Org
Org is an Emacs mode for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, project planning, outlining, and authoring with a fast and effective plain-text system. Org Mode is simple enough to start using right away, but provides tons of advanced features to support a wide variety of tasks and workflows.
| Description | GTD and document authoring package/markup language |
|---|---|
| Author | Carsten Dominik |
| Maintainer | Bastien Guerry |
| Source | http://orgmode.org/w/org-mode.git |
| Part of Emacs | yes (likely be out of date) |
Org-Mode is distributed with Emacs (since Emacs 22.2). This project is under active development and new releases are often available.
Features
- Simple plain text markup for hierarchical documents.
- Built-in table editor: easily format tables and work with spreadsheets in plain text.
- Extensible hyperlinking: create cross-references, link to external resources, and more.
- Capture system: create templates to quickly capture and file notes and tasks.
- Sequences of TODO-style keywords for task progress tracking.
- Tags, priorities and properties to categorize, sort, filter, and search.
- Custom project views using Org's Agenda.
- Convenient date/time handling for timestamps, deadlines, and scheduling.
- Clock support to track time spent on projects.
- Export from plain-text to a variety of formats (HTML, LaTeX, DocBook, etc).
- Embedded source blocks: edit code blocks in-line with the appropriate mode. Execute code blocks to generate content. Org can even be used for literate programming.
- Mobile support providing a subset of Org capabilities on iOS and Android devices.
External Links
The Org-Mode project maintains excellent documentation and has an active community.
Extensions
Org-ql: a query language for Org files
org-ql is a query language for Org files. It offers two syntax styles: Lisp-like sexps and search engine-like keywords.
Org-wiki
org-wiki allows to easily create links and browse them (helm integration).
Find files and headlines anywhere, anytime, by indexing them in a database
This is the approach taken by John Kitchin who handles thousands of org files: http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu/blog/2017/01/03/Find-stuff-in-org-mode-anywhere/
Admittedly its current approach is a bit tedious since one has to write sql queries, also there is not all the possible features yet, like an ignore pattern.
Search rapidly everywhere: helm-org-rifle
helm-org-rifle: It searches rapidly through my Org files, quickly bringing me the information I need to defeat the enemy.
This package is a continuation of the fantastic org-search-goto/org-search-goto-ml packages, now with Helm support. It searches both headings and contents of entries in Org buffers, and it displays entries that match all search terms, whether the terms appear in the heading, the contents, or both. Matching portions of entries’ contents are displayed with surrounding context and grouped by buffer to make it easy to acquire your target.
Generate an inline table of contents (toc) for github READMEs
That's possible with toc-org, available in melpa. We set an heading as :TOC: and then we can call M-x toc-org-insert-toc or make it update the toc at every file save.
Preview on save
org-preview (in MELPA) is an Emacs minor mode for org mode that automatically uses the built-in eww browser to preview the current org file. The preview is updated every time the org file is saved.
Retrieve a web page content and display it as org mode content
See org-web-tools (in MELPA, for Emacs 25.1 or later).
This file contains library functions and commands useful for retrieving web page content and processing it into Org-mode content.
For example, you can copy a URL to the clipboard or kill-ring, then run a command that downloads the page, isolates the “readable” content with eww-readable, converts it to Org-mode content with Pandoc, and displays it in an Org-mode buffer. Another command does all of that but inserts it as an Org entry instead of displaying it in a new buffer.
Org-sidebar, chronological list of scheduled and deadlined tasks
See org-sidebar. At the top is a chronological list of scheduled and deadlined tasks in the current buffer (similar to the Org agenda ,but without all its features), and below that is a list of all other non-done to-do items. If the buffer is narrowed, the sidebar only shows items in the narrowed portion; this allows seeing an overview of tasks in a subtree.
It relies on two packages not in Melpa.
Organice: use org-mode from a smartphone or browser
organice is "an implementation of Org mode without the dependency of Emacs - built for mobile and desktop browsers".
And indeed. Organice is a front-end application, which uses either Dropbox, Google Drive or WebDAV as back-end storage.
See also
Deft, to browse and edit directories of plain text notes
Deft, an Emacs mode for quickly browsing, filtering, and editing directories of plain text notes, inspired by Notational Velocity. It can be a way to leverage the process of taking notes in several org files.
Use Recoll, the desktop database from Emacs
See this blog post.
Outshine, to bring the look and feel of Org mode outside of the Org major mode
See outshine-mode.