org-mode/ORGWEBPAGE/index.org

Org-Mode Homepage

• Org - an Emacs Mode for Notes and Project Planning
• Current Version (5.19a) and Compatibility
• Downloads
• Documentation
  • Manual and Reference card
• Links
  • Mailing list
  • Worg - user-driven knowledge-base about org-mode
  • Tutorials
  • Survey
  • Org-mode, GTD and other task management systems
  • Add-Ons
  • Translators
  • Alternative distributions
  • Contributing to Org-mode
  • Future Development
• Related Software

Org - an Emacs Mode for Notes and Project Planning

Org-mode is a mode for keeping notes, maintaining ToDo lists, and doing project planning with a fast and effective plain-text system.

Org-mode develops organizational tasks around NOTES files that contain information about projects as plain text. Org-mode is implemented on top of outline-mode, which makes it possible to keep the content of large files well structured. Visibility cycling and structure editing help to work with the tree. Tables are easily created with a built-in table editor. Org-mode supports ToDo items, deadlines, time stamps, and scheduling. It dynamically compiles entries into an agenda. Plain text URL-like links connect to websites, emails, Usenet messages, BBDB entries, and any files related to the projects. For printing and sharing of notes, an Org-mode file can be exported as a structured ASCII file, HTML, and LaTeX.

Current Version (5.19a) and Compatibility

The current version is 5.19a. To see what has changed in recent releases, check this list of user-visible changes. These descriptions are extensive, to avoid that people will be printing the manual after each incremental release. If you have an older version of the manual, just check the release notes and you will be up-to-date.

This package works on Emacs 22, and (with minor restrictions) on Emacs 21 and XEmacs 21 (where you must also use noutline.el shipped with Org-mode). The Emacs 22.1 release ships with Org-mode version 4.67c. The latest CVS emacs trunk usually contains a fairly recent version, but may lag a bit behind the website release.

Downloads

Distribution

Download as zip file or gzipped tar archive. These archives contain both the Lisp file org.el and the documentation in PDF and (TeX)Info formats. A shell script to simplify upgrading to the newest release has been posted here.

Documentation

Manual and Reference card

• Read the documentation online. This is a version consisting of many small files, to save bandwidth. If you really need it, you can also have the entire manual in a single monolithic file.
• Download the documentation in other formats: PDF, Info, or TeXInfo.
• Download the Refcard for org-mode, and Kyle Sherman hast created a text version of the reference card
• There is also a Japanese translation of the manual (version 4.60), produced by Takeshi Okano.
• The FAQ is not very up-to-date, but may still answer some of your questions. Please have a look before posting to emacs-orgmode@gnu.org.

Links

Mailing list

There is a mailing list for discussion about org-mode.

• Subscribe to it at this webpage.
• Directly send mail to it. If you are not subscribed, a moderator will look at the message before passing it through to the list. If that has happened once, future messages from your email address will get through immediately, even if you remain unsubscribed.
• Read the list on Gmane through a web interface or with a newsreader.

<li><form method="get" action="http://search.gmane.org/"> <input type="text" name="query"> <input type="hidden" name="group" value="gmane.emacs.orgmode"> <input type="submit" value="Search gmane.emacs.orgmode"> </form>

Worg - user-driven knowledge-base about org-mode

Worg, created by Bastien Guerry, is a setup to allow users to jointly edit a number of Org-mode files containing documentation about Org-mode. This is something like a wiki. If you'd like to contribute your own setup, screenshots, tutorials etc, please go to the Worg page, and start from there.

Tutorials

Tutorials and screencasts are listed on a separate page.

Survey

In November 2007, Charles Cave organized a survey among Org-mode users. The answers given in this survey can be found here.

Org-mode, GTD and other task management systems

Org-mode is flexible enough to implement many different ways of organizing your projects. A frequently discusses scheme is David Allen's strategy for Getting Things Done. But it is clearly not the only way to us Org-mode for planning. Here are a couple of links related to this topic.

• John Wiegley has written an excellent document describing his way of using Org-mode as a day planner. See also some later messages for enhancements of his setup: emacs-orgmode-2962, emacs-orgmode-3629
• Charles Cave has written an article/tutorial about the basic elements of GTD and how he implements them in Org-mode. There is also a french translation of this document.

• There have been several threads on emacs-orgmode@gnu.org related to GTD, the most important ones are:

  • Another GTD question, which contains a discussion about basic GTD aspects. It also contains this
  • Post by Carsten summarizing several options for implementing GTD in org-mode.
  • GTD, Projects and Next Actions in org-mode is a thread where several people describe their personal setup is
  • The SOMEDAY/MAYBE vs. low priorities thread contains a discussion about priorities that is quite instructive.
  • Here is a very instructive post by Pete Phillips explaining why David Allens book is where you should start to learn GTD, and that the Internet and Org-mode only come into the game later, when thinking about the implementation. And since doing GTD the right way will give you lots of free time, don't forget to listen to Pete's music!

• Also on the web you can find information about how people are setting up Org-mode to fit their habits. A few examples:

  • This blog post shows a very simple and clear GTD setup.

Add-Ons

• Piotr Zielinski wrote org-mouse.el which is now distributed with Org-mode. It implements great mouse support for many functions in org-mode.
• David O'Toole is the author of org-publish.el. While this is now part of the Org-mode distribution, you might find the newest bug fixes and developments at his Org-mode page, along with several other projects like org-blog.el and org-publish-escript.el.

• Bastien Guerry has been really prolific in writing interesting add-ons, all available at his org-mode page:

  • a package for using Org-mode as the basis for blogging
  • a LaTeX exporter that is now distributed together with org-mode
  • a special table-of-contents buffer that simplifies navigation
  • a registry to find locations that link a specific document.
• George C.F. Greve wrote org-mairix.el to add links that trigger a mairix search.

Translators

I know about the following attempts to translate from and to Org-mode files:

Org-mode to XXX

• From Org-mode to remind by Bastien Guerry.
• From Org-mode to Freemind by Marco Vezzoli.

XXX to Org-mode

• From Palm TODO database to Orgmode. This Translator was written by Olaf Dietsche.
• From Remind to Org by Detlef Steuer.

Bi-directional

Unfortunately nothing so far.

Alternative distributions

• Mark A. Hershberger has made some Ubuntu packages for org-mode.

Contributing to Org-mode

You can always contribute with ideas and bug reports on the mailing list. If you want to contribute a patch, code snippets, or a full add-on, this is very welcome too! However, I can only make it an official part of Org-mode if you have signed the papers with the Free Software Foundation. Org-mode is distributed as part of Emacs and must therefore adhere to strict rules about the copyright of all included material. If this is what you want to do, here is the form that you have to fill in and send to the FSF. After you received the final copy with signatures, please scan it and send the scan to the maintainer.

Future Development

Org-mode is still developing fast. The best way to stay up-to-date is to join the mailing list where the changes are developed and discusssed.

Here is a loose list of ideas that are still to be processed somehow, when I get to it…

Related Software

Sacha Chua about Choosing between Planner and Org.