I’m not a power user of orgmode yet it is a piece of software i use daily. My emacs diary.org file has around 100 sexp entries, plus events, appointments spanning 7yrs. The problem i had was sexp entries show up in the emacs diary but would not show up in any mobile client, as usual with org there are many ways to achieve the same thing. For example a sexp entry could look like %%(diary-cyclic 14 1 10 2025) Blue bin so is a reminder to put the right colour bin out every 2wks works great when in emacs but outside? this entry is better, simpler and achieves the same results;

Is it possible to use org without emacs?

For most people it would seem from various internet searches that what keeps them using emacs is orgmode. It is certainly true for me that 75% of my emacs usage is purely org based with the rest being python (yes i know its not good python), tramp and the odd text edit though i still find SublimeText an easier option for somethings. Though to answer the question posed at the start the answer was always no, yes we have the various mobile options such as orgzly, orgro, metanote, plainorg but some of these have limited functionality and personal opinion ahead … I would say are more an extension of the desktop org allowing you to view your data and capture basic info and for the desktop you needed emacs but

[2022-11-11 Fri] renamed this article because in my mind “parser” indicates something more than this is. This is just a way to read an org file and extract headings identifed with a specific tag and only the linked files for that heading/tag not all the files i have stored in the data directory.

My workflow relies on orgmode, currently (may change ¹) all orgfiles for each project reside in a top level folder and then i create a subfolder for each project into which all data is stored (emails\images\project files etc) and the org file links to these eg;

~ top level folder

• project 1 orgfile
• project 2 orgfile
• project_1_data
  • email_1_for_project_1
  • image_for_project_1
• project_2_data
  • email_1_for_project_2
  • image_for_project_2

When it comes to image capture i either launch greenshot and save everything to a temporary capture folder or launch the windows snipping tool & then choose where to save the image the issue with this workflow is that its not smooth. After i have captured the image there is another or several steps to insert the image into the main org file and hence become usuable.

If like me you spend all your working life in MS products and yet you still want to or do rely on orgmode to give you some semblance of sanity, then this might help. Its not a bidirectional synchronisation and i only wanted the appointments for today to show. It queries Outlook for any confirmed appointments in the calendar and then outputs a single orgmode file in my main org folder which is automatically added to the agenda. The following code originally taken from https://sukhbinder.wordpress.com/2020/04/08/get-outlook-entries-with-python-3/ then gutted and adapted for my needs queries MS Outlook for the events in the calendar. I’ve restricted it for one day but changing the variable num_days can output more if you wanted.

Looking back i think this may have been the better way to start a journey with orgmode and emacs. My dotemacs file was a mess of code i didnt understand, half tried packages and poorly written comments. If you’ve spent any time searching for emacs help and on orgmode/dotemacs etc then i’m sure you will have heard of literate programming.

There is a wealth of information on the subject for example on using python;

UPDATE [2021-01-03 Sun 13:30]

After posting a reply on reddit to request for help on emacs batch mode and the agenda i realised when i migrated from the pi based server to the macmini replacement i had not re-setup batch mode myself, so following my own advice below i recreated the dotemacs added in the css export from a good working installation, altered the org-super-agenda as described here and typed in the magic code:

As the sub-heading to this site suggests this maybe a place to find poor python! I was updating my photography galleries and in doing so creating ox-hugo clickable image links so that the main page shows the thumbnail and a click brings up the main image. Anyway its a pain to go C-c C-l for each and every file so i cobbled together a dirty and quick python script to trawl a directory and create a text file with the necesary ox-hugo links for clickable images.

Success! previously i mentioned difficulty in getting the agenda output using the command line in HTML form however now after a bit of baking in today’s glorious sunshine i figured it out. As normal i’d overlooked the obvious and discounted all the info i had reviewed.

My old command looks like

/usr/local/bin/emacs -Q --batch --load ~/.emacs --eval='(org-batch-agenda "c" org-agenda-files (quote ("/srv/dev-disk-by-id-usb-Seagate_Portable_NAA570VH-0-0-part1/drakx/orgfiles/")) org-agenda-span (quote week))' > /srv/dev-disk-by-id-usb-Seagate_Portable_NAA570VH-0-0-part1/drakx/orgfiles/agenda.txt

and this is entered into the scheduled job section of the OMV server setup;

• The capture scenes look like this;
• The task element
• Finally if all goes well
• The “read my agenda” scene
• XML for the main task above looks like;
• XML for the photocapture scene

Yes i know orgzly exists and whilst it is an excellent app it just doesn’t feel right or perhaps quick enough for me, I use it but only as a “refer to” method ie a viewer of pgp encrypted passwords or other entries and not as a capture/entry or agenda viewing system and yet because i wanted a way of quickly capturing tasks & sometimes tasks with photos I created several scenes in Tasker which work for me, using these i have to simply click an icon and can have a task populated with the right orgmode format, date etc and ready to enter text. The capture scenes write to a staging_ground.org file which is automagically sync’d via syncthing to my main machine and the agenda scene simply reads the cron-generated text output of the org agenda.

OK so i dont pretend to be an all knowing computer geek in fact just the opposite i’m aging computer enthusiast that grew up in the golden age of electronics and computers but i do have some understanding from starting out with BBC’s,Spectrums and hacking high score tables or re-programming the header so the game could run from microdrive instead of C90 tape :wink: through to TCL for aero engine data analysis and then python for a home monitoring system but my decision to start afresh, move to a new domain and use hugo + ox-hugo has had me reaching for a glass of the strong stuff and several relaxing hours getting my arse handed to me on COD!

Essentially i decided (for whatever whimsical reason!) to move from the emacs diary to keeping everything in a specific org file. So previously my diary simply contained lines such as;

Information overload - over the years i’ve collected terabytes of data in different forms, books, cd’s, pdf’s, word documents, emails and so on. Finding that one bit of critical info is a pain, my work laptop has over 45g of standards, specifications and so on all stuff that should be referenced yet because it is often buried in subdirs or perhaps i’ve given the document i created a title which made sense at the time but months/years later means nothing i cannot find that which i need.