Bastien Guerry

Computers and freedom

Notes from an Org-mode demonstration

Thanks to the MediaLab Prado and Adolfo Antón Bravo for inviting me to make a small demonstration of org-mode. Below are my notes FWIW.

GNU Emacs

There use to be an editor war between Emacs and Vi(m).

This is now history, Emacs won thanks to org-mode.

Org-mode: key ideas

  • You need a single tool for both notes and tasks.
  • Your TODO list application should not be too rigid. Ideally, it is a pedagogical tool, one that helps to be slightly better organized.
  • org-mode is both a format a la markdown and a set of tools around this format.

Org-mode history

  • 2003 : Carsten Dominik starts writing org-mode as a usable outline-mode
  • 2011 : Bastien becomes org-mode the maintainer
  • 2014 : Nicolas Goaziou becomes the main developer

In the future:

  • More closely integrate with Emacs ?
  • More parsers and exporters outside Emacs ?

Notes on org-mode development

  • We don’t have a roadmap: user driven development.
  • We don’t have a bug tracker: see the KonMari methodology: discard beforing storing.
  • We don’t have a business model.
  • We DO have a strong culture of being nice to newcomers.
  • We DO have a strong culture of not breaking things.
  • We started Worg as a git-based community-driven documentation.
  • We plan to write our documentation in .org \o/

Org-mode as structured text editing

  • Headlines
  • Tags
  • TODO keywords
  • Properties
  • Lists
  • Tables

Org-mode as a spreadsheet

Let’s build a table!

| A       | Poetry |
|---------+--------|
| Nick    |     10 |
| Bastien |     12 |
| Élodie  |     14 |
|---------+--------|
|         |     12 |
#+TBLFM: @5$2=vmean(@2..@-1)

M-x org-table-import RET ~/test.csv

| A | B | C |
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | 5 | 6 |

Org-mode exporter

M-x org-export-dispatch RET

Org-mode for literate programming

Here are some explanations about a-function. Then here is the function:

(defun a-function ()
  (interactive)
  (message "Hello!"))
a-function

Now, pressing C-c C-v t I will "tangle" these chunks of code in a single file.

Org-mode as a TODO list manager

M-x org-todo RET

Org "agenda" views

M-x org-agenda RET

Capturing items

M-x org-capture RET

Conclusion

  • Come and play!

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