You're right, Mark. You CAN fold and unfold. That's great, and I was just about to be convinced this was the answer. But on my Windows and Linux installation, the alt-arrow (move paragraph) and shift-alt-arrow do NOT work to swap paragraphs and sections. Those are terrific and essential commands for structural editing. Are you using Jason Blevin's package on melpa?

And so begins another couple of hours of happy CRIMPing.

Mark wrote:

jaslar wrote:

>Another nice trick: in emacs markdown mode, there's no text
>folding/outlining, but you CAN navigate by headers easily.

This isn't correct, at least in my installation. You can fold, unfold in
markdown mode with tab or shift-tab, like with org mode.

And you you can move headings and accompanying text with Shift-Alt and
the up and down arrow keys.

Yes, I'm using Blevin's melpa package on Windows 10 with the following in the .emacs file

(autoload 'markdown-mode "markdown-mode"
"Major mode for editing Markdown files" t)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.text\\'" . markdown-mode))
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.markdown\\'" . markdown-mode))
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.md\\'" . markdown-mode))

alt-up arrow alt-down arrow don't work for me, only alt-shift-up arrow and alt-shift-down arrow.

jaslar wrote:

But on my Windows and
Linux installation, the alt-arrow (move paragraph) and shift-alt-arrow
do NOT work to swap paragraphs and sections. Those are terrific and
essential commands for structural editing. Are you using Jason Blevin's
package on melpa?

ROFL. Sounds like a CRIMPer's dream come true ;-)

Is it ever. Inspired by this thread I've spend an ungodly number of hours fiddling with Emacs. If CRIMPing is not classified as a mental illness, it should be.

Franz Grieser wrote:

ROFL. Sounds like a CRIMPer's dream come true ;-)

Yes, but doesn't it feel better to do all your CRIMPing within one program?! ;-)

One addition I have made to my setup is Helm/Helm Swoop, which is an autocomplete system for Emacs. Helm is great because it allows for a kind of Notational Velocity/NValt-like filtering of a large amount of text.

For example: call the helm-swoop command, start typing (you don't even need to use whole words or phrases), and the system shows you a list of lines of your document(s) that match. Use up & down arrow keys to select from among those lines, and then press enter (that's RET, in Emacs, don't you know :-P ) and it warps you to that line. I prefer this to incremental search (tabbing through next/previous results), though incremental search is also available, of course.

Helm is also excellent for the org-refile system. Where do you want these notes to go? Start typing and it brings up a list of matches. Keep typing to refine the list. Select the location with arrow keys and press enter. Boom, it's there. Frictionless.

To me, refile is the heart of org-mode, because it allows for very quick notetaking and then stashing those notes away in the right place immediately after they're written. I have always been frustrated with the refiling interfaces of most information organizers and notetaking software. (Tagging and filing are NOT the same thing!!) Evernote is frustrating in how it limits the depth of your file structure. I prefer to send my items to their proper place with the keyboard. It feels quite like the old pneumatic tubes—put the item in the tube and it disappears to the correct place in an instant.

I'm in the process of writing some blog posts about org-mode and why it's great. I'll post links here as they're written.

zoe wrote:

I'm in the process of writing some blog posts about org-mode and why
it's great. I'll post links here as they're written.

Great! Looking forward to reading them.

CRIMPing emacs (a field report)

WHAT I WANTED

* A capable markdown editor
* Good editing commands
* The ability to fold subheadings and text
* The ability to navigate and rearrange by subtree
* The ability to work with more than one file at a time
* Spellcheck
* The ability to export into a variety of useful formats: html, odt, doc, pdf, OPML
* The ability to edit files from Dropbox on Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android

WHAT I GOT (in mostly emacs markdown-mode):

* On Windows, I got everything above except for the export functions from within markdown (although I could get html file and preview in Linux). But I've downloaded pandoc, which allows a separate command line program (not difficult syntax) to do a remarkable, and very fast job of all kinds of translations. I can also export from within org directly to most formats.

The key discoveries:

* I had to learn how to add a package to emacs. Short version: add some lines to the .emacs configuration file to call the "melpa" packages, issue the menu command to Option>Manage emacs packages > Click on and install markdown-mode. Now I can launch a file ending with .md or .markdown.

* Learn how to configure (through the use of /C-h v /programname/) two important variables: sentence-end-double-space (to change from two to one, giving me the ability to move the cursor by sentence), and ispell-program-name (Windows doesn't have an ispell program, so I had to download aspell and tell emacs where it was -- this step was unnecessary in Linux)

* Use the Option menu to set a new default font

* Use the Option menu to set line wrapping to visual line mode (soft wraps)

* Use the Option menu to swap the emacs cut/copy/paste option to the more usual C-x, C-c, C-v. This also allows the more usual select-and-replace process.

* Use the Option menu to save these customizations

* Use Manage emacs packages again to upgrade org itself, and customize org export backends (package-install RET org; and C-h v org-export-backends)

* Realize that I could indeed move whole subtrees - provided the last subtree was blank.

* Install Editorial on iOS and JotterPad on Android (although the latter does not support folding)

CONCLUSIONS:

Hey, hours of fun! A CRIMPers paradise.

A free and powerful application (if you don't count, say, 40 hours of learning curve and experimentation).

By the end, a really seamless, capable editor that feels pretty good, and is better in many ways than haroopad (no spellcheck) and Smartdown (funny cursor movement by line). I think it gives WriteMonkey a run for its money, too, but that's mainly (for me) because WriteMonkey doesn't do folding. I could write a book with this.

Because the learning curve was so steep, I hope some of the steps here will help other CRIMPers who desire such tweaks. I have more detailed steps for those who want them.

Thanks for giving a breakdown of what you've done so far.

You should know that there is pandoc-mode! You can install it from melpa and it adds the pandoc options to your toolbar, and there you have all your export options from Markdown to whatever format you like. This is an improvement in two ways: first, it allows you to take advantage of pandoc from within your document workflow; it also gives pandoc a decent GUI menu instead of having to invoke everything from the command line. It's a minor mode so it won't interfere with markdown-mode.

I've begun to integrate emacs into more of my day-to-day text and copyediting workflow. I use markdown-mode, and also use whitespace-mode to highlight spaces and carriage returns. In my job I have to do a lot of editing of documents that have been converted from different formats (PDF, doc, docx, HTML e-mail) and there are frequently extra line breaks and double spaces I have to remove, or footnote formatting that has to be changed. Cleaning these things up in emacs is much quicker than doing so in SublimeText, I am discovering...

For those new to Emacs, there are various "starter" kits available. These help with
the initial set up and some configuration advantages. I use the configuration
created by Steve Purcell at https://github.com/purcell/emacs.d
Other starter kits are list at http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html

Brad91 wrote:

For those new to Emacs, there are various "starter" kits available.
These help with
the initial set up and some configuration advantages. I use the
configuration
created by Steve Purcell at https://github.com/purcell/emacs.d
Other starter kits are list at
http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html

I feel like these starter kits just introduce more confusion.

Most useful thing I found (for Windows) was this installer: http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/emacs/windows/

It basically takes care of the most annoying things I encountered on my first attempts with Emacs -- does a proper install, sets the Home directory, creates a directory for dumping plugins and installs Aspell (though, I think Hunspell is better and likely already installed, since it's the spellchecker for both Firefox and Libre/OpenOffice.)

It claims to include Markdown mode but I could not get it to work without installing it manually, which was no big deal. Just something to note.

pandoc-mode is genius. Thank you.

Of course, just as I thought I was making progress, I'm back to these odd differences. Windows markdown-mode now works great. Linux, on the other hand, still won't move subtrees with Alt-shift-arrow. Frustrating. But I've decided that learning emacs and org-mode, etc., is more like learning the piano than like learning an application. I'm moving to Chicago in January, and I see there's an Emacs support group there that I'll check out. I don't know if it will be more like a church, or more like AA.

jaslar wrote:

it gives WriteMonkey a run for
its money, too, but that's mainly (for me) because WriteMonkey doesn't
do folding.

That might change in the forthcoming WriteMonkey v. 3, at least by the look of the screenshot here, which seems to have a minus sign by the header, which I presume is for folding:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--Bgl0985yJw/VfKlUHCCxaI/AAAAAAAATlQ/HkDERhATMrQ/s1600/wm3.png

And it also looks like there will be some additional markup options, such as inline comments. The developer said he's looking into CriticMarkup, which would be really great.

I can't compare WM to Org-mode, as I've never tried the latter, but what's in favour of WM is that the set-up and learning curve could probably be measured in minutes (or at most an hour or two, if you want to fiddle around with plugins and customisation) for the typical user here.

Don't get me wrong, Org-mode sounds amazing, but the setup and learning curve just seem forbidding in my current circumstances.

Any estimate of how long it might take to go from zero to the point where you got the optimal setup and know how to use Org-mode to just get on with work?

Dr. Andus, I've been thinking about your question: How long does it take to get to proficient with org-mode?

The short answer is, "I don't know. I'm not proficient yet," and I'm at about 50 hours. And I have to agree that emacs generally is going to have a steeper learning curve than the limpid elegance of WriteMonkey (or most markdown editors). But I suspect it goes something like this, particularly for someone who hangs out on this site:

1. There's the shallow dive, working through the built-in tutorials. Call it two-four hours. This will get you solidly comfortable with terms and text manipulation.
2. There's the frustration of diving into major modes, and customization. You can find out that something is possible, but the steps described seem cryptic. This confusion of configuration and Lisp syntax is real. That's another 8-16 hours, with enough success along the way to feel like you're learning something, and getting closer to the tool you want. The default configuration for emacs is not inviting, more a programmer's tool than a writer's.
3. The third phase seems to be having things mostly right - good enough for serious work. Now you're focusing more on the content than the tool. Another 8-16 hours.
4. Discovering the extraordinary richness of commands. Emacs has something like 4,000. After coasting along on the previous stage for a week, I dug into the online manuals, and found a host of new, mind-blowing commands that are just wonderful for writing and organizing. (Split screen vertically, load an org file on the left, hoist a slice of it in on the right - suddenly, a two pane outliner.) And here, I imagine, it's effectively limitless. There are probably new levels of proficiency here. I guess I'm at intermediate, although I could be fooling myself. But as I mentioned earlier, it already has replaced several tools in the chest, and I've generated actual work of significant size and complexity. Moreover, it has been genuinely interesting and absorbing. This is the glory of open source. While I'll never be a programmer, it's fun to swim into the ocean.

... and drown...

(sorry, I could not resist!)

Bill, inveterate LetterSpace and Ulysses lover

jaslar - many thanks for the detailed and interesting answer, much appreciated!

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

I feel like these starter kits just introduce more confusion.

Most useful thing I found (for Windows) was this installer:
http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/emacs/windows/

I don't agree with this view. I have had an excellent experience
with a couple of starter kits, especially Steve Purcells. I should
have said that I'm using Mac. The experience with Windows
is an entirely different, and in particular the use of git for the starter
kits.
I note that I tried "http://vgoulet.act.ulaval.ca/en/emacs/windows/&quot on
Windows 7 and got a malware alert from my Avast security ware. Indeed,
while it is easy to install a vanilla emacs on Windows, I have not been
able to make the same progress that I have done with Mac and the Purcell
starter kit.
A note to Dr. Andus, while emacs is a high mountain to climb, it is no harder
to get started than ConnectedText. Org-mode outliner is very easy to use
and there are a couple of YouTube videos on its use. The problem is that
the documentation is so extensive, rather than use-oriented. My approach is
to create my own limited guide on what is necessary for my own purposes.
Indeed, there are videos and written materials aimed at the needs of writers.
By the way, searching is one of the most important features. orgmode.org
has some very good materials, (see http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/advanced-searching.html

Brad91 wrote:

while emacs is a high mountain to climb, it is no
harder
to get started than ConnectedText.
The problem is that
the documentation is so extensive, rather than use-oriented. My approach
is
to create my own limited guide on what is necessary for my own purposes.

Thanks for that. I have to admit the few times I went to the various Org-mode websites, it was the state of the documentation that put me off from trying.

Maybe what could make a difference is if one of you good souls would produce a basic guide specifically for the needs of this outliner & writer community, kind of like a cheat sheet for Org-mode for outlining and writing, alongside what's already been discussed in this thread.

Dr Andus wrote:

Maybe what could make a difference is if one of you good souls would
produce a basic guide specifically for the needs of this outliner &
writer community, kind of like a cheat sheet for Org-mode for outlining
and writing, alongside what's already been discussed in this thread.

We can do better than that. A great place to start is a You Tube video, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bzZ09dAbLEE Taking Notes In Emacs Org-Mode.
Here is another thing you will love: Like ConnectedText, you can create the equivalent of a Topic by inserting text between double brackets. Using Steve
Purcell's Starter Kit (on Mac), this will immediately ask if you want to have a separate heading. If "yes," a separate heading will be created at the end of the current buffer (the work space in Emacs). (You can then add text as you would with ConnectedText Topic.) Whenever you enclose the "Topic" word/phrase in double brackets, it links to the "Topic." (Control-c & takes you back to where you left off.)

Disclaimer: I am a scientist and my interest in emacs or vim besides some general dabbling at text is really just driven by org mode.

If you are on the fence regarding org-mode and have been put off by the seemingly disparate nature of the various contributions to this endeavour, you may at least be congratulated for your good judgment. That said, there are some initiatives that make it much easier to start and one of the more notable ones is spacemacs (https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs Unlike other starter packages, which represent one setup that works for its creator, this one has many developers and whilst prolific, is still focused.

To call it a starter package is an understatement, although you can treat it as one. It has many sane defaults and for the most part works out of the box. On the Mac it is much nicer looking despite my previous attempts to make Emacs look nicer, this one just does and supports themes that can be swapped easily.

Under the skin, it marries the power of Emacs to the modal editing philosophy of Vim (but only if you let it). This may not sound like much but if you are like me, remembering all those arcane keystrokes of pure Emacs that can very easily involve six keystroke combinations to invoke a single function can be too much very easily. They are all still there but much more accessible now by letting you switch between command mode and editing mode.
Don't want to unlearn Cmd-S for saving, Cmd-V for pasting because it is too deep in your muscle memory? Just activate this and many other defaults by activating the OS X layer in your configuration file by simply uncommenting it. You can always include more powerful Emacs or Vim editing commands later on once you have built some confidence.

You only remember part of the name for a command that may be useful (or simply guessing one like "had something to do with org mode tables and column justification or was it alignment")? Just type "SPC : org table" without the quotes and up pops the so-called helm mode that live-filters the 4000 or so commands. Better still, it will not be perturbed by occasional typos and also present fuzzy hits. Very, very useful.

But what does a function X really do? "SPC h d f" (think help describe function), again, there is helm's fuzzy matching algorithm that let's you just type the most unique parts of a function's name and still give you the result.

Don't remember what a certain keystroke does? "SPC h d k" to the rescue (think help describe key) followed by the keystroke you want to learn something about. The cool thing here is that it will tell you which function is actually tied to the key even if you have modified the keybinding, so all the googling in the world would give you a consistent but wrong answer (for your modified setup).

And so on.
Some of ingredients are spacemacs, some emacs functions, some are collections of little modes and modules that one could find somewhere on the internet and (with some luck) get to work on vanilla emacs, but spacemacs combines many useful ones in a single, remarkably streamlined package. Opinionated, but not dogmatic. Combining the best of emacs and vim may make the purist cringe (as will the inclusion of the OS X keystrokes) but if you simply want it to work and become productive it does a very good job.

Until spacemacs, I have had many unsuccessful attempts at making org-mode work for me, all of which failed because ultimately deadlines got in the way and I simply did not have the time to build the proficiency to get the work done, at least not in emacs org-mode. Utterly defeated I copied and pasted into a software that may have been inferior but better known to me.

I don't know how it will turn out this time but Spacemacs has for me altered the equation significantly and I am loving it. Give it a try if you will but don't come running to me asking questions....I am NOT an expert, not yet, ask again in some decades.

Sorry for the long post
Prion

Throughout learning Emacs and Org-Mode, I've come across a *lot* of people evangelizing Spacemacs, but if I've never used Vim, what exactly does it offer me?

(That's not entirely accurate, through my experience went something like "How do I type text? Insert mode? What YEAR is it?!? Wait..HOW DO I CLOSE THIS THING?!?" )

I'm really not sure what it does other than add even *more* weird keybindings. I mean, vanilla Emacs has a lot of ridiculous key-bindings but how is “SPC h d f” better than "Ctrl-h k"?

This is why I personally don't care for these "starter packs." They really don't seem friendly to someone who is starting out in Emacs.

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

Throughout learning Emacs and Org-Mode, I've come across a *lot* of
people evangelizing Spacemacs, but if I've never used Vim, what exactly
does it offer me?

(That's not entirely accurate, through my experience went something like
"How do I type text? Insert mode? What YEAR is it?!? Wait..HOW DO I
CLOSE THIS THING?!?" )

I'm really not sure what it does other than add even *more* weird
keybindings. I mean, vanilla Emacs has a lot of ridiculous key-bindings
but how is “SPC h d f” better than "Ctrl-h k"?

This is why I personally don't care for these "starter packs." They
really don't seem friendly to someone who is starting out in Emacs.

Different approaches for different people, I suppose. For what it's worth, I agree with you that it's better for a complete newbie to learn some sort of "orthodox" emacs, if only because a lot of the add-ons and modes that make emacs powerful are built on the assumption that you're running a non-Spacemacs/Ergo-emacs build. People do rave about Spacemacs, but those folks are often already experienced programmers (if they're used to vim, they're probably on the geekier side to begin with) who might know better how to troubleshoot when things don't work quite right.
If you start from square 1 on plain emacs, it makes it easier to Google for help.

A matter of personal preference I would say.
I am a newbie and not a programmer and to me it felt that emacs was hobbled together over decades whereas spacemacs tries to introduce one consistent approach, bundling together topically related keystrokes.
The keystrokes are not necessarily shorter (a lot of them are) but they make more sense. Anything beginning with SPC h relates to "help", SPC b relates to "buffer" and so on, only to be specified further by adding more keys. The main difference to pure emacs is that you always get feedback that offers the next choices, so if for example you have typed SPC b you are offered a choice of single keystrokes with explanations that spell out what you actually could do to the buffer. I find it a lot easier to discover as you go.

It works for me it seems, so I for one would disagree with a strict division pure emacs for the newbies, spacemacs for the geeks. In fact, I'd say, whilst spacemacs has enough power for the geekier programmers, it's the newbies like me who benefit most from the new take that spacemacs offers.
If emacs works for you, great, but it did not click with me.

Just two more things:
1) If Vim editing style using SPC as a leader key is enabled, the original emacs shortcuts still work as well so if "C-h k" is already engrained in your memory you don't have to learn "SPC hdk" or reconfigure the keybindings, they work in parallel.

2) If emacs editing style is preferred this is the other mode in which spacemacs can be run, called holy mode (as opposed to evil mode) and feels just like emacs because it is emacs.
You'd still have the advantage of a starter package that has been put together by knowledgeable people and the forward discoverability afforded by helm etc.

But whatever works, perhaps let's return to the subject of org mode.

Prion, many thanks. I don't know if I'll investigate SPACEMACS or not, but you certainly put up some thought-provoking defenses, and I did a little follow-up reading that was most interesting. I appreciate your thoughts.

For me, today, I like the "modeless" operation of emacs org-mode and markdown-mode. I'm using both of them about evenly. As is true of most things, the more time you put into something, the more sensible it seems. But I certainly accept that there is more than one way to approach the tasks of organization and writing.

In just the past couple of days I have discovered "abbrev-mode" (auto-replace shortcuts with longer phrases, as in TextExpander), "wc-mode" (put a constantly updated word count at the bottom of the screen), "org-indent-mode" (shift things to show the structure of a document by auto-indentation), and "#+STARTUP: odd" (which, when placed as the first line of a file, bumps org-indent-mode to make it even MORE obvious). All of these just add to both org-mode and markdown-mode, enhancing what seems to be an always more productive environment.

I guess that means I'm settling in.

But just as a contrary note, I want to give a shout-out to Notecase Pro, a TWO-pane outliner whose capabilities continue to evolve. For instance, it is now possible to output an outline to markdown. And various LUA scripts are available to do many other things. I'm doing a lot of cool things with emacs lately, but Notecase Pro does them, too, just in a different way. And without so much effort!

As others have noted, we don't actually need to have just one solution, right? We can play with several, because each of them offers something the others do not. The trick is to devise a workflow that matches the idiosyncrasies of our unique personalities, and the challenges of the moment. Having said that, I like emacs more and more.

jaslar wrote:

But just as a contrary note, I want to give a shout-out to Notecase Pro,
a TWO-pane outliner whose capabilities continue to evolve. For instance,
it is now possible to output an outline to markdown. And various LUA
scripts are available to do many other things. I'm doing a lot of cool
things with emacs lately, but Notecase Pro does them, too, just in a
different way. And without so much effort!

If you've discovered the joys of extending NoteCase Pro with Lua scripts, you might be interested in a draft plugin I have in the works that's usable now. It has somewhat over 200 scripted extensions for NC Pro; all scripts run on all operating systems NoteCase Pro supports. Most of the scripts are finished (the ones that don't have an "x" at the beginning of their titles). All of the scripts are accessible through a pop-up hierarchical menu. From the menu, you can also hit the Help button instead of launching the script, which extracts the script's documentation and displays it in your system's default web browser. For the most part these are scripts I've written but also a few by Daniel Hertrich and several by NoteCase Pro's author, Miro Rajcic.

If you'd like me to send you a copy, please send me an email at marbux pine @ maple gmail.com (subtract the trees).

The menu's main categories will give you a glimmer of the types of scripts:

Editing Menu
* Note Pane Actions
* Tree Actions
* Note Tag Actions
* Note Title Actions
* Note Property Actions
Clipboard Actions Menu
Event-Driven Scripts
GUI Actions Menu
Hyperlinks Menu
* Copy Links
Lists & NoteGroups Menu
* Pick NoteGroup to List Menu
* Process Listed Notes Menu
Miscellaneous Scripts Menu
Scripting Aids Menu
* Copy Actions
* Debugging
* Event-Driven Scripting Aids
* List Actions
* Lua Module Searcher Paths
* Replace Actions
* Script Launcher Menu Construction
* Scripting Resources
Shipping Scripts Menu
* Documents & Files
* Editing Notes
* Encryption
* Hyperlinks
* Icons
* Internet
* Listed Notes
* Note Flags
* Scripting Aids
* Tag-Related
Utilities

The List & NoteGroups branch presently allows selection from 40 different types of notegroups to list and has 41 scripts for applying different bulk processing to a list once assembled. The latter are not dependent on lists created using the scripts. They will work on any group of listed notes, whether the notegroup was created by script, by clicking on a tag, by filling a search to the List Pane, whatever.

Best regards,

Paul