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Beginning to see the light with org-mode

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Posted by zoe
Dec 8, 2015 at 02:38 PM

 

Yes, but doesn’t it feel better to do all your CRIMPing within one program?! ;-)

One addition I have made to my setup is Helm/Helm Swoop, which is an autocomplete system for Emacs. Helm is great because it allows for a kind of Notational Velocity/NValt-like filtering of a large amount of text.

For example: call the helm-swoop command, start typing (you don’t even need to use whole words or phrases), and the system shows you a list of lines of your document(s) that match. Use up & down arrow keys to select from among those lines, and then press enter (that’s RET, in Emacs, don’t you know :-P ) and it warps you to that line. I prefer this to incremental search (tabbing through next/previous results), though incremental search is also available, of course.

Helm is also excellent for the org-refile system. Where do you want these notes to go? Start typing and it brings up a list of matches. Keep typing to refine the list. Select the location with arrow keys and press enter. Boom, it’s there. Frictionless.

To me, refile is the heart of org-mode,  because it allows for very quick notetaking and then stashing those notes away in the right place immediately after they’re written. I have always been frustrated with the refiling interfaces of most information organizers and notetaking software. (Tagging and filing are NOT the same thing!!) Evernote is frustrating in how it limits the depth of your file structure. I prefer to send my items to their proper place with the keyboard. It feels quite like the old pneumatic tubes—put the item in the tube and it disappears to the correct place in an instant.

I’m in the process of writing some blog posts about org-mode and why it’s great. I’ll post links here as they’re written.