Emacs Org Mode for Big Sur or substitution?

January 26, 2021 5:58 AM

I have notes on many things spread out amongst many applications, because Chaos is the only god, I guess, but I do not like it. Also some of those apps have been rendered unusable because they don't care about accessibility and I can't stare at BRIGHT WHITE for very long. (Freaking Basecamp.) I keep seeing Org Mode for Emacs heralded as the solution to all things, but then from what I can tell, there isn't an Emacs for Big Sur (Mac OS 11.1). Is this...right? Why? Please help me.

Am I just SOL? Does Org Mode work with some other text editor? Will a substitution require more technical skill than I currently have? (Almost certainly; honestly emacs org mode was gonna be a Thing anyway.)

What attracts me to emacs org mode is the searchability and the standardization, and then, contradictorily, the ability to customize it as I figure out what my needs are. If I am SOL because Apple is being a dick (which...), is there another, comparable option?

posted by schadenfrau to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

I was able to download Emacs for Mac OS X, and then running it by right-clicking and selecting “Open”.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:15 AM on January 26, 2021

As an alternative, if you already use something like Homebrew for Mac OS, Emacs is available in their repositories.
posted by Alensin at 6:28 AM on January 26, 2021

John Heideman's Notes-mode for Emacs is great, but I may be the only person who still uses it. Notes-mode is not as complicated as Org-mode, it indexes notes and entries by categories, and it has good search capabilities. Perl scripts do the heavy lifting and it can be set up to update its indices daily.

I use Notes-mode for journal entries and general notes. Entries are plain text. I have over twenty years' worth of notes which I transfer to new devices as needed, and the archive directory is just a few hundred kilobytes.
posted by Agave at 7:01 AM on January 26, 2021

If you're using something like emacs, you probably are already or should be a brew user. Then you can just do "brew install emacs".

I however am a vi use ("brew install vim"), and am not supposed to like you, though my holy war reflexes have been dulled with time.

Oh I also am not on Big Sur yet so if there is some fundamental issue with emacs on Big Sur this may not work I guess.
posted by cmm at 7:28 AM on January 26, 2021

You can use Org Mode with non-Emacs editors, see this post for a few examples. The bulk of resources for Org Mode and so forth will probably be aimed at Emacs, though.

If you're not an Emacs adherent, though, and want something a little easier, cross-platform (though less customizable) I might recommend Joplin. It's open source. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. It's a bit fussy to set up sync between, say, macOS and iOS, but it's doable.

You just write in Markdown, it supports sync via Webdav (what I use), Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.

Strongly recommend giving it a try before embarking on trying to learn Emacs + Orgmode. Worst case scenario it'll export your notes as Markdown.
posted by jzb at 7:38 AM on January 26, 2021

If I'm reading your question correctly you're not already an Emacs user, and you'd just be using Emacs to get to Org Mode. If that's the case you may find a lower barrier to entry through the Atom text editor with the Organized package.
posted by fedward at 8:50 AM on January 26, 2021

On a Mac, you can use Homebrew to install emacs, and then add org-mode to emacs via the instructions here.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:18 PM on January 26, 2021

I am running Aquamacs on Big Sur and it works fine for me (despite the fact that youths these days will never have heard of Aqua).
posted by away for regrooving at 1:50 AM on January 27, 2021

Others have recommended Homebrew. I'll just add that it is extremely fast and easy to install Homebrew and then use it to install Emacs.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 5:21 AM on January 27, 2021