
The Many Uses of Org Mode - tarboreus
https://robots.thoughtbot.com/the-many-uses-of-org-mode
======
cup-of-tea
Org-mode was invaluable while I was writing my PhD thesis. I had long
structured lists full of checkboxes and progress indicators showing everything
I still needed to do. To add to the list I used org capture which is great for
not breaking flow. Often while writing I'd think "ooh how did I refer to this
in chapter 2?", capture that as a todo and carry on working.

I also struggled with procrastination during my PhD so I use org-mode to
implement the pomodoro method to great success. My notes actually document
exactly what times I worked on each point.

I've used it to document figures for publishing papers. The org file explains
how each figure is made and reproduces the figures and intermediate data when
executed. I freely mix programming languages.

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hprotagonist
Most of my work focuses on scientific computing of one form or another.

Org-mode is the digital lab notebook that I have needed forever. I have a
private repo with one folder per general project and one or more org files
inside. I mostly treat them as append-only FILO pipes.

PI wants a progress report? Export the relevant headings to a PDF and email
it.

I want some literate-programming style "work in progress"? Easy, you can even
hook jupyter in, and dump plots out simply. Export it to a PDF if you want, or
make it a blog post with some nice HTML styling.

Project documentation? easy.

Paper drafts? Yup.

It's _wonderful_.

~~~
alexozer
That does sound nice, but I'm a bit confused about using it for _project
documentation_. Are any of these open-source? Although org is plaintext and
thus technically cross-editor compatible, it's meant to be edited in Emacs, so
would contributors just need to use Emacs?

~~~
eadmund
> would contributors just need to use Emacs?

As you note, org-mode text is just special plaintext, no different from
Markdown (other than being rather more powerful).

And of course folks should _want_ to use emacs, or a similarly-powerful editor
in which it's possible to build something like org-mode. Why use worse tools
when better ones are equally available?

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melling
Github will display org files. You can have a README.org

[https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes](https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes)

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lainga
That's only two uses, OP! There's also tables, flowcharts
([https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-dot-
diagrams.html](https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-dot-diagrams.html)),
Gantt charts, and HTML publishing!

~~~
tronbabylove
And literate programming with org-babel!
([http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-
devops.htm...](http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-devops.html))

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dgellow
Org-mode is really fantastic when I work on a project alone, but I always
failed to use it when collaborating with others without finding myself with a
huge amount of duplication with JIRA, Trello, or whatever collaborating tool
is being used.

Not sure how that could be improved without adding a lot of complexity :(

~~~
zeveb
> I always failed to use it when collaborating with others without finding
> myself with a huge amount of duplication with JIRA, Trello, or whatever
> collaborating tool is being used.

You could always try to convince everyone else to use org within a git repo.
I'm serious: a decentralised VC system with structured text files is basically
the centralised-project-tool killer.

And it's free. And it means everyone using emacs!

~~~
dgellow
You say that you’re serious, but your comment sounds like a joke, so I’m a bit
confused :)

So, in case you were serious: there are good reasons to use more visual and
collaborative tools in a team, one is that people won’t learn emacs just to be
able to work with others and I personally don’t really care what editors my
coworkers use, another reason is that non-engineers are also part of the team,
and another one is that JIRA/Trello/etc support integration in others tools
(GitHub, Slack, etc.).

~~~
zeveb
I was serious about using a decentralised version-control system & structured
text files.

I was semi-serious, semi-joking about how wonderful it'd be for everyone on a
team to use emacs. It really is the best editor in existence, and it really is
usable by anyone, not just developers. And it integrates with git[0],
GitHub[1], Slack[2] &c. too!

[0] [https://magit.vc/](https://magit.vc/)

[1]
[https://github.com/vermiculus/magithub](https://github.com/vermiculus/magithub)

[2] [https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack](https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-
slack)

~~~
dgellow
Hahaha, the Slack support in emacs is really fun to see! I will give it a try,
thank you for sharing :)

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dahart
I like to use org mode for cleaning up my hard drives... a little script to
pipe du into something that sums the files in a directory and adds asterisks,
and viola, you have a UI for finding all the large and delete-able files &
directories.

I haven't used org mode for all the other cool things it can do, but I
remember watching a great video about someone who uses it a lot like a Jupyter
notebook.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-dUkyn_fZA&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-dUkyn_fZA&feature=youtu.be)

~~~
bespoke_engnr

           dp
           dp
           ||
          _||_
         ' || `      ~/
         ) || (     //
         _)::(_    //
         ) || (   //
        (  \/  ) //
         `-..-' /'

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JoshMnem
Capture templates are one of the most useful features.

[https://orgmode.org/manual/Capture-
templates.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/Capture-templates.html)

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gkya
Org mode is my goto tool for:

\- taking any sorts of notes

\- agenda stuff

\- word processing (through export to latex)

\- todo lists, long-term shopping lists

\- literate programming (my .emacs is in org mode, also many scripts in my
notes)

\- bookmarking (I have links to gnus threads to look at later, links to
related documents in agenda entries or notes, links to servers I ssh into,
links to some commands I run often, etc..)

and probably other things I don't remember ATM. Incredibly useful tool.

------
senatorobama
Is there an equivalent for vim?

~~~
eadmund
spacemacs _grin_

More seriously, there're [https://github.com/jceb/vim-
orgmode](https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode) &
[https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer](https://github.com/hsitz/VimOrganizer)
— but even more seriously, take a look at emacs + evil-mode (which make emacs
a vim-clone, but an _easily- & pleasantly-extensible_ vim-clone).

