I promised that I’d post some of the stuff from my .emacs file that makes my org-mode system work. Here we are.

There are some basic settings that I use on all major modes that I use in emacs. Basically, I want to attach the spell checker (the minor modes, flyspell-mode and auto-fill-mode). These lines do this:

(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'flyspell-mode)

I also, attached “.org” as the file extension to org-mode. This setting is good for this kind of thing:

(setq auto-mode-alist
(cons '("\\.org" . org-mode)auto-mode-alist))

The following are a list of basic org-mode related settings that I’ve found helpful. In some sequence, I keep org-mode files in the ~/org/ directory, with codex.org being my general catch-all file. I like my agenda views to include todos, even if they’re not date-specific (this is a great boon) I’ve included the diary in the agenda views for grins, though I’m not yet smart enough to really make the most of that one.

The odd-levels-only, and hide-leading-stars are aesthetic settings only, and can be changed/converted from at any point, but I like them

The org-todo-keywords setting allows you to specify alternate todo-statuses. I’ve found that this sorting is a useful and allows me to visually sort out things I need to write, versus chores and other more clerical tasks. The pipe seperates finished statuses from open statuses. I debated for a long time about weather “differed” should be “done” or “not done,” but decided that with “pending,” I was safe to use “differed” tasks for “not my problem any more” items.

(setq org-directory "~/org/")
(setq org-default-notes-file (concat org-directory "/codex.org"))
(setq org-agenda-include-all-todo t)
(setq org-agenda-include-diary t)
(setq org-hide-leading-stars t)
(setq org-odd-levels-only t)
(setq org-todo-keywords
      '((sequence "TODO"
                  "WRITE"
                  "REVIEW"
                  "PENDING" "|"
                  "DIFFERED"
                  "DELEGATED"
                  "DONE")))

The next bit, is something that I got from Jack. It creates an org-mode file with time-stamp headlines which you can use to create a journal file to record daily activities.

The first block sets up which file the journal should be in, and the second sets up entry. My main complaint with this is that I’m not very habitual about using it.

(defvar org-journal-file "~/org/journal.org"
   "Path to OrgMode journal file.")
(defvar org-journal-date-format "%Y-%m-%d"
   "Date format string for journal headings.")

(defun org-journal-entry ()
  "Create a new diary entry for today or append to an existing one."
  (interactive)
  (switch-to-buffer (find-file org-journal-file))
  (widen)
  (let ((today (format-time-string org-journal-date-format)))
    (beginning-of-buffer)
    (unless (org-goto-local-search-headings today nil t)
      ((lambda ()
         (org-insert-heading)
         (insert today)
         (insert "\n\n  \n"))))
    (beginning-of-buffer)
    (org-show-entry)
    (org-narrow-to-subtree)
    (end-of-buffer)
    (backward-char 2)
    (unless (= (current-column) 2)
      (insert "\n\n  "))))

The integration between remember-mode functionality and org-mode is one of those things that just makes org-mode amazing and awe inspiring. The sad part is that it takes some setup to make it work right and therefore doesn’t work straight out of the hook.

I’d explain the template syntax better if I understood it a bit better. I should look into that.

(require 'remember)
(setq remember-annotation-functions '(org-remember-annotation))
(setq remember-handler-functions '(org-remember-handler))
(add-hook 'remember-mode-hook 'org-remember-apply-template)

(setq org-remember-templates
      '(("todo" ?t "* TODO %?\n  %i\n  %a" "~/org/codex.org" "Tasks")
        ("notes" ?n "* %?\n  %i\n  %a" "~/org/codex.org" "Inbox and Notes")
        ("blog" ?b "* %U %?\n\n  %i\n  %a" "~/org/blog.org")
        ("technology" ?s "* %U %?\n\n  %i\n  %a" "~/org/technology.org")
        ("fiction" ?f "* %U %?\n\n  %i\n  %a" "~/org/fiction.org"))

Finally, key bindings that make org-mode functionality accessible whenever I need it in emacs. I should do things to have raise emacsclient windows from other applications, but I’ll deal with that later. There aren’t that many, and I put org-mode stuff under control-c (C-c).

(global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(global-set-key "\C-cr" 'org-remember)
(global-set-key "\C-cj" 'org-journal-entry)

And that’s it. If you use org-mode, what’s the killer snippet that I’ve forgotten? If you don’t use org-mode but are curious, what should I talk about next. If you’re still not clear what org-mode is, ask, as I should work on getting better at explaining.

Thanks for reading. Cheers!

The last time I talked about org-mode, I covered a number of my “beginner mistakes,”, this time I think it’d be a bit more productive to explain how I’m actually using org-mode. For those of you playing at home this is one of those systems I talked about.

I’m going to try and avoid including bits of code/lisp in this post, as I don’t want to confuse “what I’m doing,” with “how I’m doing it.” We’ll get to that point in time, and there’s plenty to talk about.

At the moment the features of org-mode that I use the most are:

• org-agenda-mode
• checkboxes
• org-remember-mode
• and org-mode outlines

I also store org-mode files in a git repository that lives in my home folder of all machines that I use with any regularity. I’m running emacs-23 (ubuntu package: emacs-snapshot), generally in server-mode, with two frames open, one has “the thing I’m writing” and the other has the org-mode-agenda and some org-mode file in the other window.¹

System Layout

At the moment I have 9 org-mode files:

1. A file the novel project, that contains background notes, and outline of the story, as well as project management stuff.

2. A file that contains notes for blog posts. This is mostly organizational, and I just add ideas as I have them and check them off and archive them when I’m done.

3. A general “codex” file, that I dump links. I’ve had a file like this for a number of years, and I generally find that having a catchall like this is productive.

4. A general fiction file, for project management issues related to the fiction projects that aren’t the novel. I’ll probably split this up as needed in the future.

5. I have two files to manage web development/design projects that I’m working on for myself.

6. One file to manage my academic/research project. Includes notes/content as well as todo items.

7. A “technology” file that contains lists of tweaks and other technological projects that I need to undertake (like switching to OpenDNS).

8. A file for work projects and notes
9. A journal file, for tracking activities and accomplishments.

Org-Mode Features

The features that I use:

Outlines and Checkboxes

This is a no brainier, but it makes sense. Org-mode is at it’s core an outlining program, but I think it is important to underscore this. It’s an outlining program. use it to create outlines. All of the talk and videos that I’ve seen explaining and demonstrating org-mode talk about the cool agenda functionality, or the table feature (which are great tools) but this washes over the fact that it’s an outlining program.

Why am I stressing this? Because the agenda commands and all the other functionality actually works better when you have a bunch of files with outlines in them. When you have outlines to deal with, you can tag the items that are truly “actionable” with “TODO” (or other action words) and include them with your agenda items. Or if an item/heading on your outline is time sensitive you can use the org calendar system to toggle deadlines/schedule points. And lists below headings can have checkboxes, which is a great boon, as well. But, if you work backwards and attempt to anticipate what agenda is going to do, then you’re loosing some of it’s functionality.

Brainstorm. Write notes. Add TODO flags to items that require attention. Add deadlines or schedule points if they’re time sensitive. But don’t organize the outlines for anything other than their utility as a reference document. Org-mode does the rest with….

Agenda

The org-agenda mode is the glue that makes the whole system work, as it aggregates items together from all your org-mode files. I’ve set mine up so that it displays a weekly agenda with all open TODO items. This way I can see everything that needs action, without needing to add deadlines to tasks which didn’t have deadlines so much as “don’t forget me” status."

There’s all sorts of stuff that one can do with Agenda to generate views that filter based on tags or some such, but I’ve not gotten there. It’s really flexible.

Remember

Remember is a feature that originated independently, but has been enhanced to work with org-mode. Basically you trigger it with a key-binding and it pops up a temporary window which allows you to select a template and then add notes and other items, trigger save, and it disappears and writes to the relevant org-mode file.

One of the great pains of digital systems for note taking and organization is that if you have an idea, it is often hard for us to find a way to record these notes quickly before the moment leaves us. Remember changes that, and it’s great.

Next time? Code. Cheers!

It takes me a while to adapt to new things with the computer. While I pick things up pretty quickly, I’m aware that it takes a while for me to adapt to new ways of working with the computer. I like to settle into a system before I start changing the key bindings or writing scripts (which I always think will be more successful than they are). This seems reasonable, and is generally something that I’d recommend to other people looking to learn “cool new stuff.” Go slow.

In light of this realization this post will be a review of some of my more recent adventures with org-mode. For the uninitiated, org-mode is really a subsystem of the emacs text editor.¹ It’s really powerful, and has a lot of disparate features that combine to do something really kind of magical. On one level, org-mode is just an outlining program: it provides some shortcuts and interfaces that make writing structured text really productive and pleasurable (e.g. easy navigation, block folding). On another level, org-mode is a fully featured calendaring and task/project management tool. The brilliance, is that it isn’t just and outliner or a task manager, but it provides accessory tools (like a great calendar, and even a table/spreadsheet functionality) that integrate the environment.

I found about this two months ago, and I’ve slowly started to ease into using it. This past week, however, I think I crossed some sort of boundary, because I started using org-mode for most of my note-taking and project planning/organization work. And now that I’m here, I think a small series of blog posts is in order.

I’ll start, I think with “mistakes I made,” as I couldn’t hope to explain everything the system does, and explaining how I’m working right now isn’t nearly as interesting.

My first approach was to keep an org-mode file in all of my project directories, so that the .org file would be close to the files where the actual work was going on.

Wrong.

Turns out, keeping all your org-mode files together seems to work a lot better. Org’s calendar/project planning features work by generating “agenda views” of todo items and time-specified events. While the system could pull from a half dozen different project directories. Keeping things centralized means that you can add new files willy-nilly, it makes it easy to keep things synchronized between machines.

My second approach was to keep one org-mode file and divide projects using the hierarchical nature of the file to keep things straight.

Wrong.

Turns out, that while we can represent all of our projects hierarchically² beyond a certain level it doesn’t make a lot of sense to implement “categories” or project headings in this way. Org-mode provides a tagging infrastructure and the aforementioned agenda tool to tie together files, so while you can go overboard in creating new org files, you’re probably not incredibly likely to for a while. Use outline hierarchies to represent information, use files and tags to categorize and sort your headlines.

When I discovered the agenda capabilities, I made todo items out everything and started giving all of my tasks dates so that they’d be sorted into the agenda view.

Wrong.

Turns out, you can get agenda to generate a list of undated todo items before the agenda view, and that--at least for the way I work--setting soft deadlines and scheduling tasks just confuses the point rather than facilitating action. Org-mode also has a system for task priorities--which I haven’t felt the need for--but I think the larger lesson here is don’t attach arbitrary information to items in your org-mode files. Let the agenda mode do it’s work, and you do yours, and it’ll work out.

I started my ~/org/ directory³ by creating .org files for all of the major projects in my life. Fiction writing, day-job, the blog, academic work, so that I’d be able to collect similar kinds of notes and todo-lists together in files.

Wrong.

Turns out, that while some of the setting up big sphere-based org-mode files is unavoidable, the truth is that given the power of the agenda filter, putting a lot of information that is only casually connected in the same file doesn’t make much sense when tagging can provide needed meta-data. There’s a happy medium between “dividing things too much to the point where there’s too much ‘system’ to manage,” and “not dividing enough so that you have to build informal systems in the outline which complicates the organization.” In my experience “too much division” is much harder to reach, and “not dividing enough,” is quite easy.

I’ll be blogging more about org-mode in the coming days and weeks. Stay tuned :)

Onward and Upward!