[Orgmode] Re: Collaborate with heretics

[Sébastien Vauban]

Hi Andrea,

andrea wrote:
> I try to be a prophet of emacs and org-mode but sometimes it's just a
> loss of time.
> Even very skilled informatics weren't convinced, sometimes they didn't
> like it sometimes they just didn't want to spend time on it.
>
> Once it happened that a friend of mine that was working with excel
> tables saw how the text was flowing nicely on my org-mode buffer.
> He was amazed and wanted to know everything and use it.
>
> I was very happy about and I installed all the necessary, but then it
> didn't work out.
> It's just too "alien" for people used to work with office (bleah).
>
> Emacs is not easy, org-mode also adds a lot of complexity (even if it's
> really elegant and clear), and if both are not used daily it could
> become more a pain than a pleasure.
>
> But I'm convinced there's nothing more powerful on earth than org-mode
> for working with plain text files.
>
> So my question is a bit egoistic in fact, I want it whenever possible
> also forcing other people to do it.
>
> The other way for serious work is anyway latex, which is not at all
> easier to manage.

I completely share your observations, and your convictions on this (Emacs,
Org-mode and LaTeX).

I must admit, as well, that I'd have been (and stayed there) in the category
of the guys that don't see the advantages of those (and are reluctant because
against Emacs and LaTeX because of their unattractive sides) if I hadn't had a
colleague in my office that convinced me, thanks to a small set of good chosen
points: things that helped me work less for an even better result (such as
LaTeX for automatic generation of contents with some bash scripting, or
pcl-csv integration into Emacs, with easy diff capabilities, etc.).


> Regarding the org-lite, I think it's quite difficult to create it, the
> text manipulation which is done is really dynamic, a normal grammar
> would not be enough.
>
> But I guess in org-mobile there's code that could be very useful for
> an org-lite, is there a plan to port that program to osx/windows/linux?

However, I don't how to get more people on board. It is true (and normal) that
it takes a bit more of effort in the beginning. Difficult to avoid that --
that dream is just too much. However, they still are potentialities with the
Wiki stuff I'm still assessing (waiting it to be "perfect" before being the
prophet in my company):

- Blorgit
- IkiWiki

Best regards,
  Seb

-- 
Sébastien Vauban