[HN Gopher] Beautifying Org Mode in Emacs (2018)
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Beautifying Org Mode in Emacs (2018)
Author : tosh
Score : 196 points
Date : 2024-04-15 07:32 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (zzamboni.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (zzamboni.org)
| yankcrime wrote:
| I think the work Nicolas Rougier has done on "beautifying" Emacs
| (including org-mode) is about the best that's been done, examples
| and code:
|
| https://github.com/rougier/notebook-mode
|
| https://twitter.com/NPRougier/status/1576635498264760325/pho...
|
| https://github.com/rougier/nano-emacs
| maCDzP wrote:
| When I used Emacs I went for nano, it's pretty.
| jiehong wrote:
| Indeed!
|
| I remember liking "elegance" at the time[0] by the same author.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/rougier/elegant-emacs
| bloopernova wrote:
| I wonder if that notebook mode (which looks great) works well
| with dark background and light text?
|
| I really want to mess with this, but I have zero time for yak
| shaving right now. Too many deliverables for this week :/
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| No but you can use the 'dark background' style sheet in
| matplotlib (https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/style_sheet
| s/dark_back...) and then it would work.
|
| But if you have zero time for yak shaving I wouldn't try it
| anyways :)
| NeutralForest wrote:
| There's also the excellent `org-modern`.
| https://github.com/minad/org-modern
| bloopernova wrote:
| Oh that is really nice too, thank you for sharing it. My
| current Emacs setup looks so ugly compared to these makeovers.
| NeutralForest wrote:
| Anything by minad is great tbh!
| anotheryou wrote:
| Obligatory paste, looking _so so good_ :
| https://lepisma.xyz/2017/10/28/ricing-org-mode/
|
| Not what I need for todos, but a nice "book view".
| roland35 wrote:
| I loved working with org mode - but I would occasionally hit some
| accidental key sequence which would totally blow up my entire
| document (I am not an eMacs expert so it was probably some vim
| mode problem)! I also probably tried to over organize things.
| Maybe with a simpler setup things would work better.
| User23 wrote:
| Doing C-h l
|
| Will let you identify what you did. If it's a frequent problem
| you can advise the function in question with a confirmation
| wrapper or something.
| beretguy wrote:
| Of course (!) there is a keybinding for that...
| BeetleB wrote:
| If you're using evil or something similar, I would say that's
| probably the culprit. Writing in org mode using vanilla emacs
| should have about the same "surprise" as writing in Notepad. If
| you have speedkeys enabled (which I doubt is the default), then
| yes - certain keys at certain positions will cause surprising
| behavior.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| This is why I like nano. Easily the simplest editor out there
| that actually feels like modern command line software and not
| something vestigial from the 1980s. All I need is syntax
| highlighting anyhow and nano checks that box after a git pull
| of someone elses hard work making those rules for every file
| format under the sun.
| smartmic wrote:
| Two things though. I think org-mode syntax is not the most
| ergonomic and beautiful. In facts, that's the reason I stick more
| to Markdown when writing. Second, the problem I see here is that
| they want to change the source text into a formatted one.
| Basically introducing WYSIWYG from behind through the knee, but
| the source is still plain text. Can be done, but comes with
| challenges and side-effects (there is a reason Enriched Text[^1]
| never took off - although Richard Stallmann still dreams to have
| more WYSIWYG capabilities in Emacs)
|
| [^1]:
| https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/En...
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| What do you use for writing markdown? Any recommendations?
|
| I use org mode very lightly, mostly just collapsing information
| I don't want care about as I'm writing and making formatted
| tables. I've thought about exploring markdown and other editors
| but I haven't really seen evidence it would be much of a gain.
| smartmic wrote:
| My main authoring tool is then Emacs Markdown Mode
| (https://jblevins.org/projects/markdown-mode/). For data
| entry, it comes with some bells and whistles similar to org-
| mode, like C-c C-l for inserting links etc.
|
| I seldom export my notes for external usage, but if it is the
| case, I use lowdown (https://kristaps.bsd.lv/lowdown/) which
| also comes with some nice output targets (among the more
| unusual are Groff and Terminal). Of cource pandoc
| (https://pandoc.org/) does a very good job here, too.
| dingnuts wrote:
| notably, the above mode lacks the single feature the
| grandparent uses: collapsing sub headings. In addition, it
| requires an external tool to export
|
| org of course can be exported into many formats without an
| external tool, including several plain text formats and
| HTML, and is also understood by pandoc
| smartmic wrote:
| For most of my writing (journal entries, notes), I have
| never needed the collapsible subheading and export
| functionality because I write primarily for myself. If I
| think a note is ready to be published on my blog, I will
| still rewrite, edit, and polish it in a separate file.
| Mostly also in Markdown, because the structure of such
| articles does not go very deep (I am not a fan of many
| levels of headings) and my static site generator handles
| the export to HTML in a fully automated way. No need to
| export anything manually.
| nequo wrote:
| I use Org but markdown-mode can hide subsections too:
| markdown-mode supports outline-minor-mode as well as org-
| mode-style visibility cycling for atx- or hash-style
| headings. There are two types of visibility cycling:
| Pressing S-TAB cycles globally between the table of
| contents view (headings only), outline view (top-level
| headings only), and the full document view. Pressing TAB
| while the point is at a heading will cycle through levels
| of visibility for the subtree: completely folded, visible
| children, and fully visible.
|
| (Quote from the link shared by parent.)
| dingnuts wrote:
| oh, my apologies. I both use this mode and searched for
| the above functionality on the above link "to be sure"
| before commenting, but I guess I missed it.
|
| In my feeble defense, it's hard to confirm a feature is
| missing T_T;;
| samatman wrote:
| > _I think org-mode syntax is not the most ergonomic and
| beautiful._
|
| Which parts about it? I actually agree with the sentiment, to
| my taste there are some aspects of org-mode which are better
| than Markdown, and some which are worse, and on balance
| Markdown wins the contest.
|
| I have a project which is attempting to meld the benefits of
| both, so I'm interested in what you see as org-mode's pain
| points.
| taeric wrote:
| I'd advise not worrying about the benefits others see to
| either, if you are wanting to meld them. Instead, meld the
| parts that you like above and beyond anything else.
|
| My reasoning is that the main advantage of Markdown is the
| crowd using it. It is not an unknown quantity to a lot of
| folks. Similarly, the biggest "pro" of org-mode is that it
| has all of the power of emacs. Which, is oddly its biggest
| con to the crowd that doesn't like it.
| samatman wrote:
| I would prefer to say that the biggest "con" of org-mode is
| that, as the name suggests, it's tightly coupled to emacs.
| Implementations of the syntax for other environments are
| necessarily partial. org-babel might be the best literate
| programming system there is (it's up there), but I don't
| want emacs as my compiler.
|
| > _I 'd advise not worrying about the benefits others see
| to either, if you are wanting to meld them. Instead, meld
| the parts that you like above and beyond anything else._
|
| I'm not worried at all ^_^ but I don't mind learning from
| others either.
| smartmic wrote:
| See my answer above(or elsewhere in the thread):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40044417
| justinhj wrote:
| I think this misses the point of org-mode. Markdown is even one
| of its outputs. Org-mode lets you write in an environment that
| is aware of the semantic meaning and structure of your content,
| from headlines, latex, diagrams and lists to blocks that can
| execute code or make web requests, tables that can have
| spreadsheet calculations not to mention the time tracking
| features. I can understand wanting a simpler text format to
| focus on writing, but there are many editing tasks such as
| writing a blog or making project and study notes that really
| benefit from a more capable environment.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's also very opinionated about that structure, to the
| extent that it'll get in the way of WYSIWYG'ing the content.
|
| I've driven myself half-mad just saying "These two outline
| blocks are too close together" and adding some newlines only
| to have the header-collapse hide those newlines and squash
| the two outline headers back together.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm curious what makes you consider it non-ergonomic? For the
| things both support, I don't remember that many differences.
| Org shines, though, for all of the other things it also
| supports. In a real sense, it is more in the same realm as
| jupyter than it is markdown.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I think that's really the key thing, and I didn't realize it
| until only recently: org-mode fits a Jupyter mental model
| better than a Markdown (or outliner, etc.) mental model.
|
| It's great for what it is, but what it is doesn't 1-to-1 map
| to much else.
| taeric wrote:
| I think this makes sense. If you are viewing it as marking
| up a static document, then a ton of the affordances in org-
| mode make little sense. Most of it is about interacting
| with a lot of data that happens to be represented in plain
| text.
|
| For a lot of us, that focus on the plain text is important.
| As it helps keep us focused on all of the other affordances
| that we have grown accustomed to in emacs. As soon as you
| move things into a binary format, you are likely giving up
| on a lot of the other tools you have. There can be reasons
| to do this, of course, but for most data that you interact
| with at a personal level, most of those reasons have been
| overcome by the power of the personal computer.
| smartmic wrote:
| I think org-mode has several fairly orthogonal use cases,
| including literate programming (your Jupyter reference),
| outlining, markup, task management, spreadsheets, and many
| more. And the community has done an amazing job of
| implementing all of these really well, each for itself, while
| still maintaining a working ecosystem. But I only use a small
| subset of that when I use org mode. The amount of metadata
| that needs to be included in a full-blown org-mode document
| seems to be increasing, and I feel more and more like I am
| writing a specification with verbose syntax (and personally,
| I find "#+BEGIN ... #+END" blocks or similar keywords
| unappealing).
| taeric wrote:
| Literate programming is rather distinct from notebook
| style, though? I can see surface comparisons, but they are
| very different.
|
| I can see not finding the markup appealing, but that is why
| you would export for viewing? And, outside of moving some
| of that to a binary format, I don't know how you could get
| this level of stuff in band? I suppose you could strictly
| hide it in view? Would probably still want the markup in
| data.
|
| None of which is answering what makes it non ergonomic?
| Basic text with an actual table format is about what I'd
| hope for it to be. What is off?
|
| Links are different. Everyone seems to redo that idea. Rst
| files, I still always get wrong on first tries.
| norman784 wrote:
| Any recommendation on how to get started with emacs? I tried it a
| few years ago and was so hard to use it, after that I switched to
| nvim, but now I have interest in learning emacs again.
| bananapub wrote:
| either:
|
| 1. go through the entire built-in tutorial (which it will
| prompt you about on first load)
|
| 2. just adopt doomemacs or spacemacs, which are very large
| complicated default configs that are easier for vim users to
| start with
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Many configuration-ish things that were hard a few years ago
| are now way easier. with emacs 29+. There's way fewer reason to
| reach for doomemacs etc now because package management,
| configuring LSP mode, etc is much cleaner these days.
|
| In some ways working through setting up your .emacs _the way
| you want it_ is a great way to learn the tool.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Agreed. It's gotten easier. If I was starting Emacs from
| scratch again, I'd probably write my own vanilla config. But
| Doom helped introduce me when the concept was bizarre and
| foreign to me, and I'm very grateful for that. Now I'm
| comfortable with my Doom config, and it works great, so I
| have little incentive to ditch it.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The problem I have with doom and spacemacs is that it seems
| to be bringing people into the emacs community using the vi
| keybindings as default, including people who were not vim
| users before... which is... strange.
|
| Vanilla Emacs keybindings, or cua-mode, are fine, and
| probably less of a learning curve than going modal. If
| you're already in that headspace, all power to you, but
| half the reason I got into emacs in the first place was
| because I couldn't stand vi.
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| Go through emacs from scratch:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=74zOY-vgkyw
|
| Try using that config 25% of your work/productive time for 1
| month.
|
| Then if you are annoyed by how much time it takes try using
| doomemacs for the same 25% time.
|
| At the end of this you'll know if/which emacs approach is for
| you.
| norman784 wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation
| tveyben wrote:
| And look at all the many other excellent videos that David
| Wilson (aka SystemCrafters) have made regarding Emacs!
| ParetoOptimal wrote:
| No problem.
|
| 25% isn't a hard number btw, tailor for the process to be
| frictionless and useful for you.
| justinhj wrote:
| The built in tutorial followed by a couple of weeks of forcing
| yourself to use it for basic editing tasks until you find
| yourself comfortable again. Don't try to recreate a full IDE
| experience at first. Try to walk before you run. The beauty of
| emacs comes from discovering that it solves problems you didn't
| know you had rather than being a drop in for your current IDE.
| norman784 wrote:
| Thanks, great advice, I would say it was my mistake before, I
| wanted to configure everything how I wanted and the
| information was overwhelming, plus the learning curve.
| kstrauser wrote:
| While tempting, don't do that. Use it as-is for a little
| bit to see its way of doing things before you start
| tweaking.
|
| My init.el adds quite a bit of functionality but doesn't
| change many default settings at all.
| treeblah wrote:
| Emacs 29 made getting started a lot easier IMO, my from-scratch
| configuration is pretty minimal and I use it everyday. To plug
| my own project, I built a "kickstart" equivalent
| (https://github.com/mgmarlow/start-emacs) that sets up some
| recommended defaults and packages with lots of comments so you
| can easily extend it.
| phforms wrote:
| I actually don't like the text that I am working on to look like
| a refined press article in a magazine, a beautifully typeset page
| from a book or a nice looking website. It is not a published
| text. It should look rough, unfinished, unrefined and functional
| (to me). When I write on a piece of paper, my handwriting looks
| ugly, irregular, misaligned and maybe there are some drops of ink
| splattered around, so I don't want my editor to make me believe
| that my writing looks presentable.
|
| For Org Mode, my main concern is that I want to quickly identify
| the structure of my documents and differentiate all the relevant
| parts visually. I like to keep font sizes and spacings small to
| fit as much text (= context) on my screen as possible. I also
| like using monospace fonts because it feels more like working on
| a draft (e.g. with a typewriter) to me and I can work more
| spatially with text (e.g. making little diagrams or figurative
| text arrangements) which would not be possible with proportional
| fonts.
|
| When everything looks too good/refined, I get distracted by
| wanting to shape my text to make it fit in that perfect
| environment. Then there is no space for swift notes, unfinished
| drafts, rough edges and this becomes a problem, since I am
| already a compulsive perfectionist and like to waste a lot of
| time with irrelevant details. Of course, this is just my personal
| preference, so I am not saying that this is how it should be.
| Maybe I am just trying to understand why I like it better this
| way.
| yumraj wrote:
| Does anyone know of any good _video_ Emacs tutorial that start
| from the very beginning to, say, org mode?
|
| I can use basic vi, have for a long time, but can never make
| sense of Emacs and probably my impatience doesn't lend well to
| reading and trying..
| aquariusDue wrote:
| I recommend either the videos from System Crafters or Gavin
| Freeborn, those helped me a lot when I tried out Emacs.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@SystemCrafters
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@GavinFreeborn
| sourcepluck wrote:
| I enjoyed the article, but just wanted to say in case the author
| sees this: it's "whet" one's appetite. I don't know why. If it
| was me, I'd be thrilled if someone told me, so I'm taking that
| risk.
| jerrycruncher wrote:
| > I don't know why.
|
| 'Whet' means to sharpen (whetstones are used to sharpen knives,
| for example), so whetting one's appetite means to sharpen
| appetite, or to make one hungrier (for knowledge, food,
| whatever).
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