Org-Writing Discussion
The proposal is simple. Can we build something like Epistle for org-mode? It might just render org-mode text to HTML, and frankly that would be enough for me. If the editing interface had an org-indent-mode equivalent, org-syntax highlighting, and even collapsing trees or org-narrow-to-subtree, that'd be kind of like heaven.
I'm (unfortunately) far from bored at this time in my life--finding a spare moment can be a real challenge. However, this project would scratch an itch for me. I need mainly to take meeting notes and import this fails in some way or another. Let's talk about how to get this thing done.
-- jfm
I'm starting the slow slide away from org-mode, not because I can't recognize its power, but because I don't tend to really use any of the super features (clocking, scheduling tasks, publishing, etc.) and what remains is a note taking format and this nifty paradigm of embedding action items in your notes and working file. Both of these are really the kind of thing that can be accomplished via other means. I'll write more about this in the coming weeks.
For the use case you describe, it might be the case that ?org-inbox might do most of what you're looking for, in terms of providing a way to get content into org from a mobile device. Or at least provide the foundation for mobile capture. And, I think from you, I heard that Paragraft for iOS did all of the gestural editing. It would probably be easier to get something that did markdown or similar, and then use Pandoc to translate into org as part of the mail processing script.
Having said that, regardless of markup format, (which probably could probably be abstracted and customizable,) a better editing would be very welcome (and pandoc largely renders the markup-wars moot.)
How might you like to proceed with this, and what kind of services/skills can I offer you?
-- tychoish
I've done some more thinking about this, and I may be too sleep-deprived to adequately communicate it, but I'll give it a try. Basically, org-mode does two major things in such a fluently integrated way that it hides the fact that they are somewhat opposed to each other:
- Outlining in plain text. Order of headlines matters. Not automatically changing what you write to adapt it to the format matters. You can't necessarily sync just by dumping a database.
- Random access to a database of headlines. Speed matters. Pulling things up based on orthogonal criteria like TODO states vs. tags matters.
These two map roughly to org-mode and org-agenda-mode.
Thinking about my dissatisfaction with MobileOrg, I think it's at least partly that it tries to do both of these things, but doesn't really do either of them well. As you've noticed, its note taking/displaying capabilities are pretty rudimentary, more or less limited to Android text fields. And the random-access capabilities aren't really there either -- it depends on org-mobile-push on the desktop to do all the slicing and dicing you're going to do ahead of time. What you're left with is a pretty good hierarchical outline viewer, at least until you get down to the body text level, where it gives out. This is not a slam on the developer, who's certainly put in more work on the topic than I have, but it may help explain the state of the project: the feature requests on the project tracker are not highly compatible with each other. The slow-CPU, low-RAM constraints of current mobile devices make it hard to do what org-mode does on the desktop: work live from plain text files while delivering database-like querying on TODO states and tags.
The random access bit is done very well by Shuffle. You can query a database of tasks by project, context, due date, or full-text search, more or less as you'd expect to do with org-agenda-mode. But the back end is not plain text; it's an sqlite database. It only syncs with Tracks, a RoR web application.
We're talking here about fixing the outlining and note-taking bit. A few random thoughts:
I've got the idea of making an org-to-html intent for previewing org files or subtrees. This would make the preview available from your editor of choice.
It might likewise make sense to separate out syncing. I'd like to see a good reasonably-full-featured git client (only one apparently available pulls, but does not push), or a Syncany implementation.
I'm looking at FaiF text editors for Android, either to glom on to one to add org-related features, or just to learn from for a specialized editor.
I do really need org-mode, and not a collection of equivalent features in different applications, because I do use things like clocking (makes those monthly reports ever so much easier), and need the close integration between notes, tasks, clocks, and scheduling (actually scheduling is the one place where my org-mode lifestyle is less-than-perfect).
--jfm