I bypass org-agenda for mobile viewing by scheduling a job to call org-html-export-to-html on each .org file. Dropbox mobile works well for viewing the exported HTML. There is zero hassle once the script is running.
Here's the rake script I use: https://gist.github.com/shoover/d75a58074be9894bfc54. The core emacs batch command for html export is simple enough. The rake-isms are there to find all the .org files in the given directories and check timestamps. There is optional elisp to deal with loading my latest org-mode and not the built-in one. The INDEX business was added to deal with MobileOrg but I no longer use that. Read-only HTML in Dropbox is good enough for me.
Agreed that internal linking is a pain point. I just use `C-c l` and suffer the dead links.
Agreed regarding remote editing. Gmail drafts "transport" are what I end up using. It's not terrible but could be better.
Oh well... ;). Though it might seem like it, it doesn't give me any problems. I usually remember more-less how I named a file with a particular thought I need, and if I can't, there's always grep to the rescue :).
Thanks for the script, I'll try to adapt to suit my needs :).
> Gmail drafts "transport" are what I end up using. It's not terrible but could be better.
Yeah, I usually send e-mails to myself.
I'm thinking, maybe I'll eventually get around to spin up a Dropbox daemon on a VPS and make it sync only the wiki/ directory, and then put some simple "save snippet" CGI script to have a browser capture enpoint.
Makes sense. ido-mode helps. Despite the fact that this is an anti-agenda thread, I should report that I also just discovered how easy it is to search across agenda files by word or regexp. It's like org aware grep. You would need some elisp to load all your .org files into org-agenda-files.
I've always used a handful of very large files, which probably doesn't have any particular advantage other than less buffer switching and facilitating isearch over grep. However, outline levels quickly get deep in large files.
> I'm thinking, maybe I'll eventually get around to spin up a Dropbox daemon on a VPS and make it sync only the wiki/ directory, and then put some simple "save snippet" CGI script to have a browser capture enpoint.
Sounds good.
Especially with flx-ido (fuzzy matching for names) and ido-vertical-mode; now it's just fun to use :).
> this is an anti-agenda thread
I used to use agenda for doing GTD for over a year sometimes ago; it was awesome for aggregating calendars and TODO lists from multiple files, but I never got around to learning other interesting features. Maybe it's the time to try again :).
> However, outline levels quickly get deep in large files.
Yup. I still have a lot of deeply-nested long .org files - those are usually project-specific, and contain ideas, design notes, TODO lists, etc. But for personal wiki, it feels more natural for me to keep every topic in a separate file (mind you, some of them are quite long; my notes from "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning" are 750+ lines of 4-level deep nesting, and I'm nowhere near finished :)). I fear even thinking about coalescing them into a single file; when your file hits 10k lines (like one of my project notebooks at work), you find out you need to keep it fully expanded, because navigating with top headers folded gets kind of slow.
Personally, I use Dropbox + org-mode based personal wiki. I store each important topic in its own file, and the whole thing gets synced between all my machines. It basically looks like this:
http://imgur.com/Xgpzj5f
I heavily use links between documents, to outside sources, and back-up anything important by downloading PDFs/pictures and saving plaintext in an org file.
My current pain points:
- internal linking - I try to avoid linking from .org file to another, because I expect that if I move a piece of text to another file (or even subheading, for heading-relative links), I won't be able to find all the links that broke in the other files. So I created a "dispatcher" file, that maps links to destinations, so when I move something, I only have one place to check. Unfortunately, this requires two clicks to traverse to your destination, and is basically annoying. So I'm looking for another solution for broken incoming links.
- mobile viewing - I don't use the org-agenda based flow that is apparently required for org-mode, and the Android is too stupid to let Dropbox open my org files (without workarounds that require a lot of tapping on the screen), because there's nothing registered to open files with .org extension sigh. I'm yet to find a good solution for this (even just a simple text editor that could register itself as an app for .org files would be immensely helpful).
- web viewing - sometimes I'd like to browse my personal wiki from someone else's machine, or maybe even link to a particular page; for that I'd love to have a web-viewable version of my wiki. I want it to work seamlessly, i.e. without having to manually regenerate or commit everything. This could be doable with Dropbox and a bit of org-export scripting, but I'm yet to get around to do it.
- web writing - sometimes I'd like to dump some notes into my wiki from someone else's machine; I haven't figured out how to make it work.