Using Org Mode

Aditya Athalye has a long(ish) and interesting post on how he uses org mode for writing and more. Like many of us, Athalye has used a lot of apps for keeping notes and publishing his blog and slides for his talks. He’s settled on Org for the sames reasons that many of us have:

  • It’s plain text so there’s no data lock-in.
  • It’s easily exportable to a variety of formats.
  • It has the ability to embed code with syntax highlighting.
  • It has the ability, through Babel, to execute that code and capture the results.
  • It offers a unified workflow for a variety of tasks.
  • Its Org markdown syntax is being adopted by a variety of (non-Emacs) apps.
  • It’s “local first” meaning that by default your data is held locally.

His post details how he uses Org and some of the Org features that he doesn’t use. He has no interest, for example, in using it for planning, time tracking, calendaring, or as a “second brain”. He’s content to use it for note taking and publishing.

He’s found, as have I, that Org can take over your life in the sense that it replaces most of your other applications. Sure, there’s still Email, RSS, music, and the rest but Org can subsume most of your record keeping requirements.

As I said, the post is a bit long but it’s a good example of one man’s use of Org mode and how it came to dominate part of his digital life.

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