From Ecco To Emacs / Org-Mode

Posted by cicerosc
Nov 29, 2024 at 03:14 PM

Dr. Andrus’ comment below describes me for the last twenty-five years:

> Posted by Dr Andus
>Sep 8, 2015 at 10:03 PM
>zoe wrote:
>I’m finally starting to push beyond the initial Emacs learning curve
>Respect! :) I never got past the first video by one of the gurus (his name escapes me), though I’m intrigued by the system.

The reason for this post is that about 60 days ago I finally broke down and decided to start with basic Emacs and see if I could build up a system similar to how I have used Ecco for twenty-five years, largely as a single-pane outliner. I am also experimenting with Logseq as well, but given that Logseq has its roots in org-mode I decided to take the plunge.

I now very much regret that I did not do this many years ago. I still plan to continue to use Ecco at least for a while, but I am shifting all of my new writing and organization methodology to org-mode. I was frustrated with markdown’s limited ability to work with and format footnotes and to provide linking to jump between areas of a single document. It looks like org-mode can do that and much more.

It seems to me that aside from Logseq building on org-mode, there’s been a missed opportunity for those of us focused on single-pane outlining to work together to customize Emacs in a way that is less intimidating to newcomers. So far I have found Doom and Spacemacs to be overkill, and I’ve started with vanilla emacs and built up a series of extensions and settings (including toobars) that is beginning to pretty well resemble what i am used to in Ecco. And of course now I see how org-mode is far more powerful than any program that halted development many years ago could ever be.

Apparently the geekiness of emacs invites those who take the time to learn and customize it to disdain the idea of setting it up to make it easy for new learners. Kind of like “by the way, I use Arch” (which I do as well). It also appears to me that “distributions” like Doom and Spacemacs seem oriented to programmers, rather than to outlining creative writing.

Rather than turning off all the toolbars to make it unapproachable, I’m finding it pretty straightforward to set up the major functions with a usable toolbar that’s making it a lot easier to use the key combinations and commands over time. I am sure that there are many extensions and tips and tricks that I am only beginning to learn about, and that’s another reason for this post. I would be very interested in seeing and hearing about the customizations of others who have decided to use org-mode in a similar way (making it easier to use without requiring memorization of innumerable keyboard shortcuts).

I know that the org-mode community is largely dedicated to outlining, but I haven’t yet found a central place or forum other than the org-mode manual where I can focus my reading. I know that there are some very good youtube channels, but so far I haven’t found a good “forum” where I can browse through topics in a straightforward way. Does anyone here who has gone down the route of customizing emacs/org-mode road for single pane creative outlining and word processing have any suggestions for resources to consult?