Emacs with Org
Monday, February 06, 2006
I've been playing around with an Emacs tool called Org or org-mode. It's an organizer, similar in a way to planner-mode. The main difference is that org uses more of a big text file approach, while planner uses small files for different items, like projects. Org also uses an outline structure. You can set up tags for both status and context. And you can use either the outline mode or an agenda mode to see what's on your list. It will filter out your todos for display. If you tag a todo with a deadline, the display shows you how many days are left till the deadline. It even will add a table for you, complete with the ability to do formulas. It exports as text and html. The tables can be exported or imported in tab delimited format. About the only thing Org doesn't do is sync with a Palm. Haven't figured out a way to do that yet, although I do have a tool to turn text into Palm doc format. Org also uses links for addresses (using bbdb), html links (using w3), and files. I've tried Remind and Planner, which are both good programs. So far, I like Org best. I'm not sure how far I want to go using it right now, since I'm mid-move and do not have a lot of free time to learn new programs.