4 Author: Carsten Dominik <dominik at science dot uva dot nl>
5 Date: 2007/05/13 09:31:34
10 Org - an Emacs Mode for Notes and Project Planning
14 Frequently Asked Questions
23 Org - an Emacs Mode for Notes and Project Planning
24 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
26 Org-mode is a mode for keeping notes, maintaining ToDo lists, and doing
27 project planning with a fast and effective plain-text system.
29 Org-mode develops organizational tasks around NOTES files that contain
30 information about projects as plain text. Org-mode is implemented on
31 top of outline-mode, which makes it possible to keep the content of
32 large files well structured. Visibility cycling and structure editing
33 help to work with the tree. Tables are easily created with a built-in
34 table editor. Org-mode supports ToDo items, deadlines, time stamps,
35 and scheduling. It dynamically compiles entries into an agenda.
36 Plain text URL-like links connect to websites, emails, Usenet
37 messages, BBDB entries, and any files related to the projects. For
38 printing and sharing of notes, an Org-mode file can be exported as a
39 structured ASCII file, or as HTML.
44 The current version is 4.74. To see what has changed in recent
45 releases, check this [list of user-visible changes].
50 This package works on Emacs 21 and (with minor restrictions) on
51 XEmacs 21. Version 4.67c will be part of the Emacs 22.1 release.
53 *Attention XEmacs users*: Starting with Org-mode 4.38, Org-mode will
54 only work correctly with XEmacs if you use [noutline.el], a new
55 implementation of outline-mode. Until this package becomes part of
56 XEmacs, you can find it in the xemacs subdirectory of the Org-mode
57 distribution. Just compile it and place it onto you load path,
58 Org-mode will load it automatically.
64 Download as [zip file] or [gzipped tar archive]. These archives
65 contain both the Lisp file org.el and the documentation in PDF
66 and (TeX)Info formats.
69 - Read the documentation [online].
70 - Download the documentation in [PDF], [Info], or [TeXInfo] format.
71 - Download the [Refcard] for org-mode.
72 - There is also a [Japanese translation] of the manual (version 4.60), produced by Takeshi Okano.
75 Frequently Asked Questions
76 ==========================
78 The [FAQ] used to be part of the manual but this is no longer the case.
83 There is a mailing list for discussion about org-mode. You can
84 subscribe to it at [this webpage] or directly [send mail to it] (which
85 will make it to the list after the moderator has accepted it.
86 Furthermore you can access the mailing list on [Gmane] through a
87 [web interface] or with a
95 - There is a very nice introductory [OrgMode tutorial] by [David O'Toole] covering the basics of TODO lists and the agenda. It
96 has been translated into [French], [Japanese], [Chinese], and [Korean].
100 Org-mode is flexible enough to implement many different ways of
101 organizing your projects. A frequently discusses scheme is [David Allen's] strategy for [Getting Things Done]. Here are a couple of
102 links related to this topic.
104 - [Charles Cave] has written an [article/tutorial] about the basic
105 elements of GTD and how he implements them in Org-mode.
107 - There have been several threads on emacs-orgmode@gnu.org related
108 to GTD, the most important ones are:
109 - [Another GTD question], which contains a discussion about basic
110 GTD aspects. It also contains this
111 - [Post by Carsten] summarising several options for implementing
113 - [GTD, Projects and Next Actions in org-mode] is a thread where
114 several people describe their personal setup is
116 - Also on the web you can find information about how people are
117 setting up Org-mode to fit their habits. A few examples:
119 - This [blog post] shows a very simple and clear GTD setup.
124 - [Piotr Zielinski] wrote [org-mouse.el] which is now distributed with
125 Org-mode. It implements very interesting mouse support for many
126 functions in org-mode.
128 - [David O'Toole] is the author of [org-publish.el]. While this is
129 now part of the Org-mode distribution, you might find the newest
130 bug fixes and developments at his [Org-mode page], along with
131 several other projects like /org-blog.el/ and
132 /org-publish-escript.el/.
134 - [Bastien Guerry] has a package for using Org-mode as the basis for
135 blogging, it is available at [this page].
139 I know about the following attempts to translate from and to
142 - [From Palm TODO database to Orgmode]. This Translator was
143 written by [Olaf Dietsche].
145 - [From Org-mode to remind] by [Bastien Guerry].
150 - Here is a [list of ideas] that are still to be processed somehow,