Hello,
I am relatively new to emacs, I’ve been poking at it for about a year but it didn’t really start to click until I had an excuse to use it for writing VHDL on a remote machine for a class last semester (currently an engineering student).
I am trying learn/figure out a work flow for org-mode for work and personal projects. I’m spread across numerous machines (primarily linux boxes although my work machine is windows).
As the title suggests I’m curious how folks make emacs and org-mode work for them at work.
I’ve been using org-mode to track tasks and make notes but I’m running into issues making my notes exportable for other coworkers.
Work is a windows shop unfortunately and documentation is done in word/pdf/excel, the workstations do not have scripting privileges, and things are networked in a way I don’t fully grasp (lots of UNC paths).
I’ve tried both:
org-odt-exporter - kind of works but produces broken files when I try to give it a style document.
and
pandoc - works better but doesn’t acknowledge :noexport: and chokes on UNC paths when I’ve tried to instrument it with emacs.
As much as I enjoy emacs and org-mode I feel like I’m spending too much time trying to get things to work.
Bidirectional interoperability with proprietary software is often difficult. Exporting from Org to other formats is usually fine, but sometimes details (like ODT styles) can be challenging.
My advice:
- Don’t try to force it. Use Emacs/Org for what is beneficial. If you have to do some things on other platforms for team coordination, just do it. Other software is always a moving target, so don’t spend too much time trying to integrate with it.
- This topic comes up a few times a month on r/emacs and r/orgmode and has for years. The principles haven’t changed, and few of the specifics have. Search for those discussions and mine them for information. There are blog posts about it as well, which should be findable on DDG.
Honestly at the moment I’d settle for a reasonable one way conversion but as you say I may just have to bite the bullet and write certain things in word.
I have been mining reddit and blogs for a solution but operating under windows with no scripting privileges or the ability to install 3rd party software directly on the system is really making thing challenging.
ox-pandoc looks like it might do the trick but I am off sick today so testing will have to wait.
Thank you for your response : )
A workaround may be something like this: 1) export an Org file to a Word doc; 2) edit that document’s styles according to preference; 3) delete the content and save it as a template; 4) in the future, export Org content to a Word doc, and then copy its content into the template, which may apply the styles. (A more manual operation than exporting directly to a file using the template’s styles, but it might work more reliably.)
It’s always an unfortunate, difficult situation if you can’t install the software you need. (I guess Emacs has been approved, though?)
Yeah that might help.
My apologies, life got away from me and I forgot to check back here for a response.
Happy to report that ox-pandoc works quite well. There are some oddities occasionally and I have to think a bit more about what org-markup I apply in documents. For example tagging gets weird as it is just straight up exported as part of the heading, as do TODOs.
At the moment I’ve sort of sidestepped this by maintaining separate Notes and Task headings for each topic or section of a project (eg. PCB design and Programming each have their own separate Notes and Task). I then just tag Tasks as :noexport:.
This does keep the exported document cleaner/less chaotic to look at but if I’m not care information gets lost sometimes as I often include relevant info in a TODO as I work at it.
This being said in general I’m still having a bit of a hard time internalizing how to structure information using org-mode. It’s simultaneously quite feature rich and a blank slate in terms of your application of those features.
It’s always an unfortunate, difficult situation if you can’t install the software you need. (I guess Emacs has been approved, though?)
Welllll it’s more that there is a portable Windows Emacs that can run standalone so I didn’t have to ask. I did have to find it a few binaries to get things working.
I did actually ask initially if I could have MSYS2 installed and tried to run emacs in there so I could have a more unix-y setup but although the package appeared to install I couldn’t find it after. I never figured out what was happening.
That aside, I imagine my work would let me install Emacs if I asked for it but I’m a co-op student. I feel quite self-conscious asking to have a bunch of stuff installed. Especially if it doesn’t appear immediately relevant to what I am working on.
If you’re wanting some kind of enforced organizational scheme, you’re looking in the wrong place. Emacs/Org is like a notebook. What you make of it is up to you. You can be as structured or as free-form as you like.
My personal advice is to not spend too much time trying to design or follow a strict scheme. Remember that Google beat Yahoo with search, not organization. Besides, there isn’t one, best system; there is infinite variety and infinite circumstances. You won’t be done learning and improving your systems until you exit Emacs for the last time.
In the meantime, make it as quick and effortless as possible to capture new data, and use search tools like org-ql when you need to find something.