org-mode: outlines & meeting minutes + others (create / export html)

Emacs

Author

Vinh Nguyen

Published

July 15, 2009

So I've recently discovered org-mode for emacs. I don't need to put much references up as a simple google search for org-mode should yield many references, especially its home page (there, u can find many references to start using org-mode).

It has many features, but what I personally will use often is outlining and taking notes, especially making meeting agendas and meeting minutes [for my youth group]. I love how easy it is to move things around, and especially how you can export it to ascii, latex/pdf, and html; i usually export to html (C-c C-e h or C-c C-e b), and print to pdf.

I don't think i will use the agenda and calendar system often; even though i love emacs, i rely on google calendar for this stuff since i sync things to my phone, ical (mac), on the web, etc…i have access to my calendar anytime and anywhere. Also, org-mode has a great html export, has a great table mode (for latex AND html). you can reference things very easily (html), and can create html projects. I might consider doing this for some of my websites in the near future (although i am following in love w/ google sites, it is not 100% suitable for all situations).

This is what I have in my .emacs file for org-mode:

;; Org-mode settings
(require 'org-install)
(require 'org)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.org$" . org-mode))
(global-set-key "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
(global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(global-font-lock-mode 1)
;; turn on soft wrapping mode for org mode
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook
(lambda () (setq truncate-lines nil)))
(setq user-mail-address "vinhdizzo@gmail.com")

Here is a video that the creator of org-mode gave at google corp:

NOTE: On my Mac, I'm using carbon emacs (22), and it comes with a very OLD version of org-mode. I had to: delete the org files in Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/textmodes and download and install the new org-mode. I added where files are in (path) into .emacs:

(add-to-list 'load-path "/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp")