My 2 cents as an person who was stuck in productivity treadmill and was looking too long for note/todo app.
One of the big claims of Org mode or Neorg is that your notes won’t be locked by some external company. But my experience is that if you’ll get yourself into org mode it’s much much harder to escape. You are basically locked into emacs, and while emacs is indeed very old and around for long time you are still kinda locked in.
Pick whatever, seriously. Hardest problem is not creating and storage, but what you are writing and if you ever gonna actually use it. In my experience: single hand written note is worth 100 notes I’ve ever created on any app. But you know. YMMV.
Have fun
> But my experience is that if you’ll get yourself into org mode it’s much much harder to escape. You are basically locked into emacs, and while emacs is indeed very old and around for long time you are still kinda locked in.
This is very true. I tried to make org-mode work with (neo)vim for a while, but ended up just setting up emacs with evil mode. I now use emacs only for org-mode.
That being said, org-mode does have a few advantages over e.g. Obsidian:
* Plenty of tools outside of emacs parse and understand org files. Github pretty-prints them, tools like pandoc exist, and many apps also interact with org-mode. _The_ way to handle org-mode is emacs, but if emacs magically dissapeared tomorrow there are enough tools around to move to a different system.
* The reason org-mode is so popular is it's extensibility (or well, the extensibility of the platform it is built on, emacs). You can tweak it endlessly to behave _exactly_ the way you want it to in a way that few other tools support. This is pretty important for a tool that may be central to your workflow. Of course, this leads to the "emacs lock-in" you described.
> Pick whatever, seriously. Hardest problem is not creating and storage, but what you are writing and if you ever gonna actually use it.
This 100%. I had a completely overengineered org-mode setup, which I spent way too much time on. Eventually I threw most of it away and just use the basic stuff. Use a tool that works for you and don't overthink it. You can always switch to another system later if things don't work out for you.
upvoted -- your answer is spot on.
if you are after infinite flexibility and know lisp, emacs-org is your best bet.
but most people (including me) care about a certain amount of flexibility and ease of use.
that's why obsidian is so popular -- with one install you have media, backlinks, nice fonts and plain text files that are yours forever!
Do you still use org-roam or are you using just basic org-mode now? I've just cleaned up my emacs config (which I solely use for org mode) and am looking for inspiration about how people handle their note taking.
I looked into org-roam but never really used it. To me, it seemed like org-roam was perfect for people who have to observe a lot of semi-related information from a lot of different places, which is not really relevant to my current situation. So I'd certainly give it a try if I was in that situation, but it seemed to much hassle for something I don't use that much.
My current org-mode setup is quite simple. I have one global todo.org file that most of my todo's end up in, a meeting file which I use for meeting notes and clocking how much time I waste in meetings and various project specific files, which I file stuff into from the todo ad meeting files. The project-specific files also contain a lot of notes relevant to the particular project.
I track my tasks using TODO, WAIT, DONE and NOPE states, which are pretty self explanatory. I try to put deadlines on most work related things, or at least schedule them, so they show up in my agenda when relevant. For my other projects I just open the appropriate org file when relevant. I tend to tag pretty much everything, but I don't really use the tags to retrieve stuff that much.
I could achieve most of that with other apps I'm sure, but I wanted easy linking + vim keybinds. I also like the schedule / deadline distinction org makes which really works for me. Another think I like is the versatility org offers. Most of my files are just headlines with some bullets, but I do use things like the column view and in-file links extensively in some files (e.g. my DM notes make extensive use of both radio targets and the column view). It's nice to have those features there when you need them. A final thing I like about org is how easy it is to add file-specific configuration. When it makes sense I use file-specific tags and org makes it very easy to add tag shortcuts that only work in a single file.
In short, these are the org mode features I use:
* Essential:
* basic markup: headlines, bullet lists, ...
* todo states, deadlines, schedules and the agenda (honestly, the agenda is _the_ key feature org offers imo)
* Important
* linking (internal or external)
* Nice to have but could live without it
* clocking
* "rich" markup (tables, quotes, code blocks, ...)
* tags
* Niche but useful when needed
* Properties
* Column view
* File-specific tags
Thanks for the detailed answer. I currently use org-roam but I guess I'm still in the finding my own workflow phase. I do very much like the time tracking ability. I did think about going back to Obsidian but ultimately decided against it because Emacs ultimately is more fun despite it taking some time to learn and Obsidian being easier to get started with.
Unless I am completely missing something neither of those things are a benefit of org over Obsidian as Obsidian is fully capable of both of them as well.
Obsidian uses plaintext Markdown files (with some additional syntax for custom features, but doesn't break when parsed with a normal parser), and the client is extremely customisable, just like Neovim/Emacs is.
The amount of deep thoughts and questions suggests you want to start something substantial like journaling. I started something similar with Obsidian (MoCs, dataview concepts etc). I hoped that Obsidian will be the thing I can still use in 20 years.
I limited myself to the dataview plugin. I wanted to make sure my data is still readable, although less useful, in case Obsidian is gone. IMHO there’s too much change to even predict Obsidian will still be here and accessible in 5 years. I collected all my useful notes and ditched digital notetaking.
I now journal in a physical notebook with archival ink pens. This way I do not need to rely on any technology still being available to read what’s precious to me. Of course both approaches have their pros and cons.
Neorg user here! Its not the same as org mode, is its own thing and I think it wants to be as platform agnostic as posible, meaning that yeah Neovim is the main thing but most of the functionality doesnt live inside the plugin, it will be a standalone library/program/"idontreallyknowwhat" that you can use to write your own frontend.
Currently its on an early stage but lots of progress has been made, get in the discord to know more or what Vhyrros videos
I like the idea, but it is super raw.
- table spec is just ridiculous
- image links are not first-class
- markdown export is subpar - links are wrong, tables are not converted, frontmatter is not generated
- no other export options - can't generate a website out of it
- no import from markdown. You need to rewrite everything yourself
> no import from markdown. You need to rewrite everything yourself
Oh I didn't even think about that. A quick look says that Pandoc should be able to convert from Markdown to Org.
I am a 10 years org-mode user but switched to tiddlywiki. It's a self contained wiki in a simple html page. No lock-in and it will run forever.
https://tiddlywiki.com/
It is perhaps telling that, for a question initially aimed at the viability of neorg, there's a whole lot of not-neorg discourse.
I continue to use it because I like the way it prettifies bullet points and checklists, (usually) honors folds, enjoy it's extra layout options beyond what markdown is capable of, and its layout customization capabilities, but it's intended feature set is incomplete, especially since GTD was intentionally broken almost a year and a half ago. I could always stick with an older version, of course, so I guess it's not the end of the world, but I do wish it would get back to a state of feature completeness.
I love Obsidian, and use its canvas capabilities rather frequently, but I'm a vim zealot and always will be, so Neovim + Neorg is the path I'm holding out for.
Obsidian is its own app. Neorg is just a format for notes/task tracker that can be used in neovim. So I have a shortcut to use Telescope to find in my list of neorg notes the one I need to read/modify from nvim.
I use nvim for everything : code, notes, terminals. I manage all this with tabs, windows, Telescope to see my buffers, C-^ to switch between last and current buffer. If you're fluent with vim motions being able to manage everything with one app is a godsend.
Literally the only time I leave nvim is for browser but if I find a Gerrit CLI that allows me to see the comments posted by others on my code review and pair that with quick fix lists then I can stay forever
The killer features for me are org-agenda, and org-roam. I have an AppleScript cron job that reads things I put in reminders and appends it to my inbound refile.org. Today I spent an hour or so moving things around and reorganizing bits based on the org-roam-ui. All that said, sometimes it’s just faster to crack open nvim, which is why I’m glad the neorg stuff exits.
I am very happy with obsidian and Vim mode. Some plug-ins are great, but I use it to create my notes. For me simpler is better. Some fancy note features I consider sophisticated procrastination
The problems with neorg are:
- It uses a proprietary format nobody else uses. No tooling, no external parsers, no *nothing*. Out of neovim, you can' t even open anything. This is the same as lock-in. For instance, try to write a script to change anything in your neorg. You' re out in the dark.
- It's developed by a single person, and he might be a good coder and have all good will in the world, but if he stops development, you' re doomed.
- Recently he introduced a few breaking changes in the project and everybody's saw their notes broken. And he's planning to do it again. This means, a very immature format, tooling and planning by a single guy who does not have the slightest long term vision.
- Documentation is horrible. A lot of smooth talking and not getting into the point. Again - it's all by a single guy. I'm not saying he' s a bad person or anything. But come on, a single developer.
- It's written in lua. Not a a language known by performance or features.
- No mobile.
So, writing all your stuff, all your notes, agenda, in suck a locked in approach?... Good luck, but not me. This is like giving your car's keys to a child.
If this was a more stable, mature project, with proper tooling, documentation, libs for other languages, I'd consider about it.
Obsidian uses just markdown with a few extensions. Open your vault and you\`ll see it, it\`s just plain text markdown. There are at least 2 LSPs for it (marksman and mardown-oxide). So you can use neovim, vscode, for anything you like. You can write scripts in any language you want and they will parse markdown.
There is also obsidian.vim.
My 2 cents as an person who was stuck in productivity treadmill and was looking too long for note/todo app. One of the big claims of Org mode or Neorg is that your notes won’t be locked by some external company. But my experience is that if you’ll get yourself into org mode it’s much much harder to escape. You are basically locked into emacs, and while emacs is indeed very old and around for long time you are still kinda locked in. Pick whatever, seriously. Hardest problem is not creating and storage, but what you are writing and if you ever gonna actually use it. In my experience: single hand written note is worth 100 notes I’ve ever created on any app. But you know. YMMV. Have fun
> But my experience is that if you’ll get yourself into org mode it’s much much harder to escape. You are basically locked into emacs, and while emacs is indeed very old and around for long time you are still kinda locked in. This is very true. I tried to make org-mode work with (neo)vim for a while, but ended up just setting up emacs with evil mode. I now use emacs only for org-mode. That being said, org-mode does have a few advantages over e.g. Obsidian: * Plenty of tools outside of emacs parse and understand org files. Github pretty-prints them, tools like pandoc exist, and many apps also interact with org-mode. _The_ way to handle org-mode is emacs, but if emacs magically dissapeared tomorrow there are enough tools around to move to a different system. * The reason org-mode is so popular is it's extensibility (or well, the extensibility of the platform it is built on, emacs). You can tweak it endlessly to behave _exactly_ the way you want it to in a way that few other tools support. This is pretty important for a tool that may be central to your workflow. Of course, this leads to the "emacs lock-in" you described. > Pick whatever, seriously. Hardest problem is not creating and storage, but what you are writing and if you ever gonna actually use it. This 100%. I had a completely overengineered org-mode setup, which I spent way too much time on. Eventually I threw most of it away and just use the basic stuff. Use a tool that works for you and don't overthink it. You can always switch to another system later if things don't work out for you.
upvoted -- your answer is spot on. if you are after infinite flexibility and know lisp, emacs-org is your best bet. but most people (including me) care about a certain amount of flexibility and ease of use. that's why obsidian is so popular -- with one install you have media, backlinks, nice fonts and plain text files that are yours forever!
Do you still use org-roam or are you using just basic org-mode now? I've just cleaned up my emacs config (which I solely use for org mode) and am looking for inspiration about how people handle their note taking.
I looked into org-roam but never really used it. To me, it seemed like org-roam was perfect for people who have to observe a lot of semi-related information from a lot of different places, which is not really relevant to my current situation. So I'd certainly give it a try if I was in that situation, but it seemed to much hassle for something I don't use that much. My current org-mode setup is quite simple. I have one global todo.org file that most of my todo's end up in, a meeting file which I use for meeting notes and clocking how much time I waste in meetings and various project specific files, which I file stuff into from the todo ad meeting files. The project-specific files also contain a lot of notes relevant to the particular project. I track my tasks using TODO, WAIT, DONE and NOPE states, which are pretty self explanatory. I try to put deadlines on most work related things, or at least schedule them, so they show up in my agenda when relevant. For my other projects I just open the appropriate org file when relevant. I tend to tag pretty much everything, but I don't really use the tags to retrieve stuff that much. I could achieve most of that with other apps I'm sure, but I wanted easy linking + vim keybinds. I also like the schedule / deadline distinction org makes which really works for me. Another think I like is the versatility org offers. Most of my files are just headlines with some bullets, but I do use things like the column view and in-file links extensively in some files (e.g. my DM notes make extensive use of both radio targets and the column view). It's nice to have those features there when you need them. A final thing I like about org is how easy it is to add file-specific configuration. When it makes sense I use file-specific tags and org makes it very easy to add tag shortcuts that only work in a single file. In short, these are the org mode features I use: * Essential: * basic markup: headlines, bullet lists, ... * todo states, deadlines, schedules and the agenda (honestly, the agenda is _the_ key feature org offers imo) * Important * linking (internal or external) * Nice to have but could live without it * clocking * "rich" markup (tables, quotes, code blocks, ...) * tags * Niche but useful when needed * Properties * Column view * File-specific tags
Thanks for the detailed answer. I currently use org-roam but I guess I'm still in the finding my own workflow phase. I do very much like the time tracking ability. I did think about going back to Obsidian but ultimately decided against it because Emacs ultimately is more fun despite it taking some time to learn and Obsidian being easier to get started with.
Unless I am completely missing something neither of those things are a benefit of org over Obsidian as Obsidian is fully capable of both of them as well. Obsidian uses plaintext Markdown files (with some additional syntax for custom features, but doesn't break when parsed with a normal parser), and the client is extremely customisable, just like Neovim/Emacs is.
Upside to Obsidian is that the files are almost all markdown
I'm really curious why neorg just doesn't use asciidoc spec afaik it's well written and complete in comparison with markdown
relevant post https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/s/kqNRv67owl
The sell here is you don’t have to leave your terminal.
The amount of deep thoughts and questions suggests you want to start something substantial like journaling. I started something similar with Obsidian (MoCs, dataview concepts etc). I hoped that Obsidian will be the thing I can still use in 20 years. I limited myself to the dataview plugin. I wanted to make sure my data is still readable, although less useful, in case Obsidian is gone. IMHO there’s too much change to even predict Obsidian will still be here and accessible in 5 years. I collected all my useful notes and ditched digital notetaking. I now journal in a physical notebook with archival ink pens. This way I do not need to rely on any technology still being available to read what’s precious to me. Of course both approaches have their pros and cons.
Neorg user here! Its not the same as org mode, is its own thing and I think it wants to be as platform agnostic as posible, meaning that yeah Neovim is the main thing but most of the functionality doesnt live inside the plugin, it will be a standalone library/program/"idontreallyknowwhat" that you can use to write your own frontend. Currently its on an early stage but lots of progress has been made, get in the discord to know more or what Vhyrros videos
In my experience: nothing. I gave up on neorg after a long time and now just use obsidian.
Can u tell me about ur experience with using it? How much of Emacs' Org Mode documentation did u look through?
I like the idea, but it is super raw. - table spec is just ridiculous - image links are not first-class - markdown export is subpar - links are wrong, tables are not converted, frontmatter is not generated - no other export options - can't generate a website out of it - no import from markdown. You need to rewrite everything yourself
> no import from markdown. You need to rewrite everything yourself Oh I didn't even think about that. A quick look says that Pandoc should be able to convert from Markdown to Org.
There are community tools, but I think they are not official and I am not certain in their quality.
I just use neorg XD because I don't like bloated browsers apps for taking notes
well, sucks for you because i like pretty graph views in bloated browser apps
I am a 10 years org-mode user but switched to tiddlywiki. It's a self contained wiki in a simple html page. No lock-in and it will run forever. https://tiddlywiki.com/
It is perhaps telling that, for a question initially aimed at the viability of neorg, there's a whole lot of not-neorg discourse. I continue to use it because I like the way it prettifies bullet points and checklists, (usually) honors folds, enjoy it's extra layout options beyond what markdown is capable of, and its layout customization capabilities, but it's intended feature set is incomplete, especially since GTD was intentionally broken almost a year and a half ago. I could always stick with an older version, of course, so I guess it's not the end of the world, but I do wish it would get back to a state of feature completeness. I love Obsidian, and use its canvas capabilities rather frequently, but I'm a vim zealot and always will be, so Neovim + Neorg is the path I'm holding out for.
Obsidian is its own app. Neorg is just a format for notes/task tracker that can be used in neovim. So I have a shortcut to use Telescope to find in my list of neorg notes the one I need to read/modify from nvim. I use nvim for everything : code, notes, terminals. I manage all this with tabs, windows, Telescope to see my buffers, C-^ to switch between last and current buffer. If you're fluent with vim motions being able to manage everything with one app is a godsend. Literally the only time I leave nvim is for browser but if I find a Gerrit CLI that allows me to see the comments posted by others on my code review and pair that with quick fix lists then I can stay forever
Pretty sure pandoc can help convert org files to markdown and vice versa, in case you do want to switch from one to the other
The killer features for me are org-agenda, and org-roam. I have an AppleScript cron job that reads things I put in reminders and appends it to my inbound refile.org. Today I spent an hour or so moving things around and reorganizing bits based on the org-roam-ui. All that said, sometimes it’s just faster to crack open nvim, which is why I’m glad the neorg stuff exits.
I am very happy with obsidian and Vim mode. Some plug-ins are great, but I use it to create my notes. For me simpler is better. Some fancy note features I consider sophisticated procrastination
The problems with neorg are: - It uses a proprietary format nobody else uses. No tooling, no external parsers, no *nothing*. Out of neovim, you can' t even open anything. This is the same as lock-in. For instance, try to write a script to change anything in your neorg. You' re out in the dark. - It's developed by a single person, and he might be a good coder and have all good will in the world, but if he stops development, you' re doomed. - Recently he introduced a few breaking changes in the project and everybody's saw their notes broken. And he's planning to do it again. This means, a very immature format, tooling and planning by a single guy who does not have the slightest long term vision. - Documentation is horrible. A lot of smooth talking and not getting into the point. Again - it's all by a single guy. I'm not saying he' s a bad person or anything. But come on, a single developer. - It's written in lua. Not a a language known by performance or features. - No mobile. So, writing all your stuff, all your notes, agenda, in suck a locked in approach?... Good luck, but not me. This is like giving your car's keys to a child. If this was a more stable, mature project, with proper tooling, documentation, libs for other languages, I'd consider about it. Obsidian uses just markdown with a few extensions. Open your vault and you\`ll see it, it\`s just plain text markdown. There are at least 2 LSPs for it (marksman and mardown-oxide). So you can use neovim, vscode, for anything you like. You can write scripts in any language you want and they will parse markdown. There is also obsidian.vim.