> <i>Org-Mode Makes Sense Outside of Emacs</i><p>... goes on to name one tool (pandoc) that parses Org-Mode (and also parses Markdown. I would in fact guess pandoc is used much more often for the latter than the former).<p>> <i>Org-Mode Has Excellent Tool Support</i><p>> <i>this is not an article about Emacs</i><p>... goes on to describe the "tool support" in Emacs. Sorry, but the paragraph title here really implies we're going to be talking about a <i>range</i> of tools, not just Emacs.<p>And then to conclude:<p>> <i>With this blog article I wanted to point out the usefulness of Org-mode even when you are not using Emacs as an writing tool.</i><p>Can anyone point me to where exactly in the article the author has done this?<p>Org-Mode is great if you use Emacs. Try installing the Org-Mode addon in your non-Emacs IDE of choice, and you'll hit the same "partially implemented/not-yet-supported/etc." issues you would using an obscure markdown parser. In this regard, Markdown is much more "standardised" than Org-Mode—a standard exists for both, but the level of adherance to that standard in terms of the total number of parsers out there is undoubtedly higher for Markdown.
>org-mode is standardized<p>Last I looked into it (mainly with interest for vim), few if any parsers/tooling exist for it outside of emacs; as I recall, people claimed that it apparently has sufficient (undocumented/poorly specified) quirks in the emacs implementation that 100% reproduction is difficult; similar to implementing vim-mode for editor plugins<p>In which case, its only as standardized as the one implementation; which is exactly how standardized markdown started with (the perl implementation)
The authors argument that Markdown should be discarded because there are several competing implementations isn't valid.<p>For many years (even now), we have several competing implementations of HTML, yet the HTML document is the dominant presentational document format (and UI layout language). It hasn't done anything to hurt adoption.<p>The fact that Markdown does have a common subset of features, and that Markdown is widely interoperable with a vast amount of products is why it wins. As far as I can tell Org-Mode markup is used within Emacs and really nowhere else.
After considering two or three dozens of different "lightweight" markup languages (i.e. not flavors) and designing a few (plus at least three failed attempts to improve Markdown), I'm now almost convinced that Scribble [1] or Perl POD [2] have one of the best possible designs. Not that they are optimal, but they are definitely heading at the correct direction.<p>They are extremely generic: every Scribble syntax is prefixed `@`, every POD construct is either `letter<...>` or `=word`. And yet they are surprisingly unobstructive and readable enough. Compare with BBCode, which is also pretty generic but too annoying.<p>They are readily extensible and need no special one-off syntaxes for most things. Yes, using asterisks or underscores for emphasis is handy, but how about strike-throughs? Underlines? Non-emphasis italics (e.g. species name)? Language tags? Abbreviations? Do they nest? Do they work in any context? Why not adding some harmless options to the existing constructs? Syntax extensibility should be one of the foremost concerns of markup language design and they got it right.<p>Edit: I should stress that these concerns are only valid for writings. For casual comments, less is better (ideally no-follow links and verbatim texts should suffice).<p>[1] <a href="https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html" rel="nofollow">https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html</a>
If you haven't seen it yet, check out Markdeep: <a href="http://casual-effects.com/markdeep/" rel="nofollow">http://casual-effects.com/markdeep/</a>.<p>Write in any text editor, and a tiny JS boilerplate turns it into nicely-rendered HTML.
As much as it pains me, org-mode is no better than Markdown when it comes to standards or implementations. There's basically just one de facto implementation of it, and it has no specification or standard. There are parsers out there, but all of them are lacking one or more of the parts that make org-mode so great. Markdown shines with its simplicity, org-mode shines with its extensibility. Want to use it like a Jupyter Notebook? No problem. Want to use it as a spreadsheet? No problem. Want to write academic papers and export it to LaTeX? No problem. Want to use it outside of Emacs? Well...<p>I've been looking for and at solutions for using org-mode as the markup language for a static site generator, and none of the ones I find do what I want. org-mode has a builtin exporter that can build whole websites, but it is very barebones. The only real solution I know of is Hakyll with Pandoc, which is what I'm playing with right now.<p>I wish we had something like CommonMark for org-mode, but the overlap of people who use org-mode and don't use Emacs is probably extremely small, so it's not like there will be competing implementations outside of Emacs.
The day org-mode will reach the masses is when the tutorials about it do not even mention the word <i>emacs</i>. Until then, it will inevitably be seen as a thing useful only for emacs users.
Last I checked, and admittedly it's been a while, parsing full org-mode syntax outside Emacs itself is a nightmare. It's essentially cloning whatever version of org-mode you have in mind.<p>Not that org-mode's any less for it. I'm no longer a daily user, but I was, for quite some time, to organization a particularly chaotic episode of my work life.
I really, really, really like org-mode. I've used it for more than a decade. I've written self-published books with it. I use it for capturing ideas. For writing Reveal presentation slides. My database of links. I use it as a lightweight kanban board for personal projects. I use it for generating technical documentation mixing graphs, code, and prose.<p>But most of that isn't possible without Emacs.<p>As a markup format I wish it was more widely used. The promise of org-mode is that <i>text</i> is the best format for storing your data in. However to properly read more than the surface markup language of org-mode requires a significant amount of software. And very few editors or software packages exist outside of emacs work with it.<p>And so lacking any other features of org-mode it's markup language isn't any more impressive or useful than any other and is more of a matter of preference. It would be nice if more software packages supported the org-mode markup syntax but I wouldn't say it's the most "reasonable," even given the arguments in this article.
Org mode is simply awesome and the only reason I open emacs these days. I still haven't managed to find a software, free or paid, which has the same amount of flexibility.
Might be time to plug my very orgmode-esque Vim plugin: <a href="https://github.com/nfd/disorganiser" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/nfd/disorganiser</a><p>I recently came to the same conclusion as the article but was dismayed by the performance of the popular Vim plugin (and wasn't ready to switch to emacs), so I wrote a very, very minimal implementation which is enough to get me headings, folding, tables (including formula solving, the syntax for which is currently left as an exercise for the reader), unordered lists, dates, and various other things.<p>It's very much a work in progress (in particular, the syntax files expect a graphical Vim) but it's definitely improved my note-taking. Requires Python 3 support.
While reading the thing I could not help but feel like what I'd call "sensible markdown" is both very close and bijective to org syntax. The trouble comes when I need to define what is "sensible markdown" which is a thing I never attempted to do, but pragmatically works very well. It seems like it's CommonMark + GFM (for tables, checklists, and syntax-aware fenced code blocks mostly) + MarkdownLint[0], the latter enforcing stringent rules that makes Markdown very consistent and portable as well as prune the nonsensical stuff (like double space before newline or underline headings). It's fantastic to use with VScode[1] or vim-ale.<p>Some pet peeves:<p>I really don't ever get the argument about Markdown URLS. Being able to do both [](url) vs [][ref] is awesome (the latter I liberally use when writing long form docs). If one finds it so annoying one would make the mistake like three times and then it'd be burned into one's brain due to selective pressure. Or just use [][ref] style (which is more readable anyway since you don't have the URL right in the middle of a sentence).<p>Also, very personal thing but my brain seems to hate /italics/ as it branch predicts into parsing that as a regex.<p>What drives me nuts though is all the variants and ad hoc syntaxes like JIRA's or this very board's, which sit right in the uncanny valley of nonsense.<p>[0]: <a href="https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/DavidAnson/vscode-markdownlint" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/DavidAnson/vscode-markdownlint</a>
AsciiDoc! As nice as org-mode syntax, but with "=" instead of "*". Also, has code blocks so copy&paste is nicer. Also, has one giant document explaining everything.
I use org-mode often. It's a very intuitive way of structuring notes because most things are hierarchical in nature and lend themselves well to infinitely nested lists. It really pairs well with The LISP Way™️.<p>I use it to make flashcards (csv format for Anki) out of my notes. The front side is the hierarchy of a headline to its parents, and the back is the text below the headline.<p>e.g.,<p><pre><code> * Python3
** I/O
*** modes
- 'r' open for reading (default)
- 'w' open for writing, truncating the file first
- 'x' open for exclusive creation, failing if the file already exists
- 'a' open for writing, appending to the end of the file if it exists
- 'b' binary mode
- 't' text mode (default)
- '+' open a disk file for updating (reading and writing)
</code></pre>
...makes a flashcard like:<p><pre><code> -------------- --------------
| Python3 | - 'r' ... |
| :: IO | . |
| :: modes | . |
| | . |
-------------- --------------
</code></pre>
source for undocumented spaghetti code: <a href="https://github.com/hackharmony/org-to-anki-csv/blob/master/org-to-anki.el" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/hackharmony/org-to-anki-csv/blob/master/o...</a><p>However I would say that there are much better markup languages out there. (Or better yet, don't use a markup language at all and use richer formats. We're not in the PDP11 era anymore.) It's good if you need version control though.
It does look nice, and I'd be more than happy to put some effort and use Org-Mode, instead of Markdown, if only
- There was a standardized release outside emacs which would consistently provide the same results.
- There was an easy way to render documents (like the Perl script markdown has)
- There was serious support for plugins for my editor for easy rendering to pdf/html/whatever.
The author claims, several times, that "many" people use org-mode outside of emacs.<p>I am skeptical of that.<p>The whole point of an abbreviated mark-up is to RENDER that mark-up into something else. The "many" people who use org-mode outside of emacs are just a subset of pandoc commandline users (and perhaps some other tool which I am not even aware of). I guess it depends on what one considers to be "many"?
I can't help but think this is a bit more of an apples-to-oranges comparison than it's being treated as in this post. Org's introduction (chapter 1.1 of its manual) begins,<p>* Org is a mode for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, and project planning with a fast and effective plain-text markup language. It also is an authoring system with unique support for literate programming and reproducible research.*<p>Whereas the introduction to Markdown from its original author begins simply,<p><i>Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers.</i><p>These are both lightweight markup languages, sure, but they're designed for different domains. What makes Org-mode interesting isn't ultimately its markup language; look at all the comments here talking about tasks and tags and such. What makes it interesting is its <i>implementation.</i> Markdown, conversely, was explicitly intended as an HTML preprocessor. You can do anything in Markdown that you can do in HTML for the simple reason that if you can't do it in Markdown, you can literally use HTML. That's not what Org-mode is for.<p>I think the thesis of this article is basically "Org-mode's specific choices with respect to markup syntax are better than Markdown's." And, well, fine; I'm not entirely sure I agree, but I'm not sure it really matters. What does matter to me is that Markdown (a) works very well for what I want in practice and (b) works everywhere I want it to. If I was one of the folks who lived in Emacs, the chances are Org-mode would handily hit both of those points for me. But I'm not. And as lucideer noted in his comment, just because it's possible to use (a subset of) Org-mode's markup outside Emacs doesn't mean it offers any particular advantage over, well, Markdown.
Once I played with tables in org-mode, I never turned back to markdown. I am not sure if there is another markup tool which looks at tables as good org-mode does.
> Org-Mode Is Standardized<p>Let's be totally clear about this: If Org-Mode were actually popular, it too would have twelve variants. It is not popular.
> consistent, intuitive, standard<p>about that, just found some random online editor and entered this:<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/Mcyi3kS.png" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/Mcyi3kS.png</a><p>not what I'd call intuitive. maybe is that particular editor implementation? but then I'd have an issue with the other half of the post, where he talks down markdown dialects.
The article title is missing a footnote:<p>"Only if you use EMacs, as Org-Mode is impossible to implement outside of EMacs".<p>Source: tried once as someone who never used org-mode or emacs. Did not go well.
I like Wikitext[1] which is Mediawiki's markup. Mediawiki is the software that runs Wikipedia. I have a personal Mediawiki that I use for taking notes and it works a lot better than org-mode in that it is easy to make tables, nicely formatted outlines , hypertext, etc. Chrome has a plugin that lets you edit textboxes in emacs too so you can use a real text editor instead of just chrome textboxes.<p>[1] <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples" rel="nofollow">https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples</a>
Org-mode syntax is no better than that of AsciiDoc, or arguably Markdown.<p>But I can assign keywords and unique id to sections, include sections from another file, generate indexes and sitemaps in fully customizable manners, incorporate other programming environments. What markup languages can do that?<p>Org-Mode syntax is an interface to a powerful writing/authoring environment. To dismiss it as a `markup language' is not a good way to advocate its adoption. Something similar can be said to ways people appreciate the power of Emacs.
What we need is more time machines so we can go back in the past and make even more future choices. Because just splitting amongst the choices we have is so .. limiting.<p>I do kind of wish we only had one markdown flavour. Maybe why we only have one org mode is because of its lack of ubiquitousness? If it had an electron windows version would it be the same?<p>The commensurate note is, everything here (Bar one) says it's a stalking horse for Emacs
Maybe I'm just old but I miss the old MoinMoin syntax. A lot of markups are so complicated (mediawiki) I'd rather just write HTML.<p>For my personal notes I now just use vim and a custom syntax file to give color to special names and headings. I've used markdown before but it seemed like different tools treated the language slightly different.
Unconvincing. Markdown surely has way better tool support.<p>The lack of standardisation is probably the best argument, but I suspect that is mostly not a problem for Org mode simply because barely anyone uses it. If it were as popular as Markdown you'd find plenty of non-standard extensions and slightly different implementations.
Having written my dissertation in markdown, and having not tried org-mode, I'm intrigued. The thing about multiple markdown implementations is a bit of a red herring. The subtly different problem with markdown is not multiple implementations, but a syntax with too many alternative ways of doing the same thing. Section headers, tables, raw HTML, raw LaTeX -- it's kind of a mess. Multiple flavors make this worse by supporting subtly different variants of the alternative syntaxes, but the core of the problem is that the original specification was "whatever this perl script does," and that leads to weird corner cases.<p>The appealing case for org-mode is consistent syntax. At least that's what it looks like from a distance. Like I said, I haven't tried it.
Makes me think of a comment I posted not too long ago (and it's responses) : <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474623" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19474623</a><p>Reasonable for text...for most text that's skeuomorphic with regards to the printed word (in most senses). But... what is there for that which is beyond? A response to the linked comment mentions TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Anything else? Is it too vast a problem in that we should make due with solutions that cover 90% of use-cases? Ah, but does that limit potential future development as people mold themselves to the constraints placed on them by the tools and what those tools allow?<p>Just thinking out loud, per usual.
It fills most of the same niches as a tool which is currently extremely widely used (Markdown) without having any major benefits over it. Probably the single biggest improvement I see is the link syntax which I find bothersome in Markdown for the reasons the author suggests (parens first or brackets first). Aside from that, tooling for Markdown is massively better with dozens of tools supporting Markdown parsing and authoring. Yes there are a lot of sub-versions of Markdown, but if you know the basic markdown features you can use any of them.
Such free-style formats are easy and addictive, but you eventually hit some well-hidden sharp corners. For example I missed some deadlines without any warning from emacs nor any indication with syntax higlighting when I had:<p><pre><code> * TODO stuff
text <- no text should be here!!
DEADLINE: <date>
</code></pre>
Not to mention I am vim user and ANY vim compatibility layer for emacs eventually goes infuriatingly against my muscle memory.
I sometimes think that Org-mode suffers in the same way that SGML lost to HTML, SOAP lost to XML-RPC, Atom lost to RSS, XML lost to JSON, and so on. What some people see as the over-simplicity of Markdown is exactly what leads to it being implemented "everywhere." The simpler format often ends up being more widely used precisely <i>because</i> of its simplicity, not despite it.
Another one that doesn't respect line breaks<p>What is the reason why all those lightweight markup languages don't preserve plain text line breaks by default without special formatting?<p>It would be much easier to use if they did, if I hit enter in plain text it's for a reason<p>I like BBCode, and that one preserves your line breaks too
Org mode is great, at work I use it since half a year to keep myself organized. For instance when I'm debugging something, I can keep notes and clues or the sometimes not avoidable request that just won't fit into the issue tracker.
Previously in <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321850" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15321850</a>
This looks very similar to markdown. I wonder how org-mode distinguishes itself.<p>> Org-Mode is Standardized<p>> the very widely used markup language named Markdown has many flavors to choose from<p>I believe the XKCD about standards applies here.[0]<p>The problem with Markdown is only real if you treat Markdown as a single language instead of a family of languages. You don't need to support multiple Markdown compilers. Just pick a particular flavor of Markdown to support for your project. I usually go with GitHub's.<p>Besides, having a standard doesn't stop others from adding unofficial features on top of that standard. If this happens to take off, maybe I'll be using GitHub Flavored Org-Mode in the future.<p>[0] <a href="https://xkcd.com/927/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/927/</a>
I'm surprised how many people use org-mode.<p>At least on Hacker News... a Lot of the Polar users mention org-mode as one of the other tools they're using.
I've always wanted to learn org-mode and emacs.<p>Can anybody recommend a good tutorial?<p>Also, should I learn pure emacs or go the spacemacs route? My background is in vim.
> Org-Mode Is Standardized<p>(until it isn't)<p>I'm assuming all of the variations of Markdown that were created were created without knowledge of the original Markdown creator.<p>Is the OP going to monitor all open source projects and block people from creating an improvement of Org-Mode
<p><pre><code> : Simple pre-formatted text such as for source code.
: This also respects the line breaks. *bold* is not bold here.
</code></pre>
The trouble with that is you cannot easily copy/paste code to/from it, because you'll need to manually add/subtract the : prefix. Delineating the section with:<p><pre><code> ```
Simple pre-formatted text such as for source code.
This also respects the line breaks. *bold* is not bold here.
```
</code></pre>
is much more practical.
I refuse to use a plain text editor for my personal notes. Bold, italic, underline, text highlighting... these are all things that help me organize text and draw my attention to certain areas. Asterisks simply don't do the same job, visually.