4 ms·

It might be my Emacs bias, but I find Org much nicer as a format. For instance, timestamps and todo items make it trivial to use Org as a planner. This would be

by nextos 1y ago

It might be my Emacs bias, but I find Org much nicer as a format. For instance, timestamps and todo items make it trivial to use Org as a planner. This would be great to have in applications such as Apple Notes.

bqmjjx0kac 1y ago
I love org-mode, but if I were king, it would accept freakin' back-quotes for monospaced text. Instead, it takes ~tilde~ or =equals=, and I will never remember the difference no matter how many times I look it up.
- nextos 1y ago
 =string= leads to the text being transcribed verbatim. A good hint is to recall that the equals sign kinda implies verbatim.
 - kevhito 1y ago
 Ironic then that [0] (the first hit when I search "emacs org mode tutorial") says: You can make words *bold*, /italic/, _underlined_, =code= and ~verbatim~, and, if you must, +strike-through+. [0]: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org4beginners.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org4beginners.html
 - nextos 1y ago
 That seems to be a very old tutorial. It's indeed confusing that they host that on the official site. The official manual states equals is used for =verbatim= quotes: https://orgmode.org/manual/Emphasis-and-Monospace.html https://orgmode.org/manual/Emphasis-and-Monospace.html
- epistasis 1y ago
 This is also the primary hangup that's kept me from adopting org-mode for notes, and I instead keep everything in MarkDown, and miss out on all the org-mode organization effects. The differences in link syntax are hard too, but I've got 5-10 years of DokuWiki in my history that make the link syntax more palatable. However, I still prefer MarkDown syntax for links too...
- fhd2 1y ago
 I switch between Markdown and Org Mode a lot, the syntactic differences don't bother me too much, but I guess I like Markdown's a bit more. But what I really miss in Markdown: 1. Collapsible headlines and headline search. 2. Executable source code blocks (for notebook style work). 3. TODO states. 4. Time tracking and clock tables. 5. Table formulas. 6. Inline LaTeX and document generation in general. Now 1 is just an editor feature, and some of these others could be, too. But I wish Markdown was more powerful, extensible, or less ubiquitous. What bothers me most about Org Mode is that support is pretty limited outside Emacs. We use it as a wiki replacement at my company, for that integrations into other editors are kinda good enough. But there's some areas like reporting only Emacs users can realistically work on. GitLab (and Forgejo, which we recently switched to) render Org pretty nicely, so it's easy to consume in a browser. But editing is a different story. So I guess I wish for either a less complex (and thus easier to support) Org, or a more powerful Markdown.
 - al_borland 1y ago
 I’ve seen a lot of apps extend markdown to support various additional features. Obsidian, for example, has an extensive number of community plugins which offer a ton of features. This of course ends up being editor specific, but if org has the same limitation, by being tied to emacs, is it really any different? I think what emacs has going for it in this case is that it’s been around for decades, and we can assume it will continue to be around for decades into the future. The markdown editor de jour may not be.
 - fhd2 1y ago
 Yeah, that's my thinking with these tools. I think it needs to be more of a standard. Either Markdown++ or Org Lite. I'll take either :) I'm not a fan of coupling formats and tools tightly.
- Spicy69 1y ago
 I use orgmode's ~tilde = "for code"~ and =equals_for_filenames.txt=, but what do I know. I also like [Markdown's text first](https://hyperlink.com https://hyperlink.com) then link format much more than [[https://hyperlink.com https://hyperlink.com][Orgmode's link first then text]]. But for the life of me, there are so many things I hate about Markdown: - Alternative syntax for _italic_ *italic* and __bold__ **bold** (why?) - versus using /italic/ and *bold*. It just feels so right - You need to use HTML tags to underline, or <s>strikethrough</s>, or just about anything in Markdown (including line breaks! You need to use the tag) - +strikethrough+ is alright, but _underline_ just makes sense - Lack of a unified Markdown standard: - Diminishes portability (e.g. varying approaches for file meta tags like in Obsidian) - Causes different renderings of the same document (e.g. Obsidian vs GitHub) - There was a serious standardization effort in 'Standard Markdown', only for the original creator to be a knob about it: https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-markdown/ It's a shame too because despite Orgmode being superior to Markdown in just about every way, its adoption is nowhere near as close (editing is hard on iOS, and needing Emacs is a barrier for the general public). Markdown isn't going away anytime soon.
dingaling 1y ago
Which is what frustrates me with the invention of Markdown. A ten minute web search would have revealed it was already a solved problem, instead of splintering and inventing a new 'standard'. But that was somehow too much effort.
- jen729w 1y ago
  I'm sure Gruber was entirely unaware that there existed other markup languages. If only he'd done a quick Google first. Shame. /s
- sitharus 1y ago
  Markdown was never created as a standard, it was created to fit one person's workflow and how they liked to format documents. It just so happened that it's pretty similar to how many others like to format documents.
rcarmo 1y ago
Forget it, we’ve lost. I was also partial to Textile for tables, and that’s gone nowhere too.
arresin 1y ago
ASCII docs is the nicest for humans of all the ones I’ve experimented with.
- homebrewer 1y ago
  And it's readily convertible into high quality manpages. I thought git's were written in troff before stumbling into the actual source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/refs/heads/master/Documentation/git-rebase.adoc https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/refs/heads/master/... When the original is in markdown, it's somehow always noticeable.
slightwinder 1y ago
You can have all that and even more with Markdown too, but it comes with the price of "vendor lock-in", as most of those are kinda optional and depending on which markdown-app you are using. On the other side, org-mode has also kind of a vendor lock-in, as there is only one leading and format-defining app, even if there are a handful of clones implementing a subset of its features. Though, at the moment org-mode, has a slight advantage in having a more well-defined and maintained format-definition, while Markdown seems more a chaotic meltingpot of anything goes.. but it seems the community-effect manifests in the long run, and people settle on new features and their syntax. The only thing missing is a proper definition of this, which is supported by everyone. Obsidian seems to have enough weight to pull this at the moment, but we will see.

by nextos 1y ago

bqmjjx0kac 1y ago

I love org-mode, but if I were king, it would accept freakin' back-quotes for monospaced text. Instead, it takes ~tilde~ or =equals=, and I will never remember the difference no matter how many times I look it up.

nextos 1y ago
=string= leads to the text being transcribed verbatim. A good hint is to recall that the equals sign kinda implies verbatim.
- kevhito 1y ago
  Ironic then that [0] (the first hit when I search "emacs org mode tutorial") says: You can make words *bold*, /italic/, _underlined_, =code= and ~verbatim~, and, if you must, +strike-through+. [0]: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org4beginners.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org4beginners.html
  - nextos 1y ago
    That seems to be a very old tutorial. It's indeed confusing that they host that on the official site. The official manual states equals is used for =verbatim= quotes: https://orgmode.org/manual/Emphasis-and-Monospace.html https://orgmode.org/manual/Emphasis-and-Monospace.html
epistasis 1y ago
This is also the primary hangup that's kept me from adopting org-mode for notes, and I instead keep everything in MarkDown, and miss out on all the org-mode organization effects. The differences in link syntax are hard too, but I've got 5-10 years of DokuWiki in my history that make the link syntax more palatable. However, I still prefer MarkDown syntax for links too...
fhd2 1y ago
I switch between Markdown and Org Mode a lot, the syntactic differences don't bother me too much, but I guess I like Markdown's a bit more. But what I really miss in Markdown: 1. Collapsible headlines and headline search. 2. Executable source code blocks (for notebook style work). 3. TODO states. 4. Time tracking and clock tables. 5. Table formulas. 6. Inline LaTeX and document generation in general. Now 1 is just an editor feature, and some of these others could be, too. But I wish Markdown was more powerful, extensible, or less ubiquitous. What bothers me most about Org Mode is that support is pretty limited outside Emacs. We use it as a wiki replacement at my company, for that integrations into other editors are kinda good enough. But there's some areas like reporting only Emacs users can realistically work on. GitLab (and Forgejo, which we recently switched to) render Org pretty nicely, so it's easy to consume in a browser. But editing is a different story. So I guess I wish for either a less complex (and thus easier to support) Org, or a more powerful Markdown.
- al_borland 1y ago
  I’ve seen a lot of apps extend markdown to support various additional features. Obsidian, for example, has an extensive number of community plugins which offer a ton of features. This of course ends up being editor specific, but if org has the same limitation, by being tied to emacs, is it really any different? I think what emacs has going for it in this case is that it’s been around for decades, and we can assume it will continue to be around for decades into the future. The markdown editor de jour may not be.
  - fhd2 1y ago
    Yeah, that's my thinking with these tools. I think it needs to be more of a standard. Either Markdown++ or Org Lite. I'll take either :) I'm not a fan of coupling formats and tools tightly.
Spicy69 1y ago
I use orgmode's ~tilde = "for code"~ and =equals_for_filenames.txt=, but what do I know. I also like [Markdown's text first](https://hyperlink.com https://hyperlink.com) then link format much more than [[https://hyperlink.com https://hyperlink.com][Orgmode's link first then text]]. But for the life of me, there are so many things I hate about Markdown: - Alternative syntax for _italic_ *italic* and __bold__ **bold** (why?) - versus using /italic/ and *bold*. It just feels so right - You need to use HTML tags to underline, or <s>strikethrough</s>, or just about anything in Markdown (including line breaks! You need to use the tag) - +strikethrough+ is alright, but _underline_ just makes sense - Lack of a unified Markdown standard: - Diminishes portability (e.g. varying approaches for file meta tags like in Obsidian) - Causes different renderings of the same document (e.g. Obsidian vs GitHub) - There was a serious standardization effort in 'Standard Markdown', only for the original creator to be a knob about it: https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-markdown/ It's a shame too because despite Orgmode being superior to Markdown in just about every way, its adoption is nowhere near as close (editing is hard on iOS, and needing Emacs is a barrier for the general public). Markdown isn't going away anytime soon.

dingaling 1y ago

Which is what frustrates me with the invention of Markdown. A ten minute web search would have revealed it was already a solved problem, instead of splintering and inventing a new 'standard'. But that was somehow too much effort.

jen729w 1y ago
I'm sure Gruber was entirely unaware that there existed other markup languages. If only he'd done a quick Google first. Shame. /s
sitharus 1y ago
Markdown was never created as a standard, it was created to fit one person's workflow and how they liked to format documents. It just so happened that it's pretty similar to how many others like to format documents.

rcarmo 1y ago

Forget it, we’ve lost. I was also partial to Textile for tables, and that’s gone nowhere too.

arresin 1y ago

ASCII docs is the nicest for humans of all the ones I’ve experimented with.

homebrewer 1y ago
And it's readily convertible into high quality manpages. I thought git's were written in troff before stumbling into the actual source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/refs/heads/master/Documentation/git-rebase.adoc https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/refs/heads/master/... When the original is in markdown, it's somehow always noticeable.

slightwinder 1y ago

You can have all that and even more with Markdown too, but it comes with the price of "vendor lock-in", as most of those are kinda optional and depending on which markdown-app you are using. On the other side, org-mode has also kind of a vendor lock-in, as there is only one leading and format-defining app, even if there are a handful of clones implementing a subset of its features. Though, at the moment org-mode, has a slight advantage in having a more well-defined and maintained format-definition, while Markdown seems more a chaotic meltingpot of anything goes.. but it seems the community-effect manifests in the long run, and people settle on new features and their syntax. The only thing missing is a proper definition of this, which is supported by everyone. Obsidian seems to have enough weight to pull this at the moment, but we will see.