledged org-mode implementation? Especially Babel functionality.

430 points by cjauvin 6y ago

I like it, especially the up-front demo! For a while I've been wanting to learn Org Mode, and this redesign is making it much more clear to me what Org Mode is and how I'd use it.

ancarda 6y ago

I'm sure this new website is a big improvement, but to me (not an Emacs or Org Mode user), it seems Org Mode does... everything? Kinda like Emacs? Like, that spreadsheet example seems clunky to me, why would I want to use this?

bnj 6y ago
I think part of it at least is being able to operate on spreadsheet-style data in a contiguous environment, building it into the document in a way that you can’t if there’s a file type divide
- minikomi 6y ago
  To add on this - you can use it as inputs (and outputs) for org babel. Eg. A tabulated list of ENV vars to be passed to a bash script, which in turn generates a list of URLs that you can pass to a RESTclient script or python. When editing, it updates the width of columns automatically and supports tabbing through, along with re-arranging rows using common shortcuts within org mode.
taeric 6y ago
I do not think the intention is at all to replace spreadsheets, if that is the concern. More, this is a great way to move some data through a series of exploratory questions without having to push the data through many other tools. In large, it is Emacs taken to an extreme. With the major feature point that all cards are on the table. Meaning the file you get at the end, is just plain text. There is no need to ever worry about export of data being locked out from you. Yes, using it is currently best exemplified with Emacs. No, nothing is forcing that.
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  That is correct and it is a pity other editors are so far behind in all things org. It means that for people, who have not tried it and gotten used to it, there is a double obstacle to take and most will miss out on it for that reason.
karlicoss 6y ago
In the first appoximation you can use org-mode the same way you'd use markdown -- merely for the syntax. But indeed, it shines when you use it within Emacs because you can extend it. Even the 'vanilla' setup is very powerful -- you get the markup, datetimes, todos, scheduling, agenda, clocking, literate programming, etc. Spreadsheets.. personally, never had the need to use formulas, but they are very nice when you need.. well, to organize information in tables. For example, I'm using it with org-capture to track sleep data straight into the table, which results in a table row for each day (with an auto-generated timestamp).
- appletrotter 6y ago
  > For example, I'm using it with org-capture to track sleep data straight into the table, which results in a table row for each day (with an auto-generated timestamp). I'm curious how one would do that. Would you mind sharing your capture template?
  - karlicoss 6y ago
    My capture templates are here https://github.com/karlicoss/dotemacs/blob/d3d26d4315868298b96cebf6bd9c5ffc25632fd8/org.el#L156-L162 https://github.com/karlicoss/dotemacs/blob/d3d26d4315868298b... , but sleep logging is in a 'private' config for some reason, so I'll just paste it here: (setq --my/extra-capture-templates '(("s" "sleep" table-line (file+headline "/path/to/capture.org" "sleep table") "| %U | %? | | | |"))) "sleep table" is the heading, under which the table is contained. So: - I press the capture hotkey (F4 for me) - then 's' which prompts me for a table line - %U automatically substitutes the timestamp - the cursor is placed at %? (second column), so I can just log whatever I need to, tab for the next column, and then finish capture
    - cauthon 6y ago
      What’s the advantage to this over a csv in excel? I track my blood pressure similarly. The entry is simple and I can read the csv into R/python whenever I want to visualize it.
Scarbutt 6y ago
For the same reason it is sometimes useful to put tables in Word.
badjeans 6y ago
Org-mode tables are super convenient for organising information. You just press | and tab and you have a new table in your text file! You can insert lines with |- tab and the columns auto expand to fill your text. The formula functionality is pretty useful too, although I rarely use it and working it out is a bit of a puzzle still.
chapium 6y ago
Its plain text one note/ evernote, plus a bunch of macros for formatting text.
sasaf5 6y ago
Imagine having small patches of spreadsheet along your document without the clutter and slowness of a GUI. Also the equation evaluator is a symbolic engine. I manage all my nutrition with it, from macronutrient count to ingredient prices.
- taeric 6y ago
  Any chance you could share some of that? Sounds cool!
  - sasaf5 6y ago
    Something like this. There are other parts calculating the requirements. | -1 | req. | 100 | 100 | 50 | | 3 | milk | 2.92| 4.37| 3.5| | # | |-91.2|-86.8|-39.5| #+TBLFM: @>$3..$5=(@<$1..@>>$1)*(@<..@>>)
anyfoo 6y ago
Because when freely and quickly writing notes, being able to freely and quickly jot down a table is enormously helpful. Source: I use org-mode for project notes, and they do end up with a lot of tables.
simtel20 6y ago
Not specifically spreadsheets, but the org table code is also used in the feature-mode for writing gherkin tests. One of the powerful aspects of cucumber tests is the tables, and having the org tables code in the editor means that the feature mode didn't have to do anything to support tables that auto size and align and add columns etc.
Derbasti 6y ago
Spreadsheets can be surprisingly useful in a text document. For example, I regularly need to grade programming assignments. I do this in.a structured text document, with sub-headings per student and category, where I take notes about their work, and assign points. So far, this could be easily done in markdown, or even plain text. But then I tally up the points, and convert them to a grade based on some simple equation in a table. My colleagues need to do this in a separate Excel sheet. I can do it right in my org document.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  I do the same, and I email the student my notes, by calling the org mime function.
tecosaur 6y ago
My take: You're not going to be working with some 500 row monster etc. in Org, but if you just want to quickly do something like get the row-wise averages of a table, you can just do that in-place easily. The underlying math engine in Emacs is also pretty fancy, it can do stuff like symbolic algebra which I have yet to see in Excel :)
samus 6y ago
Org mode seems to be like Markdown in spirit - sometimes you are just writing stuff and realize that you need to do something slightly more complicated with a table than HTML and pure ASCII-art allow. Doing it in spreadsheet software entails either a workflow break or having to do over the rest of the document in a text processor.
jeromenerf 6y ago
I use spreadsheets in org when: - teaching classes and grading students - working on a quote / invoice for a customer (I add numeric properties to an org item, org gather them in a table, and I add columns to that to get sums, taxes, discounts, etc) - designing my woodworking and other building stuff, for cutlist and so on I am not the kind of guy that lives in emacs, I only use it for org mode, in a way that resembles a scientific notebook, mixing text, data and code. I would not force it onto anyone, but using anything else feels backwards.
JohnL4 6y ago
I'm with you. If I want to subtotal and subtract one subtotal from another, I'm popping over to excel. But... columnar text is a big win.
stinkytaco 6y ago
I have a bookmarklet in my browser for recommendations. I have org-protocol set up so when I highlight a book title and click the bookmarklet, org mode opens and prompts me for several other things (author, genre, notes, format, etc.) and then it saves all that to a table with the website I found the recommendation. The table allows me to sort different genres and go back to see why I found that title compelling in the first place. I also use org's ability to show properties as a table. When I read something I write a little review for myself and have some relevant info in the properties drawer. I can toggle a table view to see and sort all the properties.
trey-jones 6y ago
I use org-mode mainly just for note taking, and I've only been using it for a little over a year. In addition to notes, I do software planning and cost estimating. I prefer this to a "real" spreadsheet application, because they are mostly text, with a few important numbers. Those numbers can still easily be added to computations. Also, stubbornly, I prefer my comfortable emacs environment to the clicky unfamiliar interface of something like Google Sheets / Excel. Finally, org-export is fairly infinite in potential. I actually sync these notes to GitHub, which displays the org file as Github-Flavored Markdown -> HTML without even needing to export. The tables export very nicely, and are easily consumable in a read-only fashion by those who asked for them.

mdoms 6y ago

It's hard for me to imagine a bigger waste of time than learning this.

clircle 6y ago
It definitely has more features than anyone needs, but there is some real gold in this library. org-capture and org-agenda are incredibly useful to me.
tom_ 6y ago
Then don’t learn it!
bachmeier 6y ago
How valuable can your time be if you spend it writing comments like this on HN?

parhamn 6y ago

What is it particularly about open source that it cannot attract designers? Can’t they have similar skin in the game as engineers. I’m sure it would look good on a designers portfolio if they did the design/branding for a project like org mode. To be frank, the site looks a lot better but it went from 4 decades dated to 1 decade dated.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jhhh 6y ago
Do you have a point of comparison with another site you'd like it to look more like? I think it looks fine.
- parhamn 6y ago
  I guess if “looks fine” is the goal it definitely achieved that. There is definitely huge gap between software quality and design quality in the OSS work and I’m wondering why.
  - sgillen 6y ago
    I think probably a lot of self selection. I would guess most people get involved with open source so because the technical problems being solved are interesting. I would guess the people who choose to work on emacs don’t necessarily care about web design. I think most open source web frameworks have pretty decent design!
  - anyfoo 6y ago
    What's wrong with it? I use org-mode, and I find this site readable and useful?
  - grep_name 6y ago
    I personally think it's an aesthetic choice at this point. I actually kind of like it. I've come to associate the borderline absurdity of logos for open source projects with projects I like at this point, and I do think these kinds of logos are almost a shibboleth for certain kinds of software. I'd say it's less about not knowing how to do "better" or driving away designers and more about signaling "hey, this is NOT corporate software." I've always considered it as a community thing and a cultural quirk more than anything else. To come in and say "this unicorn is ugly, let me fix that for you" would be to misunderstand a lot of things about the context that the software exists in IMO.

Wonnk13 6y ago

I've tried to learn org-mode several times, but can never get it to "stick" with me.

ece 6y ago
I'm not an emacs user, but I've started using orgzly on Android through F-Droid and it's great. The sample notebook is nice, and easy to pick up on.
jhhh 6y ago
I've been using org mode since 2015 and for a majority of that time I didn't really customize anything besides some more TODO labels. I've changed my layout several times too as I've changed projects or roles. Since it's just text I'd just start with using headings+folding and todos. Even just that is better than a text file. You can pick up more things as you find some friction in your organization process and wonder if there's a different way to do something. I eventually found that tags didn't work much for me but properties were very useful along with a handful of capture templates.
e19293001 6y ago
Not if you use it daily. In my experience, I forced myself to use it everyday. And now, I can't work without it.
jonnycomputer 6y ago
I use, but I don't find that I really need to track daily TODO's most of the time. But when I have lots of small-tasks to manage, I turn back to it. I do think that emacs and org-mode can lend themselves to excessive yak-shaving; but if you get everything working, then maybe you can settle into it. I did use org-mode to track my pathfinder roleplaying character, which worked fine. I've tried using it for document production, but found it too restrictive. I've not tried it for literate programming, as I still find RStudio and MATLAB better for IDE's for R and MATLAB respectively.
anyfoo 6y ago
I tried organizing everything with org-mode, and burned out a bit on it. That however wasn't org-mode's fault, but rather my attempt at "GTDizing" everything. Now, I still use org-mode for project notes, at work or as hobby, usually (but not forcibly) one file that starts out very freely and gets more levels/organization over time. The key for me is that I don't have to adhere to some organization, I can also just jot things down without structure or reason. But I may often reach a point where organization sets in beneficially.

ropeladder 6y ago

They should mention the excellent Orgzly (org mobile app) on the install page. I don't even use org files but it was the best touch GUI for plaintext lists I could find for android.

ajvs 6y ago
I adore Orgzly on mobile but it's a shame there's no way to have their GUI on desktop. It's a lot more intuitive than Emacs.
- circularfoyers 6y ago
  I do too. The dev has mentioned that he wanted to make a web app, but that's yet to happen. I did however try launching it in Anbox today and it seems to run perfectly, so that's an option.
justaj 6y ago
Also nice to mention is Organice: https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice It's a web SPA made for mobile devices.
immigrantsheep 6y ago
BeOrg as well if you're on iOS
tgbugs 6y ago
We had this on the features page. Not sure why it was removed, but here is the commit [0]. 0. https://github.com/tecosaur/orgmode.org/commit/54ad9895065cb541cb7fa1555c221e802dc6e1e4#diff-86e63011af7a6e5224374d4f44bab4ea185d0343cc06b75a3e136691315323c4 https://github.com/tecosaur/orgmode.org/commit/54ad9895065cb....

srinathkrishna 6y ago

It's a huge coincidence that I'm beginning to enter into the world of emacs owing to org-mode after being a vi(m) user for about 15 years now. Of course, I'm doing this with evil mode which I'd say gives the best of both worlds. vim's editor keys are much more intuitive and easy on the hands than emacs'. Hoping to eventually learn more of org-mode and use it more diligently.

zaiste 6y ago
I also switched from Vim to Emacs specifically for Org Mode and Magit. I found the Doom Emacs configuration to be a perfect match for my muscle memory. ;) I document my learnings about the Emacs/Doom ecosystem (including Org Mode, Magit et al) in a form of short videos on YouTube [1]. Maybe it will help in your journey... [1]: https://zaiste.net/courses/emacs-doom/ https://zaiste.net/courses/emacs-doom/

siraben 6y ago

Org mode also has a great spreadsheet system[0], making it easy to work with plaintext tables! I used Org mode in a school assignment to generate a gnuplot graph from an Org data table (which also had calculated data using formulas). This all would happen all in Org at compile time, since Org lets you evaluate code snippets[1] as well. The final result is that the table, the graph and the syntax-highlighted gnuplot code would all be put in the LaTeX document, and updating the code or data would take effect immediately when recompiling the document. There's also other cool things like a habit tracker[2] that can also show you an interactive mode where you can see your progress. [0] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro... [1] https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html [2] https://orgmode.org/manual/Tracking-your-habits.html https://orgmode.org/manual/Tracking-your-habits.html

anyfoo 6y ago
The ability to just freely type in a table and it keeps it aligned automatically with basically ASCII art, and allows me to sort or rearrange lines or columns, is just fantastic. If I really need a "spreadsheet", I will use a dedicated software package (which is sometimes actually Matlab, because often that's what I actually need, except for finance stuff), but so so many times when jotting down notes I just need some hassle-free instant tables.
- earthscienceman 6y ago
  I don't mean to go all Stallman on you, but MATLAB is the devil's software.
  - eigenhombre 6y ago
    Why?
    - ptman 6y ago
      Let me guess: because it is proprietary, has a terrible license management experience and there is an open source alternative: https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

symlinkk 6y ago

So it’s basically just markdown? This is what everyone has been raving about?

dbmikus 6y ago
Nah, not even close (but I can see someone getting that impression from the landing page). To various extents it can replace: - a task manager - an outliner - Jupyter notebooks - Evernote (and other bookmarking and note capture systems) - LaTeX, DocBook, and equivalent (although you fall back on LaTeX for math)
anyfoo 6y ago
No, it's much richer than markdown, and a single glance at the manual would probably have prevented this comment: https://orgmode.org/manual/ https://orgmode.org/manual/ I use markdown for documentation that I want to publish/package with something. I use org-mode for project notes and organizing.
GlennS 6y ago
Markdown plus some other useful stuff: + really good keyboard shortcuts + better header structure + better tables + calendar + interactive multi-language literate programming environment + some other stuff that I don't use
- input_sh 6y ago
  Can you elaborate the better header structure?
  - jeromenerf 6y ago
    Org mode supports adding metadata to the whole document (a la pandoc, frontmatter) and any node. There are a lot of properties (dates, settings, user defined ...). With pandoc, the frontmatter metadata are only used when exporting the document. With org mode, the metadata are also used during editing, executing code, etc. The headings themselves can embed tags.
  - 6y ago

tookiwooki 6y ago

teeeekiii weeeekiii

tookiwooki 6y ago

woooooki woooo

tookiwooki 6y ago

listen

aszen 6y ago

How closely is org syntax tied to emacs, I would love to try it but I can't just switch my text editor just to learn a markup language.

silly-silly 6y ago
Syntax is not at all, but you lose all the benefits of doing org-mode. If you're not in a situation to afford the switch, do not switch. This is not for you.
tecosaur 6y ago
You can find syntax highlighting + a bit more in a number of editors (see the bottom of the install page), but unfortunately much of the "really cool" stuff is currently only available with Emacs.
jeromenerf 6y ago
You don’t have to switch. You can use it as a dedicated application, like you would use your browser, spreadsheet program or notebook. I guess it’s easier if your preferred editor is vim, as emacs vim support is great.

tookiwooki 6y ago

api test

nackjicholson 6y ago

Awesome! If you're like me, you'll go through these steps. 1. Use org-mode in one file for a few years to track all of your todos. You can make a good David Allen GTD system this way. Headings for Inbox, Projects, Someday/Maybe, Tickler. 2. Discover https://www.orgroam.com/ https://www.orgroam.com/ as the best note taking and personal knowledge system you've ever seen. 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know.

nasdack 6y ago
> 3. Obsess about backing up all of your org files because if you ever lose them you will literally have lost half of what you know. Do you use version control to backup org-mode, or opt for some Google Drive/Dropbox/Nextcloud scheme?
- kreetx 6y ago
  Although git works great, there is some double-duty regarding history: there are both the git history of the .org files and also the.org_archive files. I wonder if people opt for one or the other and not both?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I've been using Org Mode for close to 10 years now, and I never grokked how the archiving is supposed to be used. You can browse the archive files for your data, and the automatically added metadata give some context as to where it was located, but AFAIK you can't rebuild an old version of an .org file from the archive. So because of that, if I care about the whole structural history of an org file, I stick it in a git repository.
    - forevernoob 6y ago
      I made a thread about this on /r/Emacs, perhaps people here might chime in too: https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jiyn4n/orgmode_archiving_a_mirror_of_your_existing_org/ https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/jiyn4n/orgmode_archi...

thespoonbends 6y ago

I think the landing page would be more effective/descriptive if it emphasised it's role as a TODO/extensible structured document. I use it as a personal planner for career and life stuff. Nothing too fancy, just TODOs with tags.

yantrams 6y ago

This has got to be one of the cleanest websites I have seen in recent times. The layout, spacing between letters and lines and the color contrast are very satisfying to the eyes. I'm sure there are thousands of websites out there with similar layouts but there is something very pleasing about this.

zenlot 6y ago

I've tried to use Org for a while. Actually had hundred of pages of notes written in its format. But it never felt right for me. You press the wrong keyboard button it tries to execute the code, you press another key - text gets reformatted, folds, unfolds, etc... It just doesn't feel text anymore and you have to know lots of complexity of the Org itself to make it useful. And all I want is just to write some text and display it. After all, just converted all .org to .md and use Hugo for displaying it in HTML. Everytime I see an article about Org, I think how nice it would be to use it and feel comfortable in it, it just never worked out for me.

roland35 6y ago
Yes that is my problem as well. I love my org files but it is too easy to make a mistake that can really mess up your file, such as deleting a heading line accidentally will then file everything under the heading above it!
- weavie 6y ago
  Does undo not put it all right again?
  - draxil 6y ago
    It does :)
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    Undo in emacs isn't on a very intuitive place. Those people are complaining that they don't want to learn a new complex UI (what it is - I have wondered in the past if it wouldn't be better for me to simply disable org-mode and edit the files as plain text). Getting using to the undo is part of it.
  - roland35 6y ago
    Yes, if I notice it I can undo obviously! The problem is when I realize the mistake a few edits later...
- 6y ago

eps 6y ago

Org mode for life, but that's one ghastly looking unicorn to be honest. Not winning any new hearts with it.

_pmf_ 6y ago
Not all unicorns are pink, bigot.
ejolto 6y ago
Is it a play on the name where they try to make the unicorn look like an ogre?
nightfly 6y ago
It can be friends with the DTrace pony http://dtrace.org/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/dtrace_pony_xray.png http://dtrace.org/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/dtrace_po...
tetris11 6y ago
I initially joined because I thought it was a brony fan club, but I stayed for the simplicity and worryfree project planning. (None of the above is true - but its a daily driver)

asdojasdosadsa 6y ago

I have always wanted to learn Org Mode, but at the same time I have been trying to learn emacs (spacemacs) and this has been a bit complex and my interested has fallen quickly. Any ideas or resources on learning org mode? Can it be used with ex. IntelliJ? Should I learn first plain emacs then orgmode? Or should I look into other note taking tools

mickael-kerjean 6y ago
I made a tutorial series on emacs and org mode: https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/20/emacs-tutorial-series-episode-2/ https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/20/emacs-tutorial-series-...
WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 6y ago
About a year ago bit the bullet and learned emacs, mostly for org-mode because of all great reviews. I made it my primary editor for about 6 months, which forced me to become familiar with it. Now I've dropped it and I'm back to vscode and Roam as my life management system. Maybe the time I gave it was too short, but I didn't feel like org-mode or emacs made me more productive - the opposite. I spent so much time fiddling with configuration options, trying to understand elisp, finding the right emacs/org-mode packages, and so on. Yeah, these things felt productive, but in the end they were are a waste of time that got in the way of getting work done. Also, let's not talk about the time where emacs just crashed and lost several hours of work. Apparently the default config (I used Doom) didn't think it was important to handle that case. Perhaps things are different once you've use Emacs for 5+ years and are intimately with its ecosystem and packages. So, if you decide to go that route, it's a long-term investment. Don't expect any productivity gains soon. And honestly, even after using org-mode for 6 months for pretty much everything in my life, I didn't think it was that great. Yeah, it's pretty good, but I don't think it quite lives up to the religious hype it gets from some users. People are going to downvote me for saying this, but IMO org-mode is a pretty neat but outdated piece of technology with most of its following coming from people who grew up with it and have used it for 10+ years. The power comes from their familiarity with it, not from org-mode itself. It's not that great.
- 6y ago

justaj 6y ago

I like the redesign, but how can I get rid of that annoying sticky header bar?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jeromenerf 6y ago

Nice rework. I think the design language is too simple though, Twitter bootstrap like, which doesn’t convey the rich possibilities offered by org. Org is more than roam or markdown and it’s not quite clear how for the newcomers. Maybe some nice graphical mindmap-like feature map?

tecosaur 6y ago
That's a nice idea! If you'd be interested in coming up with a mock-up please send it through to me. My email is on my github page, which is linked in the footer of the new website :)
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  Ok!

tecosaur 6y ago

Designer of the revamp here. AMA :)

defanor 6y ago
I've noticed a few relatively minor issues, which can be rephrased/viewed as "why" questions: - The introductory text ("Org mode is for keeping notes [...]") overflows, possibly because of an enforced minimum font size (and an assumption about it that doesn't always hold true in the markup) in my case. - SVG images are embedded as objects, leading to noscript blocking them in FF, and just unnecessary spam ("Sorry, your browser does not support SVG.") in lynx. This one is more of a question, rather than just a report: why not to use the img tag (which, I think, is handled generally better) instead? Or even to leave them as texts. - "Made with by TEC" uses a relatively uncommon glyph (the font I use doesn't have that; apparently it was assigned just last year).
- tecosaur 6y ago
  - I expect "Org mode is for keeping notes [...]" to take up about three lines. What's going wrong for you? - I agree :D this is actually something I've raised on the ML (see https://orgmode.org/list/87sga4914t.fsf@gmail.com/ https://orgmode.org/list/87sga4914t.fsf@gmail.com/) - Good to know. This should be irrelevant soon with a change to the footer content in the near future that will make it just ASCII + images
  - defanor 6y ago
    > I expect "Org mode is for keeping notes [...]" to take up about three lines. What's going wrong for you? It takes 4 lines here, but the issue is with horizontal overflow: "planning" is in the end of the first line for me, and it's cut on the last "n" (with no horizontal scroll). Below that, "developed by many others." is cut on "h" in "others". That's in FF 68, where it's also aligned to the right side, while in FF 78 it is centered. All the other elements are centered in FF 68 too. It moves to the left and becomes readable (i.e., all words are fully visible) when I remove font settings (org.css:32) and the --body-left ones, or if "display: flex" is disabled altogether, but not sure what's the exact issue. There's "overflow-x: hidden" in the CSS, which probably contributes to it. Edit: apparently it's similar to the issue reported by john-aj here.

petre 6y ago

Are there any Org Mode to HTML rendereres? Can it replace Markdown? I see it has tables which aren't a part of regular markdown aka commonmark.

tecosaur 6y ago
Yes on both counts :) see: https://orgmode.org/manual/Exporting.html https://orgmode.org/manual/Exporting.html

ktpsns 6y ago

Slightly off topic: To be honest, the non correct indendation in https://orgmode.org/resources/img/main.svg https://orgmode.org/resources/img/main.svg is the reason why I always change my text editor fonts in a way that for every highlight variant, the same font is used. Different font sizes, font families, etc. have the effect that the monospacing is lost.

roland35 6y ago

I love using org mode but what I would really like is a thin GUI client which would keep me from making silly mistakes (such as deleting a heading line accidentally and leaving the orphaned content under a new heading), keep things visually separate, and help organize links between headings and tags. Also an easier way to customize the agenda command without writing lisp would be more user friendly!

olivierestsage 6y ago
If you haven't already, you might want to add (setq org-catch-invisible-edits 'smart) to your config. It will stop you from backspacing over anything invisible, but I don't think it stops the issue of highlighting a region and deleting it. This was a problem I ran into early on while using Org, but a combination of this setting and Git helped solve it.

nivenkos 6y ago

I wish there were a comparable mode for neovim. I now use a combination of Google Keep and vimwiki, but I really liked org-mode back when I used emacs.

olivierestsage 6y ago

To anyone who's on the fence about trying Org: if organization has ever been a problem for you, I don't think you'll regret giving it a spin. I considered myself a disorganized person for all my life until I started using Org-mode, but not anymore. It's been such a relief to my overall stress/anxiety.

st1x7 6y ago
That's an argument for having some personal organisation system, not necessarily for org-mode. After multiple attempts of using Emacs and a couple of tries at org-mode I just decided that the time investment that I need to put in a frustrating to learn interface just isn't worth it.
- olivierestsage 6y ago
  I take your point, but in fact my argument is for Org, specifically. I've tried tons of options, from things like Evernote to very different approaches like GTD with an all-physical tickler file. I also picked up and dropped Org/Emacs a couple of times before they really "clicked" - but once they did, they clicked for good. Obviously no system is going to be the objectively superior choice for everyone, but I think there's a very strong case to be made for Org for anyone who (a) finds the plain-text approach to this problem appealing and (b) wants agenda/calendaring functionality built right on top of the other organizational functions.

john-aj 6y ago

Looks nice, but it seems shifted to the right for me: http://img.ankarstrom.se/orgsite.png http://img.ankarstrom.se/orgsite.png I do use a browser that might not support all the latest things, but I suspect the site could be made a bit more compatible. The layout isn't that advanced.

g8oz 6y ago

Wouldn't it be great if VS Code had a full fledged org-mode implementation? Especially Babel functionality.