4 ms·

> I want to be able to encode more of my memory and context to my notes with a minimum of fuss, and therefore want to embed images (gasp!), tables, hyperlinks,

by pxc 4y ago

> I want to be able to encode more of my memory and context to my notes with a minimum of fuss, and therefore want to embed images (gasp!), tables, hyperlinks, and even file or sound embeds in my documents. I do this stuff with my notes in Emacs and it's really nice. Emacs is a graphical application and its notetaking facilities are really outstanding. It even supports syntax highlighted, executable, exportable code snippets, as well as all the basic text formatting, hyperlinks, tables of contents, tables, etc. It's a great tool for developers and sysadmins to use for notetaking. If you know Emacs isn't for you, that's totally fine, but I wanted to throw this out there for bystanders that when someone suggests to build your notetaking workflow around a great text editor, the proposition is not at all to somehow confine oneself to an 1980s terminal.

nextos 4y ago
Same here. I use Emacs to write tons of notes. I rely heavily on tables, hyperlinks, timestamps and tags. Images are also possible, just not part of my workflow. All this is trivial, out of the box and I know it will still work many years down the road. Even custom hyperlinks and text notes that refer to chunks inside PDFs are easy to do.
- deepnet 4y ago
  My life and work would be impoverished without emacs. Thank you Richard
  - b112 4y ago
    I personally dislike emacs, but say the same. Why? vim would not be what it is, without emacs to rage against.
    - glumpsoff 4y ago
      vim would not be what it is without having become a shallow emacs. Emacs is emacs because its extensible, between vim, neovim and vim9, im starting to think people might enjoy the extensibility seeing as that brings vim up to 3 scripting languages to write things in. vim has become what it purported to hate
      - bb010g 4y ago
        I don't think Vim ever hated extensibility. Vim is defined by its modality and vocabulary and grammar, which Emacs lacks without extensions like evil.
- strongbond 4y ago
  Your phrase 'Images are also possible' worries me. But then you go on to say 'All of this is trivial ...', which makes me feel a lot better. I've had many well-intentioned but ultimately abortive attempts to get on board with Emacs. So, are images 'possible' or 'trivial'? Not trolling, and I do note that you say it's not part of your workflow.
  - Avshalom 4y ago
    eehh... so (out of the box) in org mode if you type [[./file/path/to.png]] it will turn into a link, if you hit Ctrl-c-x-v it will toggle between showing images as a link (which will open in a new emacs buffer) and just showing the images inline. ALSO you can just drag an image file onto an emacs window and it will display it in a new buffer. however getting it so that A) images are displayed automatically when you finish typing the [[path]] and/or B) dragging an image into emacs will result in a new link in orgmode... that's probably possible
    - codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
      https://github.com/abo-abo/org-download https://github.com/abo-abo/org-download This is the package you're looking for. Just drag and drop images into the org mode buffer and you're done. I've been using it for years to take lecture / book notes in org mode where I have to constantly take screenshots and embed them in my notes.
      - Avshalom 4y ago
        that's part B. part A is still annoying though. if you have inline images toggled and type in a new image it still turns into a link instead of an inline image.
        codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
        That's an org mode setting, can be added to the #+startup declaration at the top of the file.
  - 4y ago
radarsat1 4y ago
As far as I can tell, embedding images into org documents still requires saving them to a directory and linking them. I can't seem to find a way to get it to actually embed the image data into the document, for example like a base64 data URL or something.
- pxc 4y ago
  This is the only way I've done it, since my org notes are organized into git-based wikis and that's kinda what I expect from wikis. Direct embedding binary data in the Org files would be cool for emailing Org files around, though. It looks like Org does support this kind of embedding on export, if you don't mind exporting to other formats when you send documents around.
- Siira 4y ago
  Base64 images and URLs are possible with extensions, but simple files are better IMO. Getting URLs asynchronously doesn’t work well, and base64 embedding seriously bloats the text file and makes it more difficult to plain text tools on it. (E.g., you’ll get false positive grep results.)
rawoke083600 4y ago
> I want to be able to encode more of my memory and context to my notes with a minimum of fuss, and therefore want to embed images (gasp!), tables, hyperlinks, and even file or sound embeds in my documents. Yea, you will get a lot of Emacs and Emacs with Org mode answers here. To be fair they not wrong :) As a complete emacs newb, start with something like "doom emacs" ! It's brilliant for beginners. >Emacs is a graphical application Too few ppl know this.
- Multicomp 4y ago
  > Too few ppl know this. Including me until now. I will examine this emacs of which you speak. No promises but I can at least attempt to run it.
  - rawoke083600 4y ago
    ProTip: Not many ppl like YouTube as a "learning platform" but just look for "doom emacs" on youtube to get the basics. You only a need to "learn" a minimal set of keys+concepts to start to get insane value. Goodluck :)
    - pxc 4y ago
      Seconding the Doom recommendation. There is no need to become a guru before you can be productive, or to use Emacs for all your coding just to make good use of it for notes. Doom is a great way to quickly get up and running for notetaking with Org mode. Get used to the basic workflow for a little while and forgive the monospace-ness while you evaluate the workflow. I like taking notes in Gollum wikis, the wiki format used by GitLab and Github. The project management features enabled by default in Doom will kick in for that. Decide how you feel about those. If you like the workflow, take a look at org-modern and take a few minutes to work out the proportions for variable pitch fonts. Then you can have Org text render in a nice, proportional font that you like and use monospace only for the embedded source code (including shell languages) blocks. As an alternative to the using git repos to store notes collected into projects, take a look at Org Roam v2 for keeping a topic-based knowledgebase that you can work with without thinking much about the filesystem, and which offers mindmapping features. That stuff works great for me, has required zero substantial elisp knowledge to get working, and has been natural for me to ease into. I hope you find a workflow you like!
Siira 4y ago
I have images, audio, and backlinks using UUIDs in my terminal emacs. The image support is the worst, as I have to open the image and then it takes over the screen until I dismiss it, but it’s usable.

by pxc 4y ago

nextos 4y ago

Same here. I use Emacs to write tons of notes. I rely heavily on tables, hyperlinks, timestamps and tags. Images are also possible, just not part of my workflow. All this is trivial, out of the box and I know it will still work many years down the road. Even custom hyperlinks and text notes that refer to chunks inside PDFs are easy to do.

deepnet 4y ago
My life and work would be impoverished without emacs. Thank you Richard
- b112 4y ago
  I personally dislike emacs, but say the same. Why? vim would not be what it is, without emacs to rage against.
  - glumpsoff 4y ago
    vim would not be what it is without having become a shallow emacs. Emacs is emacs because its extensible, between vim, neovim and vim9, im starting to think people might enjoy the extensibility seeing as that brings vim up to 3 scripting languages to write things in. vim has become what it purported to hate
    - bb010g 4y ago
      I don't think Vim ever hated extensibility. Vim is defined by its modality and vocabulary and grammar, which Emacs lacks without extensions like evil.
strongbond 4y ago
Your phrase 'Images are also possible' worries me. But then you go on to say 'All of this is trivial ...', which makes me feel a lot better. I've had many well-intentioned but ultimately abortive attempts to get on board with Emacs. So, are images 'possible' or 'trivial'? Not trolling, and I do note that you say it's not part of your workflow.
- Avshalom 4y ago
  eehh... so (out of the box) in org mode if you type [[./file/path/to.png]] it will turn into a link, if you hit Ctrl-c-x-v it will toggle between showing images as a link (which will open in a new emacs buffer) and just showing the images inline. ALSO you can just drag an image file onto an emacs window and it will display it in a new buffer. however getting it so that A) images are displayed automatically when you finish typing the [[path]] and/or B) dragging an image into emacs will result in a new link in orgmode... that's probably possible
  - codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
    https://github.com/abo-abo/org-download https://github.com/abo-abo/org-download This is the package you're looking for. Just drag and drop images into the org mode buffer and you're done. I've been using it for years to take lecture / book notes in org mode where I have to constantly take screenshots and embed them in my notes.
    - Avshalom 4y ago
      that's part B. part A is still annoying though. if you have inline images toggled and type in a new image it still turns into a link instead of an inline image.
      - codemonkey-zeta 4y ago
        That's an org mode setting, can be added to the #+startup declaration at the top of the file.
- 4y ago

radarsat1 4y ago

As far as I can tell, embedding images into org documents still requires saving them to a directory and linking them. I can't seem to find a way to get it to actually embed the image data into the document, for example like a base64 data URL or something.

pxc 4y ago
This is the only way I've done it, since my org notes are organized into git-based wikis and that's kinda what I expect from wikis. Direct embedding binary data in the Org files would be cool for emailing Org files around, though. It looks like Org does support this kind of embedding on export, if you don't mind exporting to other formats when you send documents around.
Siira 4y ago
Base64 images and URLs are possible with extensions, but simple files are better IMO. Getting URLs asynchronously doesn’t work well, and base64 embedding seriously bloats the text file and makes it more difficult to plain text tools on it. (E.g., you’ll get false positive grep results.)

rawoke083600 4y ago

> I want to be able to encode more of my memory and context to my notes with a minimum of fuss, and therefore want to embed images (gasp!), tables, hyperlinks, and even file or sound embeds in my documents. Yea, you will get a lot of Emacs and Emacs with Org mode answers here. To be fair they not wrong :) As a complete emacs newb, start with something like "doom emacs" ! It's brilliant for beginners. >Emacs is a graphical application Too few ppl know this.

Multicomp 4y ago
> Too few ppl know this. Including me until now. I will examine this emacs of which you speak. No promises but I can at least attempt to run it.
- rawoke083600 4y ago
  ProTip: Not many ppl like YouTube as a "learning platform" but just look for "doom emacs" on youtube to get the basics. You only a need to "learn" a minimal set of keys+concepts to start to get insane value. Goodluck :)
  - pxc 4y ago
    Seconding the Doom recommendation. There is no need to become a guru before you can be productive, or to use Emacs for all your coding just to make good use of it for notes. Doom is a great way to quickly get up and running for notetaking with Org mode. Get used to the basic workflow for a little while and forgive the monospace-ness while you evaluate the workflow. I like taking notes in Gollum wikis, the wiki format used by GitLab and Github. The project management features enabled by default in Doom will kick in for that. Decide how you feel about those. If you like the workflow, take a look at org-modern and take a few minutes to work out the proportions for variable pitch fonts. Then you can have Org text render in a nice, proportional font that you like and use monospace only for the embedded source code (including shell languages) blocks. As an alternative to the using git repos to store notes collected into projects, take a look at Org Roam v2 for keeping a topic-based knowledgebase that you can work with without thinking much about the filesystem, and which offers mindmapping features. That stuff works great for me, has required zero substantial elisp knowledge to get working, and has been natural for me to ease into. I hope you find a workflow you like!

Siira 4y ago

I have images, audio, and backlinks using UUIDs in my terminal emacs. The image support is the worst, as I have to open the image and then it takes over the screen until I dismiss it, but it’s usable.