Org mode started as an Emacs only thing. Over time it has evolved into a much more capable thing than markdown format. One can do almost anything in the org mode format: literate programming with code blocks which can be executed (org babel), plain text spreadsheets, scheduling and summarizing scheduled events in an agenda view, time tracking, thesis writing (it has the necessary syntax for element one needs when writing a thesis, unlike normal markdown), inter-document linking, and probably many other things.
Some time ago people started slowly bringing things to VS Code. Org mode syntax has also been separated out as "orgdown". Now finally other editors are catching up to what has been possible in Emacs for a long time using org mode. They still got a long way to go, because integration of org mode things in Emacs is very far ahead, but at least work is being done.
Kinda difficult to explain as I dropped emacs due to issues with it on Windows despite enjoying org-mode.
The key thing is, org-mode treats data/text as a tree graph programmatically, you move through headings, and properties can be attached to those.
So a property for a deadline time can be added, and parsed, so you can get a list of todos/schedule showing the headline, and being able to jump to it.
Your api access targets these "nodes", so you are adding under "journal" rather than line 674 when using the template feature to quickly add entries.
emacs has ridiculous levels of customisation that let this data structure do basically what you want or need with some scripting.
It is an extension of Emacs outline mode. Outliners are hierarchical text formats. Org added many useful things to outline mode: keywords, tags, timestamps, footnotes, links, tables...
What makes Org unique is the presence of interpreters, including user-defined ones, that take Org files as input and do things on them.
A famous interpreter is org-agenda which harvests TODO keywords, timestamp deadlines, etc. from different Org files to generate a weekly agenda. Another one is Babel which runs embedded code in Org files, i.e. a literate programming system.
To sum up, Org is a plain text format analogous to Markdown, but with many more features and also interpreters that define certain operations on them.
It's markdown with Excel's ease of creating buttons (in org-mode's case ascii buttons) to execute arbitrary callbacks, e.g., cross referencing, summarizing, sorting, etc.
It primarily appeals to weekly status jockeys (project managers) whose rudimentary programming skills are just good enough to hack some emacs lisp. As someone who doesn't mind grepping an omnibus "notes.txt" file and thinks "literate programming" is a waste of time, I've never found a use for org-mode.
Explaining org-mode at this point is almost akin to explaining emacs itself.
What is Emacs? Is it a text editor, for editing config files?
Is it an IDE for development? An email reader?
Org-Mode is a mode for Emacs that provides structure to documents in such a way that it allows documents to be used for many things- authorship (web sites, books, etc.) but its primary use for most of us who is it is to integrate into our todo management systems- allowing us to manage our tasks in a way that's integrated into our work. It provides flexible, queryable and programmable todo lists, document generation, literate programming, spreadsheets, living documents that can execute code, time tracking, and more.
It can also integrate with other tools, like org-roam, to provide backlinks and other features, or work with tools like mu4e to integrate email and todo lists in both directions.
In other words, it's a system for working with data/life.
Short version: an text file based note taker, an outline editor, a calendar and an operating system disguised as a text editor came together to make an incredibly handy personal information manager. The file format looks like markdown, but is not markdown (and existed before markdown).
Comments
Can someone explain to me what org mode is? Is it simply a markdown editor?
Org mode started as an Emacs only thing. Over time it has evolved into a much more capable thing than markdown format. One can do almost anything in the org mode format: literate programming with code blocks which can be executed (org babel), plain text spreadsheets, scheduling and summarizing scheduled events in an agenda view, time tracking, thesis writing (it has the necessary syntax for element one needs when writing a thesis, unlike normal markdown), inter-document linking, and probably many other things.
Some time ago people started slowly bringing things to VS Code. Org mode syntax has also been separated out as "orgdown". Now finally other editors are catching up to what has been possible in Emacs for a long time using org mode. They still got a long way to go, because integration of org mode things in Emacs is very far ahead, but at least work is being done.
I know there was a proposal to call the language specification as "orgdown" but that has been accepted?
I propose that a more catchy name would help its adoption. "Org-y" would suffice.
Best to get this out of our systems before a WASM implementation shows up
me: "why is wasmorgy a problem
... ...
oh"
Orgr
Orgify
Orgly
Kinda difficult to explain as I dropped emacs due to issues with it on Windows despite enjoying org-mode.
The key thing is, org-mode treats data/text as a tree graph programmatically, you move through headings, and properties can be attached to those.
So a property for a deadline time can be added, and parsed, so you can get a list of todos/schedule showing the headline, and being able to jump to it.
Your api access targets these "nodes", so you are adding under "journal" rather than line 674 when using the template feature to quickly add entries.
emacs has ridiculous levels of customisation that let this data structure do basically what you want or need with some scripting.
It is an extension of Emacs outline mode. Outliners are hierarchical text formats. Org added many useful things to outline mode: keywords, tags, timestamps, footnotes, links, tables...
What makes Org unique is the presence of interpreters, including user-defined ones, that take Org files as input and do things on them.
A famous interpreter is org-agenda which harvests TODO keywords, timestamp deadlines, etc. from different Org files to generate a weekly agenda. Another one is Babel which runs embedded code in Org files, i.e. a literate programming system.
To sum up, Org is a plain text format analogous to Markdown, but with many more features and also interpreters that define certain operations on them.
It's markdown with Excel's ease of creating buttons (in org-mode's case ascii buttons) to execute arbitrary callbacks, e.g., cross referencing, summarizing, sorting, etc.
It primarily appeals to weekly status jockeys (project managers) whose rudimentary programming skills are just good enough to hack some emacs lisp. As someone who doesn't mind grepping an omnibus "notes.txt" file and thinks "literate programming" is a waste of time, I've never found a use for org-mode.
Org-mode is to Markdown what JavaScript is to HTML
Explaining org-mode at this point is almost akin to explaining emacs itself.
What is Emacs? Is it a text editor, for editing config files?
Is it an IDE for development? An email reader?
Org-Mode is a mode for Emacs that provides structure to documents in such a way that it allows documents to be used for many things- authorship (web sites, books, etc.) but its primary use for most of us who is it is to integrate into our todo management systems- allowing us to manage our tasks in a way that's integrated into our work. It provides flexible, queryable and programmable todo lists, document generation, literate programming, spreadsheets, living documents that can execute code, time tracking, and more.
It can also integrate with other tools, like org-roam, to provide backlinks and other features, or work with tools like mu4e to integrate email and todo lists in both directions.
In other words, it's a system for working with data/life.
eMacs is a text editor for editing your eMacs config file.
In all seriousness though, org changed my life. Had never gotten organized before it.
As an added bonus, it has nice export functionality.
Short version: an text file based note taker, an outline editor, a calendar and an operating system disguised as a text editor came together to make an incredibly handy personal information manager. The file format looks like markdown, but is not markdown (and existed before markdown).
My one-sentence take on it is: A personal Atlassian Confluence that doesn't suck.
There's more to it than that, but I think that that's the killer use case that gets most people hooked on it in the first place.