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Emacs Org-mode

Org Mode - a system for note-taking and project planning

Section titled “Org Mode - a system for note-taking and project planning”

Source: Emacs Org-mode - a system for note-taking and project planning with speaker: Carsten Dominik, creator of org mode. Including notes from org mode is awesome - YouTube, Org-mode manual

Use cases

Section titled “Use cases”
  • Take notes
    • Outline documents
  • Tasks, planning
    • To do list manager
    • Day planner (org-agenda)
    • Getting Things Done (GTD)
      • to do states, tags, contexts and agendas
  • Time planning and accounting
  • Small database (properties, metadata)
  • Construct documents and websites
  • Making drafts
  • Swiss army knife

Why Org Mode?

Section titled “Why Org Mode?”
  • Everything is text based
  • Note based project planning
  • GTD starts with projects, then tasks instead of just starting with tasks
    • Task come from projects. Use same tool for notes and planning
  • Supports links, spreadsheets, export to different formats
  • Easily use and embed latex - good for university

Principles:

  • Simple core
  • Not impose complexity

  1. Why not Org mode?

    • You will likely continue to customize and change it to your own needs
    • Not for masses and was intended for Emacs users

Features

Section titled “Features”
  • Use outlines
  • Tab to cycle view
  • Promote and demote headings easily
  • Ordered and unordered lists

Meta Data

Section titled “Meta Data”
  • Inheritance: org documents can have tags/properties, can be inherited by children
    • Search tags with org-agenda with m “Match TAGS/PROP/TODO option, then type tag you want to search on
  • Accumulation: certain properties can be summed up (numbers, times, status flags)
  • Support for
    • One key per tags
    • Completion (tags)
    • Clocking and timesheet system
    • Templates: to do lists, journal entries, links to context
    • Links to websites, org documents in specific places and headings, citations, emails, attachments, etc.

Configuration

Section titled “Configuration”

Add your org files using org-agenda-files variable or configuration in your personal settings

;; Add my pcode org files so org agenda can find them
(custom-set-variables
 '(org-directory "~/myorgfiles")
 '(org-agenda-files (list org-directory)))

Remember

Section titled “Remember”
  • Remember
    • Quickly remember an item without disrupting your workflow with Remember: M-x remember
    • Recall notes with M-x remember-notes

Collect and Display

Section titled “Collect and Display”
  • Tasks can be collected in special list, use queries
  • Sparse tree - for single file, find stuff in outline structure
  • Agenda view - parse outline nodes into a flat list

Exporting and Publishing

Section titled “Exporting and Publishing”
  • Export to HTML, PDF, LaTeX, Markdown, ASCII, iCal
    • Example: LaTeX equations
  • Sets of documents can be linked to a publishing project

Interfaces

Section titled “Interfaces”
  • Date time
  • Columns: Activate Org mode Columnar view: C-c C-x C-c and quit use org-columns-quit

  1. Tables

    | Name    |        Phone | Room        |
    |---------+--------------+-------------|
    | Peter   |       463733 | 32          |
    | John    | 323-323-4242 | Upstairs 62 |
    | Sabrina |      Unknown | Flr 1 242   |
    |         |              |             |
    • Press tab to start editing
    • Create header line with |---- then press tab

    1. Calculator

      • Interface with emacs calculator and tables to do math
      | Student  | Maths | Physics | Mean |
      |----------+-------+---------+------|
      | Bertrand |    13 |      09 |   11 |
      | Henri    |    15 |      14 | 14.5 |
      | Arnold   |    17 |      13 |   15 |
      |----------+-------+---------+------|
      | Means    |    15 |      12 |      |
      #+TBLFM: $4=vmean($2..$3)::@5$2=vmean(@2$2..@4$2)::@5$3=vmean(@2$3..@4$3)
      • Mean is a column formula, access it using: C-c =
      • Mean row is a row and cell formula

    2. Radio Tables

      • Org mode manual entry: Radio Tables

      • Embed an org-mode table in any file (e.g. Markdown, C, Javascript)

      • The key to finding the target location is the magic words ‘BEGIN/END RECEIVE ORGTBL’. They have to appear as comments in the current mode. Example insert into a C file:

      // At the location of source, Org needs a special line to direct Orgtbl to translate and to find the target for inserting the translated table. For example:
      

      #+ORGTBL: SEND table_name translation_function arguments ...
      

      /* BEGIN RECEIVE ORGTBL table_name */
      /* END RECEIVE ORGTBL table_name */

Timer

Section titled “Timer”
  • Set timer org-timer-set-timer

Context Sensitive Keys

Section titled “Context Sensitive Keys”

  • Meta + cursor: Structure editing, table structure editing

  • Look and update: C-c C-c

  • Tab: Headline visibility, motion and table evaluation, LaTeX template expansion

  • All printing characters: automatic overwrite mode in tables

  • For radio tables, org table mode is a context sensitive minor mode

Literate Programming

Section titled “Literate Programming”
  • Write programs and output results to org file (weave) or save to file (tangle)
  • Can also work with compiled languages by combining tangle with shell command to compile and run source code file

In Linux shell

#+begin_src sh :results output
  echo PID: "$$"
  uname -a
,end_src

See Also

Section titled “See Also”