Tim Makarios <emacspeak.correspondence(a)freespoken.nz> writes: > > Also, I have no experience writing org files, but orgmode.org looks > interesting (similar to MarkDown, but more powerful?), so learning that > might get added to my Emacs-learning curve at some point! > Highly recommend getting to know org mode. It is a lot more than just another markdown format. It composes many great Emacs features into a powerful mode which is great for organising 'stuff'. In addition to being able to export the contents in multiple formats (PDF, HTML, Markdown, Texinfo, odf, etc) it also includes - powerful TODO management - Emacs outline mode (like folding, making navigation and display of sections easy) - Support for editing and formatting tables of data, including tables with 'spreadsheet' like functionality (formulas, cell references etc). - Babel and noweb, which allows you to embed blocks of source code in your org files that you can execute or 'tangle' to generate source files (i.e. literate programming support). Can create 'dynamic' files which are updated based on new internal or external data. - Powerful data capture system with flexible capture templates - Integration with various graph, diagram, plotting programs. Can generate diagrams, graphs and plot data using tools like gnuplot, graphviz, ditta, plantuml. Great for generating diagrams from a text based description. There are also many packages which build on org mode to provide more targeted functionality, such as contact management, blog feed management, accounting and invoicing, bibliographical database, etc. After learning basic Emacs, I think org mode is one of the most beneficial next modes to learn. For blind and vision impaired, it is fantastic because everything is just managed as text, which makes it very accessible. I find it really great when experimenting and working with small projects as I can have a single file which contains detailed description and notes as well as the specific configuration values. Great when I need to revisit some configuration setting and cannot remember why I set it to some value or how I found out how to set it etc. With the hit of a couple of keys, I can export the contents to well formatted PDF or HTML and with the hit of another key, generate a new or updated configuration file. Even better, because it is all text, I can keep it in a git repository, so now I have version tracking as well. The biggest danger with org mode is that it is so powerful and flexible, new users tend to get carried away and over engineer their workflows. Like many things in Emacs, best to start with the defaults, use them for a while and only after your comfortable with how it all works, start looking to see how you can refine things to better suit your requirements. -- Tim Cross
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