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0 pointswestoncb6y ago0 comments

Perfect—thanks!

Yeah, my current, main ideas txt file is something called "movies to watch.txt" —which does start with a list of movies, but then I added some random extended thoughts there temporarily and it has grown massively since.

So yep, I may be a good candidate for using OrgMode ;)

I tried out a demo of Notion (https://www.notion.so/) not long ago and was pretty impressed by their editor (similar concept to OrgMode, but wysiwyg, which I prefer if it's done well). It's actually really good (annoyingly you have to give an email address to try, and their other info. isn't nearly as informative as just trying it for a minute)—but I can't bring myself to use it because of the platform lock-in aspect. I want the data stored in a local file and that's it.

Edit: looking a little more though (was watching a video of table creation in OrgMode), I think the emphasis on editing plain text is going to be too off-putting for me: I do want a simple local file that multiple programs could work with, but the text editing required for OrgMode seems way too cumbersome unless you're already an emacs devotee—which I'm not (largely because I've had RSI issues, and rumor is emacs isn't the most ergonomic text input style).

0 comments

juki6y ago

> but the text editing required for OrgMode seems way too cumbersome

If you don't like key-chords then Emacs probably won't work for you, but just in case the video you watched wasn't clear about it, most of the markup is handled pretty much automatically by Emacs. Table creation and editing in particular works pretty much like in a graphical application. For example, if you want to create a table like

    | foo | bar | quux | qwerty |
    |-----+-----+------+--------|
    |  10 |  20 |   30 |     40 |
    |  50 |  60 |   70 |     80 |

All you need to do is insert the first row with the vertical bars to separate fields,

    |foo|bar|quux|qwerty

Then hit `C-c RET` and Emacs turns it into

    | foo | bar | quux | qwerty |
    |-----+-----+------+--------|
    |     |     |      |        |

with the cursor ready on the first cell under `foo`. Then you can just write the value and use tab to move to the next cell like in any spreadsheet program. Emacs will add new rows as needed and adjusts the table formatting automatically as you move to the next field (or when you hit `C-c C-c` if you don't want to move).

There are typical table editing commands available like moving, deleting and inserting columns or rows with [shift+]alt+arrows.

westoncbOP6y ago

Ah, thanks! That actually is better than what I inferred from the video.

mikekchar6y ago

Yeah, just to cheer you on, if you are using Emacs just for Org mode you really can just learn the Org mode commands and use the editor just like you would any other insert mode editor. If you want to do complex editing, then it helps to know Emacs.

However, Evil mode now works pretty amazingly right now if you like Vim. I use Emacs with Evil and Vim practically interchangeably. My biggest frustration is a bug (which is probably unfixable) with how undo doesn't always correspond with a vi command. There are some details with how buffers are specified, etc, but you can customise it to get close.

Spacemacs is a pre-setup Vim setup for Emacs using Evil mode which is highly recommended, though I haven't used it (I like minimal setups). I don't know if anyone has ever setup edit-mode key bindings for Org mode, but I just use the Emacs ones (I was originally an Emacs user before switching to Vim... and then back to Emacs :-P )

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