Beginning to see the light with org-mode

Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 29, 2015 at 06:50 PM

zoe wrote:
>A great video explanation from Jay Dixit about “Emacs/Org-Mode for
>Writers,” with a nice shout-out to this forum:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtieBc3KptU

Thanks for that! It was an interesting case study about how this forum has helped someone to find the answer to their problem.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Scrivener’s screen, which he didn’t
>like, makes a lot more sense to me that Org-Mode.

It probably comes down to what suits one’s temperament and how many different tools one wants to use.

Org-Mode seems to combine an outliner, word processor, calendar, task and project manager and who knows what else, while Scrivener is mainly and primarily an outlining and writing application.

I had a similar experience with Scrivener as Jay. Even though it does have a distraction-free feature, somehow I also found it too busy for me.

The distraction-free writing aspect of Org-Mode does appeal to me (though I’m not ready to invest my time to learn it yet).

But in contrast to Jay I’m happy to use multiple software, so I can outline in one (e.g. Gingko), have tasks in another (WorkFlowy), store data in another (CT), and write in yet another (WriteMonkey).

BTW, Jay complains in the video that WorkFlowy doesn’t have keyboard shortcuts. That’s not quite correct. While it’s probably nothing on the scale of Org-Mode, WorkFlowy has all kinds of keyboard shortcuts to navigate it and move stuff around. I’m not even sure you need to use a mouse at all.