
Emacs org-mode examples and cookbook - dangom
http://ehneilsen.net/notebook/orgExamples/org-examples.html
======
nextos
It's worth noting a great Android client for org-mode has been recently open
sourced:

[http://www.orgzly.com/](http://www.orgzly.com/)

[https://github.com/orgzly](https://github.com/orgzly)

[https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/com.orgzly](https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/com.orgzly)

It was a little annoyance we did not have anything as good as this before.

~~~
AsyncAwait
I was wondering just a few days ago whether building a nice Mac desktop app or
maybe a web app, akin to Ulysses, but for Org file writing/editing, exporting
etc. would be a viable idea and whether it could eat some of Markdown's
marketshare by not being tied to Emacs, which is why I feel most people don't
pick it up.

Would that be something the HN crowd would be interested in?

~~~
taeric
This will be a tough sell. Org-mode is a fairly fast moving target, due to how
easy it is to extend anything in emacs. For lots, you will actually be
battling against all of the other extensions in emacs. (For me, as an example,
you will have to replace flyspell, beacon, tramp, ace-jump, ido, and ggtags.)

All of this is doable, of course. But it will be a tough sell.

That said, I'd say go for it. Worst case, nobody uses it and you just learn
some of the difficulties of implementing. Hard to see that as a failure.

~~~
AsyncAwait
Yeah, it would be fairly difficult to build, which is why getting feedback
would be useful, but there's a catch 22; people who already know what Org is
are fairly comfortable using Emacs and I don't know how to find out if people
not that found of Emacs itself would still find Org useful, or if combining
apps like Ulysses and Omni Outliner is good enough for them - the worst part
is that because they don't use Emacs, they can't tell me.

This really may be the 'just build it and see' sort of scenario.

~~~
lygaret
I've often about some sort of app that uses Org as a design basis, but stores
data in a way that makes it easy to access remotely without having an Org
parser, to be easy to sync and query programmatically, and is designed for the
modern world in terms of connectivity and interface.

I think that could _absolutely_ kill it.

Imagine writing extensions in js or lua or whatever, and having those
extensions have clear DOM-like access to the outline, have full access to
their stdlib, have access to built in services like notifications, etc.

Imagine being able to programmatically access and manipulate the outline from
wherever: webhook to add an outline node from IFTTT, twilio access your notes?
etc. Yes you _could_ do that with Emacs, but IMHO it would take an incredible
amount of work to not suck, partly because all the various pieces necessary
feel like hacks on top of hacks.

Sort of how Atom and VSCode provide _much_ better interfaces (both code and
UI) to your source code, and are starting to make honest inroads against the
established players (like Emacs and Vim).

------
chemag
I've been trying for a while to understand what org-mode gives you. I saw
Dominik's tech talk at Google, and Bieber's discussion on dropping vim with
emacs. I really like the approach taken in this article, showing some of the
language features.

IIUC, what org-mode provides you is:

1\. a (markdown-like) lightweight document markup language, with lots of
syntax hooks ("#+") for different tools.

2\. some (even lighter, i.e., no "#+" required) organization-based syntax
hooks. These are the TODO/DONE/... labels (plus the "[ ]" tidbits), the table
syntax, the metadata (e.g. AUTHOR). In fact, the idea of adding metadata to a
lightweight markup language is very interesting.

3\. some "programmy" syntax items, including things like tags, spreadsheet-
like tables, properties, etc.

4\. the agenda view. This is a horizontal search on multiple .org files to
create a work agenda.

5\. some emacs functionality related to automatic recognition and operation on
some of the syntax items. For example, org-table-align will "Re-align the
table and don't move to another field".

There are lots of other features, but nothing that other lightweight markup
languages don't/can't have too.

My main concerns are:

1\. it is inextricably tied to emacs. AFAICT, only (5) in the previous list is
emacs-only. All the other functionalities are related to the markup syntax.

2\. I wish the org-mode language was fully markdown compatible (I can barely
remember the syntax of one, and now I need to use 2).

~~~
dangom
You are very right that other lightweight markup languages could provide
syntax for everything that org-mode does. But what would possibly interpret
that syntax?

The fact that org-mode is tied to Emacs is both its weakness but also its
strength. By sitting on the Emacs interpreter, org-mode imposes no limits to
what you can achieve. The synergy with other Emacs packages is enormous.

You also forgot to mention one of the coolest features of Org: exporting your
documents to whatever format you may want, e.g. html, latex, markdown, odt,
reveal.js, - and it's possible to hack the export to fit your needs usually
with modest effort. Here's an example of workflow to collaborate with Word
users, for example: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
orgmode/2015-06/msg...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
orgmode/2015-06/msg00246.html)

And here a recent blog post on exporting org to jupyter notebooks:
[http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/21/Exporting-...](http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/21/Exporting-
org-mode-to-Jupyter-notebooks/)

~~~
chemag
I can see some of the benefits of the integration: emacs can do the horizontal
search for TODO entries, create an agenda, let you edit it, and move the
changes to the right .org file. Still, I'd argue that the file is the
important thing here, not the tool to manage it. I should be able to edit .org
files with any other tool (e.g. an android app that eventually modifies a .org
file in github), and then do re-process the file.

Other languages also allow exporting to other formats. I use md-to-pdf all the
time, and it works well. Integrating the use of other tools in the export
process should be independent of the usage of emacs.

~~~
mikekchar
There is lots of functionality you can't do without _some_ kind of non-
ordinary editor functionality. The table functionality comes to mind, as does
the time management functionality. But, really org-mode's syntax is simple and
close enough to MD that it's very easy to implement in other editors. There
_is_ a vim package and even an Intellij package. But I challenge you to start
implementing the non-syntax parts in another editor and you will quickly see
that there is a lot of it.

------
vbernat
As a complement on how to use Org mode for ops:

\- [http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-
devops.htm...](http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-devops.html)
(Literate DevOps)

\- [https://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2017-netops-org-
mode](https://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2017-netops-org-mode) ("same" for
NetOps, I am the author of this one)

~~~
camperman
Howard's YouTube video is really nice too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg)

~~~
ttsiodras
After watching this video, I spent a few hours reproducing the core
functionality of what Howard demonstrated (with an .org file of my own)...

...and then went further down the rabbit hole. I installed org-reveal and used
it to create a very nice presentation out of my .org file - with syntax-
highlighted code seemlessly merging with screenshots.

Incredible. Thanks for pointing me to this - and thank you, Howard!

~~~
camperman
Pleasure. org-mode really is the gift that keeps on giving.

------
tomhoward
Server is currently overloaded.

Google cache version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HsxJcXa...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HsxJcXanfuYJ:ehneilsen.net/notebook/orgExamples/org-
examples.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au)

------
amackera
Every time I see something about org-mode posted, I get mad FOMO and decide to
re-dedicate my life to learning emacs and everything it has to offer. Then a
little while later I inevitably drift back to vim.

It's getting to the point where I need to just ignore cool stuff like this
post in order to get on with my life.

~~~
itamarst
Try [http://spacemacs.org](http://spacemacs.org) with Evil mode - vi
keybindings, all the power of emacs, and emacs pre-configured to work well out
of the box.

~~~
dfrey
spacemacs is all of the power of vim and emacs with all of the complexity of
vim and emacs. Having said that, it's what I'm using for writing code now.

~~~
aaronchall
I was using spacemacs, but I didn't know emacs and lisp well enough to solve
problems when I had them, and getting help was hard.

Now I'm back to using plain old emacs, and I'm hoping I can learn from
spacemacs to make emacs better by contributing back to it.

~~~
weaksauce
You can get help in the spacemacs gitter chat... there is usually someone
around that can help you out for most things.

[https://gitter.im/syl20bnr/spacemacs](https://gitter.im/syl20bnr/spacemacs)

~~~
OhSoHumble
In my experience, it was kind of hard to get someone to reply back to me when
I had a problem.

~~~
weaksauce
I can be for some advanced things. it's still emacs under the hood though so
emacs resources are valid sources of information. That said, it's not busy
during the weekend usually and is more active during US business hours.

------
rerx
I have been a heavy user of Emacs for six years or so.

However, I never really got into org-mode. I use it for some simple notes and
lists, but I never export them into any different format. If I want to produce
a well-formatted PDF, I directly write LaTeX with the help of some very nice
Emacs modes. For online documents I feel that some sort of Markdown is often
the most practical choice. So far, in my experience there was little overlap
in between these use cases for the same documents.

This cookbook, however, is a very nice resource. Maybe one of these tricks
will convince me to use org-mode more productively at some point.

I thought org-mode would be useful for personal task management, but I find it
to offer way to many intricate options for that. The restricted feature set of
Wunderlist is actually better for me, and having all lists always fully
available on any device and the web is extremely useful.

~~~
BeetleB
> If I want to produce a well-formatted PDF, I directly write LaTeX with the
> help of some very nice Emacs modes.

My experience is quite the opposite. I was a heavy LaTeX user, and stopped
pure LaTeX years ago when I learned org mode. For the usual markup, Org mode
syntax is _much_ nicer than LaTeX's. And if I want custom LaTeX, Org mode lets
me insert it in the document.

I never manually write TeX or HTML documents any more. I always author in Org
mode and export.

>I thought org-mode would be useful for personal task management, but I find
it to offer way to many intricate options for that. The restricted feature set
of Wunderlist is actually better for me, and having all lists always fully
available on any device and the web is extremely useful.

The task management is as simple or as intricate as you like. Org mode doesn't
force any intricacies on you. If you want a simple flow, you can get it
without learning too much Org Mode.

However, having it available on any device is a big deal. I'll grant you that.

~~~
rerx
> My experience is quite the opposite. I was a heavy LaTeX user, and stopped
> pure LaTeX years ago when I learned org mode. For the usual markup, Org mode
> syntax is much nicer than LaTeX's. And if I want custom LaTeX, Org mode lets
> me insert it in the document.

That's interesting! I googled a bit and found that people actually write
research papers in org-mode.

But in my experience (physics) that usually requires _a lot_ of manual LaTeX
control. Also these documents are often written in collaboration with other
people, who do not use org-mode.

Frankly, Auctex with Reftex is so nice, I do not see the advantages of org-
mode for my main use cases.

Maybe I will give it another try one day for letters and other one-off
documents. I could see an advantage in hiding all the LaTeX boilerplate cruft.

> The task management is as simple or as intricate as you like. Org mode
> doesn't force any intricacies on you. If you want a simple flow, you can get
> it without learning too much Org Mode.

This is one case where I find actual value in the choices and pleasant design
somebody else has made for me. Of course, now that I have learnt how well
Wunderlist works for me, I could try to re-implement it in org-mode. But what
would I gain? Mainly nicer text editing capabilities, secondly independence
from a cloud service. The text editing is not a big deal, since it is actually
beneficial to keep these lists short. For now, the cloud service comes with so
many advantages that I accept this dependence. Finally, I have come to the
surprising realization that browsing and checking off these lists is actually
nicer for me in a mouse-first, keyboard-second interface, at least as long as
I get to use a keyboard with a trackpoint.

~~~
BeetleB
>But in my experience (physics) that usually requires a lot of manual LaTeX
control. Also these documents are often written in collaboration with other
people, who do not use org-mode.

You can pretty much embed any LaTeX code in your document. Org mode is usually
smart enough to pick up command (\whatever) without any extra markup (I
believe this works even for custom commands you defined yourself). Equations
are surrounded by a single or double $. If you have other special stuff, you
can explicitly put it in a block by itself and Org mode will pass it to the
.tex file unmodified.

Yeah, coauthoring could be an issue.

>Frankly, Auctex with Reftex is so nice, I do not see the advantages of org-
mode for my main use cases.

I'll confess that I was not an advanced Auctex user, so I can't compare. The
author of org mode is a heavy latex user (astronomy professor), so I'm sure he
made it good enough for _his_ needs.

One thing I liked was the ability to insert Greek characters with minimal
keystrokes (a for alpha, b for beta, etc). You can preview your equations just
as you would with auctex.

This tutorial shows the capabilities in older versions of org mode. Not sure
if there is an updated version:

[http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-latex-
export.html](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-latex-export.html)

------
greggyb
Question I've found myself running into with org-mode. How do you use it to
collaborate and share notes with others?

I work in a Windows shop (Microsoft data platform partner), and most of my
coworkers don't even know what emacs is. I can always export my own notes to
HTML or similar for others to consume, but most of my coworkers are using
OneNote. I prefer org-mode to OneNote, but for convenience I use OneNote since
we can collaborate better.

I didn't find anything that can ingest and spit out OneNote compatible
notebooks when I looked.

~~~
sk8ingdom
Maybe take a look at Pandoc[1]? It converts between Org-mode and Microsoft
formats.

[1] [http://pandoc.org/](http://pandoc.org/)

------
cygned
I write lectures for university in org-mode. The PDF export (org -> LaTeX ->
PDF) with org-beamer and a theme makes it a nice looking presentation. I can
check into Git, can copy and paste layouts, have a great search and don't have
to leave the keyboard (which over time has actually become quite a big deal
for me).

Just wished Preview would show thumbnails in the TouchBar.

~~~
throwanem
For those uninterested in getting into a LaTeX presentation tool, there's also
a package [1] supporting export from org-mode to Reveal.js presentations. I've
found it to work quite well, and to be much more convenient than any more GUI-
focused tool.

[1] [https://github.com/yjwen/org-reveal](https://github.com/yjwen/org-reveal)

~~~
cygned
I have used that, too, works like a charm.

------
taude
i used to use org-mode a lot back in the day, but I lost my emacs config, and
since then haven't really gone back. I always have a fond memory of organizing
my tech life with org-mode, though. It was truly ahead of its time, but I feel
there's better tools for the job now, that specialize in doing each of the
many things org-mode does, but better.

Some alternatives I used off and on for a bit: * NValt * Respose Notes *
Evernote * Plain Tasks for Sublime Text
[https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks](https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks) *
Workflowy * Other web-based/mobile optimized tools

It's still a great tool for managing a single dev's work life, especially if
using emacs, but I've found more modern tools, with collaboration built in,
pretty formatting for non-techies, etc. a little more flexible.

(I also dare to say that I'm on Microsoft OneNote these days, mostly because I
work in a multi-platform environment.)

~~~
stinkytaco
Just to play counterpoint to this, these features being available in various
tools is precisely why I like org mode. Workflowy has always struck me as
"org-lite", and plain tasks for sublime is also a good package, as is nvalt.
But the combination of org-velocity or deft and org give me all that in an
integrated tool. The only thing I _don 't_ get is the clipping ability of
Evernote. Plus my data is my own, not locked into someone else's ecosystem.

------
euroclydon
If anyone is having trouble getting the plantuml diagrams going, here is what
worked form in OSX:

1) Didn't have Java, installed it by following the prompt that appears by
running 'java' in the shell

2) brew install plantuml

3) M-x package-install<RET> plantuml-mode<RET>

4) Add following to .emacs

    
    
        (setq org-plantuml-jar-path "/usr/local/Cellar/plantuml/8057/libexec/plantuml.jar")
        
        (require 'ob-plantuml)
        ;; active Babel languages
        (org-babel-do-load-languages
        'org-babel-load-languages
        '((plantuml . t)
        ))

------
baby
Every time I try to get into org-mode, I just don't get where to start and how
to do things. So I end up going back to Sublime text, creating markdown files
to take my notes, works well.

~~~
rgoddard
Given the many different features this is not surprising. My approach was to
focus on learning one set of features at a time. I used
[http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html](http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html) as a
guide. The order I went in was: Creating / editing / manipulating trees -
Being able to easily organize everything in a hierarchy TODOs - how to
customize my own list of TODO states to fit my workflow Habits - I created a
habit for learning more about org-mode each day Agendas - I found this to be
one of the most useful features especially being able to create a custom
agenda to see exactly what I wanted - a section of scheduled todos/habits and
list of TODO items organized by todo state, sorted by category Capture Mode -
makes adding new todo items easy

I used org-mode to help me learn org-mode, using everything I learned prior to
help bootstrap learning the next piece. At the same time I integrated the
pomodoro technique into my work flow. So my habit item for learning org-mode
was to spend one 25 minute period a day learning. Do this for a couple of
weeks, making sure to spend some time customizing everything to suit your
process and you should be all set.

~~~
m-j-fox
Okay but it's too easy to fill a todo list with more than you can accomplish
in one lifetime.

I need a guide that tells me how to rationally prioritize work, health and
family above my never-ending .emacs.d side project.

------
tombert
Org-mode is one of those things that I regret not learning about when I used
Emacs full-time. I've had a few friends now show me how it's completely
changed their workflow, but since it's not terribly popular in Vim-land
(though I am aware there is a port to Vim), I haven't really had a chance to
really learn it.

~~~
ageofwant
Check out [http://spacemacs.org/](http://spacemacs.org/). Adding the org layer
is a one-liner: 'org' in dotspacemacs-configuration-layers.

~~~
tombert
I've actually used Spacemacs, but the problem with all these "recreate your
Vim setup in another editor" things is that you end up having to redo your
entire config. I've had years of custom key-rebindings and tweaks to my
`.vimrc` that I don't really feel like redoing for something else.

~~~
weaksauce
I had a lot of modifications to my vimrc but spacemacs won me over. It's
mostly setup well out of the box. If you feel like taking the plunge there is
an Irc like thing for open source projects (don't recall the name of it now.)
that is fairly active.

~~~
avtar
[https://gitter.im/syl20bnr/spacemacs](https://gitter.im/syl20bnr/spacemacs)

------
lemonberry
I switched to Emacs specifically because of all the Org mode love I'd read
about. I've barely touched the surface of Org, thank you!

------
JohnStrange
I tried to get into org mode and even ordered the printed manual, but it was
just too much configuration work and shortcut memorizing, to be honest. Maybe
another time. For now I've reverted to using an _Action Day Planner_ [1] and
_Leuchtturm1917_ [2] notebooks with numbered pages for notes, and I'm fairly
happy with this system.

In hindsight, given the many things I've tried, email + pencil&paper is still
hard to beat.

[1] [http://www.actionday.com](http://www.actionday.com) [2]
[https://www.leuchtturm1917.us/](https://www.leuchtturm1917.us/)

~~~
lallysingh
They're for different kinds of work, really. I use a Leuchtturm1917 with a
nice fountain pen for deep thinking and analysis, and org-mode for running
notes while doing work.

org-mode is very deep, and you shouldn't try to learn it all at once. Start
off small in a way that you find it useful, then start adding in features as
you need. There's no need to use all, or even many, of the features for most
use cases.

But it's nice to have them when needed.

------
alphapapa
Shameless plug: [http://github.com/alphapapa/helm-org-
rifle](http://github.com/alphapapa/helm-org-rifle) Makes it very easy and fast
to search through org files.

~~~
dangom
By looking at the GIF in helm-org-rifle I remembered reading about variable-
pitch fonts on (what I believe to be) your blog. Great content in there,
thanks a lot for sharing!

~~~
alphapapa
Don't actually have a blog, but I've been thinking about one for some Emacs-
related stuff (though it would be feeble compared to the Emacs-related blogs
already out there!). I assume you know about Planet Emacs, but if not,
planet.emacsen.org. :)

Anyway, about the fonts: I use monospace fonts for code, but I like
proportional fonts for Org documents, so I have this in my org-mode hook:

    
    
        (buffer-face-set :family (face-attribute 'variable-pitch :family))
    

Then I use monospace in Org code blocks like this:

    
    
        (set-face-font 'org-block-background frame-font)
    

You could also set that one in the customize interface.

------
spinchange
For years I've wished to see an implementation of the basic feature set of Org
and Remember, et al., as a javascript/node app that could be re-packaged as an
outlook plugin, browser extension, or electron app, etc., ...for those of us
non-pro-programmer/hobbyist types who really want to use emacs and org to do
mere mortal stuff but don't _need_ to live in a code editor/IDE like the pros.

------
nickpeterson
Org-mode is on my list of things I should probably learn better, but never
seem to get around to. Here are some entries in that list:

    
    
      Emacs
      Regex
      Latex
      Bash/Terminal/Powershell
      Unicode
      APL/J/K
      Linear Algebra
      Category Theory

~~~
dredmorbius
Start using the tools.

For LaTeX: I very strongly recommend picking up a copy of the Lion Book
(Leslie Lamport) and running through the examples. I actually picked up a
great deal by taking documents I'd found online in bastardised for and tagging
them up manually in LaTeX for output into flexible formats -- HTML, PDF, ePub,
and more. It turns out that the basics of LaTeX are, well, pretty basics.
Paragraphs are double returns, which buys you a lot. Italic and bold text, and
the ``quoting'' style, are the main adaptations I had to make.

Digging into the equations and images features takes some doing, but you can
produce excellent docs well before that point.

Stack Exchange has a wonderful LaTeX community.

Of the rest of your list:

1\. Emacs: I actually got pretty good at it at one point, then signed on to a
gig (in the days just before running one's own Unix was readily possible) in
which it wasn't available and the boss (idiot) didn't believe in installing
anything which wasn't vendor-provisioned. That said: commit to using it. I've
found that I prefer vim's editing modes, but there's viper-mode in emacs. The
power of having _all_ text interactions under your editor is ... immense.

2\. Regex: Start with the basics. The Sed & Awk book (O'Reilly) is a good
start. Most of it is simple substiutions, and you can get tremendous mileage
from that, though as with many tools, you can abuse the concept. Perl remains
probably the canonical home for advanced regex use, though most languages have
some facility for it now.

3\. Bash: I'd recommend this, if only because Microsoft has a poor track
record of integrating with others and/or supporting other tools over a long
period of time. Bash has existed on Windows since the 1990s under various
toolkits, most notably Cygwin, and is now pretty much native.

4\. Unicode: mostly a matter of figuring out what bits you need within a given
project. I'd deprecate that on your list and consider it something to pursue
on an as-needed basis.

I can't much speak to the remainder of your list, though I'd suggest treating
them as tools adapted to uses and goals.

~~~
_jal
As far as regexes, The Sed and Awk book is good, but Mastering Regular
Expressions by Friedl is amazing. The amount of time that went into that work
is mind-boggling. The deep dives into the differences between different
engines and the detailed explanations of why one regex performs horribly vs.
another that matches the same thing quickly are really enlightening.

~~~
dredmorbius
I agree with both statements. I _still_ think that Sed & Awk is the better
_starting_ reference, as it begins with basic tools.

Deep dives are fine, but sometimes you just wanto to get a few toes in the
water.

I'd argue that if you've got performance issues with regexes, you're
(arguably) abusing the tool.

------
fosco
bandwidth exceeded message

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HsxJcXa...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HsxJcXanfuYJ:ehneilsen.net/notebook/orgExamples/org-
examples.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

I have gotten into org-mode a few months ago, simply amazing.

Edit: I see why I have been downvoted, but here is the error message I
received.

451 Actioning this file would cause "ehneilsen.net//notebook/orgExamples/org-
examples.html" to exceed the per-hour file actions limit of 20000 actions, try
again later

------
optimali
Any suggestions for composing gantt charts in org mode? I've been using
taskjuggler but printing them out to anything other than html (ex. image, pdf)
has been a hassle.

------
thesorrow
I'm surprised that no one tried to replicate this in electron yet. Outlining
alone is really powerfull and would be a great fit for a web based app !

~~~
wtbob
Why use electron? emacs is already available. And it includes a pretty great
news reader, mail reader, git interface, source-control interface, a thousand
other nifty things — oh, yeah, and a text editor too.

~~~
spinchange
Even if they _should_ , not everyone _needs_ to, or is inclined to learn and
live in emacs. Thinking especially of technically inclined folks (or managers,
etc) who don't really write code or have any reason to live in an editor, but
get benefit from all the loads of other nifty things - just without the
cognitive overhead of stuff like tweaking config files, learning all the
keybindings, managing buffers and the like- again, just for the use of org as
a powerful, text-based, personal information manager.

~~~
sedachv
Why do people think that Emacs is impossible for non-programmers to use?

 _" He wrote a version of Emacs in Multics MacLisp, and he wrote his commands
in MacLisp in a straightforward fashion. The editor itself was written
entirely in Lisp. Multics Emacs proved to be a great success — programming new
editing commands was so convenient that even the secretaries in his office
started learning how to use it. They used a manual someone had written which
showed how to extend Emacs, but didn't say it was a programming. So the
secretaries, who believed they couldn't do programming, weren't scared off.
They read the manual, discovered they could do useful things and they learned
to program."_

[https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-
lisp.en.html)

 _" I'm a non-technical user, non-programmer, and I started using it because
of org-mode."_

[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/gnu.emacs.help/QU6xN34ollo/K...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/gnu.emacs.help/QU6xN34ollo/KRtRHBwW1lYJ)

 _" Shel wrote Mailman in Lisp. Emacs-Lisp… Mailman was the Customer Service
customer-email processing application for … four, five years? A long time,
anyway. It was written in Emacs. Everyone loved it.

People still love it. To this very day, I still have to listen to long stories
from our non-technical folks about how much they miss Mailman. I'm not
shitting you. Last Christmas I was at an Amazon party, some party I have no
idea how I got invited to, filled with business people, all of them much
prettier and more charming than me and the folks I work with here in the
Furnace, the Boiler Room of Amazon. Four young women found out I was in
Customer Service, cornered me, and talked for fifteen minutes about how much
they missed Mailman and Emacs, and how Arizona (the JSP replacement we'd spent
years developing) still just wasn't doing it for them."_

[http://tess.oconnor.cx/2006/03/quality-without-a-
name](http://tess.oconnor.cx/2006/03/quality-without-a-name)

~~~
spinchange
I didn't say it was impossible, just maybe not entirely _practical_ (due to
time or inclination, etc)

------
desireco42
For all those who are coming from Vim and experience FOMO... I learned Emacs,
it is fantastic editor. Org mode, it is nice, I tried to use it several times,
it is a little bit overengineered, but very smart. I wasn't as awestruck with
it.

I find whole Emacs ecosystem slow. After I type, things are slowly happening
one, by one. Org Mode, especially coming from Vim is not that impressive, I do
respect history of it.

------
hyperhopper
My big question with org mode is how to really handle todos. Should I always
capture tasks into one big file? When I finish them, do I just leave them for
this file to grow forever with more tasks being done and having to hunt for
the todos in the file unless I use agenda view?

~~~
juki
You can always put different tasks to different files (per project for
example).

There no need to hunt for todos; use `C-c \\` (or `C-c /` for more options) to
create a sparse tree. It supports the same queries as agenda tag searches. For
example, `/!` to show all unfinished tasks, or `/TODO` for just the ones with
TODO as the keyword.

You can also use the timeline view with a prefix argument to see tasks in the
current file (`C-u C-c a L`). Or you can restrict other agenda views to the
current buffer (`C-c a < t` for a task list). Custom agenda commands can also
specify their own set of agenda files (they can also be chosen by a function
whenever the agenda view is created).

------
alanning
Wow, I didn't know org mode did sequence diagrams. That is going to be really
useful to document our code.

Will be great to be able to check in the source for sequence diagrams since
the online services I've found for making them are hard to work with as a
team.

~~~
codemac
Think of Org-mode as more of a multi-language ipython notebook, where anything
(plantuml, ditaa, python, etc) can be used, along with a data interchange
format (org-mode vars + tables).

It can literally "do" any tool you use that has a cli interface.

------
type0
It amazes me how powerful org-mode is. I saw that Hugo has started supporting
org-mode, together with Caddy server and couple of extensions one could create
awesome web based knowledge-base, all with a minimal stack.

------
nodivbyzero
Bandwidth Restricted The page you have tried to access is not available
because the owner of the file you are trying to access has exceeded our short
term bandwidth limits. Please try again shortly.

------
partycoder
Looks great but I personally prefer to take notes with jupyter notebook.

For TODO lists I prefer Asana, since it will send you e-mails/push
notifications, and has a website + mobile app.

~~~
base698
Can jupyter do tables and diagrams followed by code snippets in multiple
languages?

~~~
Y_Y
Yes. You can use cell magic to change the language for each cell and you can
display HTML/latex output inline or just mix computations in with markdown.
The only problem is that the editor is just a text box with annoying bracket
matching instead of Emacs.

~~~
Steeeve
I really _want_ to like Jupyter. But taking notes or working through things in
a textbox element just doesn't cut it.

If I could build my notebooks in emacs...

But then org mode has most of the same functionality.

~~~
peatmoss
My biggest Jupyter complaint is that, at least by default, produces files that
are pretty hard to revision meaningfully in git.

~~~
Y_Y
The jupyter team are aware of, but not currently fixing, this issue. I use the
excellently simple nbstripout as git hook and it silently removes everything
but code.

------
andrewdon
exceeded bandwidth limit. how much traffic you think getting on hn's frontpage
might bring in?

------
braveoyster
oh, bandwidth restricted

------
snakeanus
A bit unrelated but in the last update of org-mode when trying to use the
listings latex package it starts inserting a \ before the { in \lstset {, is
there any way to fix this?

