Emacs Org Mode

Disclaimer: I use Emacs, but I am not deeply into various emacs cultish uses. I just write books and about everything else in it. (Except mail.)

That being said, I am currently dealing with Markdown and friends, and so I came across Org Mode.

“Big Deal”, I thought - just another Emacs thing I don’t need. But what did impress me was the way it handles tables! That’s worth seeing. (Go play with it! https://orgmode.org/guide/Tables.html)

The rest seems fine, too.

This post makes the point that Org Mode is standardized, in marked contrast to Markdown (pun intended). I agree with this: “… because nothing is more difficult to differentiate than multiple standards that are almost the same but not really the same.” (https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/)

On a more philosophical level: for my own notes, I have been using various ad-hoc, bastard forms of this kind of lightweight markup. I never really learned either Markdown or AsciiDoc, for precisely the reason that the guys says: it doesn’t seem worth it, since there are so many flavors.

But Org Mode seems to get enough of the “little” things right that I might actually sit down and really memorize it, as the only lightweight markup I will ever need. The ability to turn it into other formats (other markups on the one hand, but in particular viewable/printable formats, like HTML and PDF) is a big appeal.

In any case, I recommend the blog above. It’s a bit lengthy, but the points are all well made.

Hugo accepts Org Mode as input format natively. This post has some pertinent details.