org tutorial

org tutorial

http://dto.github.com/notebook/orgtutorial.html

Introduction

Org-mode is a personal information management and outlining tool forEmacs. This document is intended to give the reader a "feel" fororg-mode and to teach basic usage with step-by-step instructions andplentiful screenshots. It is not intended to replace the manual, asonly a subset of org-mode's features are covered.

This tutorial has been translated into French, Japanese, Chinese, andKorean. Special thanks to the translators.

Obtaining org-mode

You can download org-mode from the org-mode home page. You shoulddownload at least the latest version to follow along with this tutorial.

Installation

Add the following to your .emacs:

(add-to-list 'load-path "PATH_TO_WHERE_YOU_UNPACKED_ORGMODE")
(require 'org-install)
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.org$" . org-mode))
(define-key global-map "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
(define-key global-map "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(setq org-log-done t)

This will make sure org gets loaded, and some basic global keycombinations are defined. We'll go over what "org-store-link" and"org-agenda" do later in this document.

One more thing—it's best to set aside a separate directory whereyour org files will be kept. I recommend using ~/org.

The basics

This section illustrates basic org-mode usage by showing how I usedorg-mode to create this document.

Creating a new file

If you've configured your Emacs initialization file as suggestedabove, Emacs should enter org-mode whenever you visit or create a filewith the extension ".org".

I created a new file called "OrgTutorial.org" and saw the "Org"indicator in the modeline, showing that we've entered org-mode.

Simple task list

First I entered a headline called "Tasks" to keep tasks under. Thisisn't necessary but is often convenient, especially when you want tokeep tasks separate from the body of a document you're writing.

First-level headlines begin with one star; second-level headlinesbegin with two stars, and so on.

In org-mode, TODO items are always headlines. I entered a TODO itemfor "Start new org file for tutorial."

This is a bit silly, because we've already started a new file. So,let's mark the TODO item DONE by moving the cursor onto that line andhitting C-c C-t, which runs the command org-todo.

Here is the result:

Notice how org-mode uses a timestamp to record when a TODO item wasclosed.

Let's add some more TODO items. Position the cursor on the next line,and hit M-shift-RET to call org-insert-todo-heading. You can hitit several times to add several TODOs.

Using headlines to structure a document

Often the best way to organize your ideas is an outline. My next stepis to outline the different topics of the tutorial. By doing this, youbreak up the intimidating blank page into a series ofless-intimidating smaller chunks. Then it becomes easier to fill themin.

Remember that one star begins a first-level heading, and two starsbegin a second-level heading. If you need deeper nesting, go ahead anduse three or more stars!

Here is what it looked like after I finished outlining the document:

Notice I marked "Outline document" as DONE after I finished.

Filling in the sections

You can easily add body text underneath any headline.

Links to other places

In the section on "Obtaining Org-mode" I need to provide a link to the org-mode website. A special bracket syntax is used when linking:

[[link][description]]

Watch how I first type the link and description, leaving open the last bracket:

Then when I type the last bracket, the link "collapses" and simply shows the description.

Try moving the cursor over the link and press C-c C-o for org-open-at-point.

You can also link to local files. Try visiting another file—for example, your emacs initialization file. Then hit C-c l to call org-store-link （在Dired模式下，保存文件路径，用于org-insert-link）. You'll see a message that a link was stored to the current location in the file you're visiting.

Then switch back to your org-mode buffer and paste the link using C-c C-l to call org-insert-link. (You may need to press the arrow keys to scroll through and find the link you just recorded.)

Overviews of a document

By this time, my document is getting longer and I can no longer fit it all on one screen. Org-mode makes it easy to get an overview of your document by pressing shift-TAB, org-shifttab.

Notice that just the top-level headings are shown. You can hit shift-TAB again to show all headings, including TODO items:

Then hit it again to show a normal view of the document, with section bodies shown:

Adding notes to a task

You can put as much text as you want under a TODO item's heading. In fact, you can even have subheadings under a TODO, and TODOs withinTODOs!

Being able to annotate tasks makes it easy to collect related links and thoughts along with a task. Being able to nest tasks is great for modeling workflow—quite often, a larger task is broken into smaller subtasks you want to check off as you do them.

A taste of advanced features

Before we finish, we'll touch on org-mode's global TODO list,scheduling, and agenda features. These are used to combine relevant TODO items from different org files into a prioritized, chronological display. You can also use it to see which tasks were completed, and when.

Setup

First you must set the variable org-agenda-files so that org-mode will know which files to search for TODOs and scheduled items.

Let's imagine you already have several org files—say, one for work,one for home, and one for school.

Then you'd add the following to your emacs initialization file:

(setq org-agenda-files (list "~/org/work.org"
                             "~/org/school.org" 
                             "~/org/home.org"))

The global TODO list

Press org-agenda | t to enter the global todo list. Org-mode will scan the files in org-agenda-files and present a listing of all the open TODO items:

You can move the cursor around to the different todo items, and hit "t" to mark an item DONE, or hit RET to jump to the source file where the TODO is located.

Scheduling tasks and using the agenda

Let's say I want to schedule "Finish document" for today. I move the cursor to the line after the TODO item "Finish document", and hit C-c C-s to run org-schedule. The calendar pops up, and I can either enter or click the desired date:

Once I select the date, org-mode inserts a scheduling timestamp after the TODO item:

Now save your file, and hit org-agenda | a. A display of this week's scheduled items are displayed:

Now press "l" (lowercase L) to turn on log display（toggle log mode on and off）. This displays the all finished tasks and their completion times.

Farewell

This has been only a brief tour of org-mode. More excitement awaits you at the online org-mode manual.

Date: 2011-08-02 19:51:39 EDT

Author: David O'Toole

Org version 7.7 with Emacs version 24

Validate XHTML 1.0