Beginning to see the light with org-mode

Posted by jaslar
Nov 29, 2015 at 09:48 PM

I’m continuing to explore emacs org-mode. I learned four things today that might help or be of interest to others.

1. “M-x auto-fill-mode” is a toggle that turns on/off the addition of a hard return at the end of each line, set at a column you choose. But I learned that if you turn it off, then type “M-x visual-line-mode” (another toggle), emacs then behaves like most modern text editors: it wraps at the screen border. You can also turn this on in the menu (Options>Line wrapping in this buffer>Word wrap). This makes it much easier to cut and paste from and to it from other programs. It’s surprising to me how much easier this seems to make emacs to use.

2. There is a markdown export. Emacs exports are really good. http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/4279/exporting-from-org-mode-to-markdown
I haven’t worked out yet how to install it, but intend to.

3. There is a markdown MODE. http://jblevins.org/projects/markdown-mode/
Again, I haven’t installed it yet, but I’ve been thinking….

With Dropbox, org-mode on Windows and Linux, and Editorial on my iPad, this really does start to look like a cross-platform solution for writing.

What I find particularly appealing about emacs is the really extraordinary richness of commands. A example: move the cursor forward and back not only by line and paragraph, but by SENTENCE. Shouldn’t every editor have that?

4. emacs also has a taskpaper mode.
https://github.com/jedthehumanoid/taskpaper.el

Which again allows for cross-platform use, this time for task management.

As others have noted, the learning curve is relatively steep, but it appears that emacs really can do everything.