Comment by IshKebab
1 day ago
Hmm with the way people go on about it I always assumed there was more to Org mode than "Markdown for Emacs", but this post makes it sound exactly like that.
He's also not exactly gaining credibility with "Markdown is useless because it's not standardised; there are lots of slightly different implementations"... Well yeah that's mildly annoying but it's still very useful! And then he completely throws away all credibility with "this isn't a problem with Org mode because Emacs is the only implementation!".
Can anyone tell me an actual reason to use Org mode over Markdown?
> I always assumed there was more to Org mode than "Markdown for Emacs", but this post makes it sound exactly like that.
That is because the post focuses on org-mode: the markup language. But there is also org-mode: the agenda tracker, org-mode: the literate programming system, org-mode: the spreadsheet, org-mode: the website publishing system, org-mode: the document writing system, org-mode the time-tracking system, org-mode: the personal wiki, etc.
>Can anyone tell me an actual reason to use Org mode over Markdown?
I think the reason in general is simply that org-mode is better, i.e. more carefully defined. I'll mention the things I like more specifically:
- Link syntax in markdown is something I never remember how it goes. Org-mode is [[link][description]].
- Text styles in org-mode make more sense. In markdown, * is used for italics, * for bold. Additionally, * is for lists, which might be confusing.
- Markdown blocks are freaking awful and seem to work by luck more than anything else. Code blocks even worse -- they are made by indenting 4 spaces or a tab! I couldn't come up with a worse way to do that even if I tried. Org-mode has clear #BEGIN_xxx / #END_xxx blocks.
- Markdown has a weird YAML frontmatter syntax. Org-mode has keywords which can be attached to the whole document and properties, which can be attached to every heading.
- Org-mode has tags.
- Org-mode has timestamps.
> Link syntax in markdown is something I never remember how it goes
I can remember it fairly easily. [Link](url). Very unconvinced by this.
> Text styles in org-mode make more sense. In markdown, * is used for italics, * for bold. Additionally, * is for lists, which might be confusing.
* for lists is what I would naturally use so I think that's better than - (but Markdown actually supports both). I'll give you * for italics though. Definitely should have been bold.
> - Markdown blocks are freaking awful and seem to work by luck more than anything else. Code blocks even worse -- they are made by indenting 4 spaces or a tab! I couldn't come up with a worse way to do that even if I tried. Org-mode has clear #BEGIN_xxx / #END_xxx blocks.
Sorry but there's no way #BEGIN_xxx is better than ``` or 4-space indent.
> Markdown has a weird YAML frontmatter syntax.
It doesn't. That's some extension. Maybe Pandoc?
> Org-mode has tags.
Yeah they look kind of useful.
> Org-mode has timestamps.
Can't say I've ever remotely wanted that feature...
Overall it seems like a wash.
> Sorry but there's no way #BEGIN_xxx is better than ```
Ok, I can give you that as a subjective thing you might have.
> or 4-space indent.
Ok, you saying this practically invalidates every single opinion you have on everything. So thanks for playing, I won.
Seriously though, you don't have to like org.