This manual is for Org version 6.28d.
Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover texts being “A GNU Manual,” and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”(a) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual. Buying copies from the FSF supports it in developing GNU and promoting software freedom.”
This document is part of a collection distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License. If you want to distribute this document separately from the collection, you can do so by adding a copy of the license to the document, as described in section 6 of the license.
--- The Detailed Node Listing ---
Introduction
Document Structure
Archiving
Tables
The spreadsheet
Hyperlinks
Internal links
TODO Items
Extended use of TODO keywords
Progress logging
Tags
Properties and Columns
Column view
Defining columns
Dates and Times
Creating timestamps
Deadlines and scheduling
Capture
Remember
Agenda Views
The built-in agenda views
Presentation and sorting
Custom agenda views
Embedded LaTeX
Exporting
Markup rules
HTML export
LaTeX and PDF export
DocBook export
Publishing
Configuration
Sample configuration
Miscellaneous
Interaction with other packages
Hacking
Tables and lists in arbitrary syntax
Org is a mode for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, and doing project planning with a fast and effective plain-text system.
Org develops organizational tasks around NOTES files that contain lists or information about projects as plain text. Org is implemented on top of Outline mode, which makes it possible to keep the content of large files well structured. Visibility cycling and structure editing help to work with the tree. Tables are easily created with a built-in table editor. Org supports TODO items, deadlines, timestamps, and scheduling. It dynamically compiles entries into an agenda that utilizes and smoothly integrates much of the Emacs calendar and diary. Plain text URL-like links connect to websites, emails, Usenet messages, BBDB entries, and any files related to the projects. For printing and sharing of notes, an Org file can be exported as a structured ASCII file, as HTML, or (TODO and agenda items only) as an iCalendar file. It can also serve as a publishing tool for a set of linked web pages.
An important design aspect that distinguishes Org from, for example, Planner/Muse is that it encourages you to store every piece of information only once. In Planner, you have project pages, day pages and possibly other files, duplicating some information such as tasks. In Org, you only have notes files. In your notes you mark entries as tasks, and label them with tags and timestamps. All necessary lists, like a schedule for the day, the agenda for a meeting, tasks lists selected by tags, etc., are created dynamically when you need them.
Org keeps simple things simple. When first fired up, it should feel like a straightforward, easy to use outliner. Complexity is not imposed, but a large amount of functionality is available when you need it. Org is a toolbox and can be used in different ways, for example as:
• an outline extension with visibility cycling and structure editing • an ASCII system and table editor for taking structured notes • an ASCII table editor with spreadsheet-like capabilities • a TODO list editor • a full agenda and planner with deadlines and work scheduling • an environment to implement David Allen's GTD system • a basic database application • a simple hypertext system, with HTML and LaTeX export • a publishing tool to create a set of interlinked webpages
Org's automatic, context-sensitive table editor with spreadsheet capabilities can be integrated into any major mode by activating the minor Orgtbl mode. Using a translation step, it can be used to maintain tables in arbitrary file types, for example in LaTeX. The structure editing and list creation capabilities can be used outside Org with the minor Orgstruct mode.
There is a website for Org which provides links to the newest version of Org, as well as additional information, frequently asked questions (FAQ), links to tutorials, etc. This page is located at http://orgmode.org.
Important: If Org is part of the Emacs distribution or an XEmacs package, please skip this section and go directly to Activation.
If you have downloaded Org from the Web, either as a distribution .zip or .tar file, or as a Git archive, you must take the following steps to install it: Go into the unpacked Org distribution directory and edit the top section of the file Makefile. You must set the name of the Emacs binary (likely either emacs or xemacs), and the paths to the directories where local Lisp and Info files are kept. If you don't have access to the system-wide directories, you can simply run Org directly from the distribution directory by adding the lisp subdirectory to the Emacs load path. To do this, add the following line to .emacs:
(setq load-path (cons "~/path/to/orgdir/lisp" load-path))
If you plan to use code from the contrib subdirectory, do a similar step for this directory:
(setq load-path (cons "~/path/to/orgdir/contrib/lisp" load-path))
XEmacs users now need to install the file noutline.el from the xemacs sub-directory of the Org distribution. Use the command:
make install-noutline
Now byte-compile the Lisp files with the shell command:
make
If you are running Org from the distribution directory, this is all. If you want to install into the system directories, use (as administrator)
make install
Installing Info files is system dependent, because of differences in the install-info program. In Debian it copies the info files into the correct directory and modifies the info directory file. In many other systems, the files need to be copied to the correct directory separately, and install-info then only modifies the directory file. Check your system documentation to find out which of the following commands you need:
make install-info
make install-info-debian
Then add to .emacs:
;; This line only if Org is not part of the X/Emacs distribution.
(require 'org-install)
Do not forget to activate Org as described in the following section.
Add the following lines to your .emacs file. The last three lines define global keys for the commands org-store-link, org-agenda, and org-iswitchb—please choose suitable keys yourself.
;; The following lines are always needed. Choose your own keys.
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.org\\'" . org-mode))
(global-set-key "\C-cl" 'org-store-link)
(global-set-key "\C-ca" 'org-agenda)
(global-set-key "\C-cb" 'org-iswitchb)
Furthermore, you must activate font-lock-mode in Org
buffers, because significant functionality depends on font-locking being
active. You can do this with either one of the following two lines
(XEmacs users must use the second option):
(global-font-lock-mode 1) ; for all buffers
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'turn-on-font-lock) ; Org buffers only
With this setup, all files with extension ‘.org’ will be put into Org mode. As an alternative, make the first line of a file look like this:
MY PROJECTS -*- mode: org; -*-
which will select Org mode for this buffer no matter what
the file's name is. See also the variable
org-insert-mode-line-in-empty-file.
Many commands in Org work on the region if the region is active. To make
use of this, you need to have transient-mark-mode
(zmacs-regions in XEmacs) turned on. In Emacs 23 this is the default,
in Emacs 22 you need to do this yourself with
(transient-mark-mode 1)
If you do not like transient-make-mode, you can create an
active region by using the mouse to select a region, or pressing
C-<SPC> twice before moving the cursor.
If you find problems with Org, or if you have questions, remarks, or ideas about it, please mail to the Org mailing list emacs-orgmode@gnu.org. If you are not a member of the mailing list, your mail will be reviewed by a moderator and then passed through to the list.
For bug reports, please provide as much information as possible, including the version information of Emacs (C-h v emacs-version <RET>) and Org (C-h v org-version <RET>), as well as the Org related setup in .emacs. If an error occurs, a backtrace can be very useful (see below on how to create one). Often a small example file helps, along with clear information about:
If working with Org produces an error with a message you don't understand, you may have hit a bug. The best way to report this is by providing, in addition to what was mentioned above, a backtrace. This is information from the built-in debugger about where and how the error occurred. Here is how to produce a useful backtrace:
C-u M-x org-reload RET
or select Org -> Refresh/Reload -> Reload Org uncompiled from the
menu.
Options menu and select Enter Debugger on Error
(XEmacs has this option in the Troubleshooting sub-menu).
Org uses three types of keywords: TODO keywords, tags, and property names. In this manual we use the following conventions:
TODOWAITINGbossARCHIVEReleasePRIORITYOrg is based on Outline mode and provides flexible commands to edit the structure of the document.
Org is implemented on top of Outline mode. Outlines allow a document to be organized in a hierarchical structure, which (at least for me) is the best representation of notes and thoughts. An overview of this structure is achieved by folding (hiding) large parts of the document to show only the general document structure and the parts currently being worked on. Org greatly simplifies the use of outlines by compressing the entire show/hide functionality into a single command, org-cycle, which is bound to the <TAB> key.
Headlines define the structure of an outline tree. The headlines in Org start with one or more stars, on the left margin1. For example:
* Top level headline
** Second level
*** 3rd level
some text
*** 3rd level
more text
* Another top level headline
Some people find the many stars too noisy and would prefer an outline that has whitespace followed by a single star as headline starters. Clean view, describes a setup to realize this.
An empty line after the end of a subtree is considered part of it and
will be hidden when the subtree is folded. However, if you leave at
least two empty lines, one empty line will remain visible after folding
the subtree, in order to structure the collapsed view. See the
variable org-cycle-separator-lines to modify this behavior.
Outlines make it possible to hide parts of the text in the buffer. Org uses just two commands, bound to <TAB> and S-<TAB> to change the visibility in the buffer.
,-> FOLDED -> CHILDREN -> SUBTREE --.
'-----------------------------------'
The cursor must be on a headline for this to work2. When the cursor is at the beginning of the buffer and the first line is not a headline, then <TAB> actually runs global cycling (see below)3. Also when called with a prefix argument (C-u <TAB>), global cycling is invoked.
,-> OVERVIEW -> CONTENTS -> SHOW ALL --.
'--------------------------------------'
When S-<TAB> is called with a numeric prefix argument N, the CONTENTS view up to headlines of level N will be shown. Note that inside tables, S-<TAB> jumps to the previous field.
When Emacs first visits an Org file, the global state is set to
OVERVIEW, i.e.,
configured through the variable org-startup-folded, or on a
per-file basis by adding one of the following lines anywhere in the
buffer:
#+STARTUP: overview
#+STARTUP: content
#+STARTUP: showall
Furthermore, any entries with a ‘VISIBILITY’ property (see Properties and Columns) will get their visibility adapted accordingly. Allowed values
for this property are folded, children, content, and
all.
The following commands jump to other headlines in the buffer.
<TAB> Cycle visibility.
<down> / <up> Next/previous visible headline.
<RET> Select this location.
/ Do a Sparse-tree search
The following keys work if you turn off org-goto-auto-isearch
n / p Next/previous visible headline.
f / b Next/previous headline same level.
u One level up.
0-9 Digit argument.
q Quit
org-treat-insert-todo-heading-as-state-change.
org-yank-adjusted-subtrees and
org-yank-folded-subtrees, Org's internal yank command will
paste subtrees folded and in a clever way, using the same command as C-c
C-x C-y. With the default settings, no level adjustment will take place,
but the yanked tree will be folded unless doing so would swallow text
previously visible. Any prefix argument to this command will force a normal
yank to be executed, with the prefix passed along. A good way to
force a normal yank is C-u C-y. If you use yank-pop after a
yank, it will yank previous kill items plainly, without adjustment and
folding.
org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift.
When there is an active region (Transient Mark mode), promotion and demotion work on all headlines in the region. To select a region of headlines, it is best to place both point and mark at the beginning of a line, mark at the beginning of the first headline, and point at the line just after the last headline to change. Note that when the cursor is inside a table (see Tables), the Meta-Cursor keys have different functionality.
When a project represented by a (sub)tree is finished, you may want to move the tree out of the way and to stop it from contributing to the agenda. Org mode knows two ways of archiving. You can mark a tree with the ARCHIVE tag, or you can move an entire (sub)tree to a different location.
A headline that is marked with the ARCHIVE tag (see Tags) stays at its location in the outline tree, but behaves in the following way:
org-cycle-open-archived-trees. Also normal outline commands like
show-all will open archived subtrees.
org-sparse-tree-open-archived-trees.
org-agenda-skip-archived-trees, in which case these trees will always
be included. In the agenda you can press the v key to get archives
temporarily included.
org-export-with-archived-trees.
org-columns-skip-arrchived-trees is configured to nil.
The following commands help managing the ARCHIVE tag:
Once an entire project is finished, you may want to move it to a different location. Org can move it to an Archive Sibling in the same tree, to a different tree in the current file, or to a different file, the archive file.
org-archive-location. Context information that could be
lost, like the file name, the category, inherited tags, and the TODO
state will be stored as properties in the entry.
The default archive location is a file in the same directory as the
current file, with the name derived by appending _archive to the
current file name. For information and examples on how to change this,
see the documentation string of the variable
org-archive-location. There is also an in-buffer option for
setting this variable, for example6:
#+ARCHIVE: %s_done::
If you would like to have a special ARCHIVE location for a single entry
or a (sub)tree, give the entry an :ARCHIVE: property with the
location as the value (see Properties and Columns).
When a subtree is moved, it receives a number of special properties that
record context information like the file from where the entry came, its
outline path the archiving time etc. Configure the variable
org-archive-save-context-info to adjust the amount of information
added.
An important feature of Org mode is the ability to construct sparse trees for selected information in an outline tree, so that the entire document is folded as much as possible, but the selected information is made visible along with the headline structure above it7. Just try it out and you will see immediately how it works.
Org mode contains several commands creating such trees, all these commands can be accessed through a dispatcher:
For frequently used sparse trees of specific search strings, you can
use the variable org-agenda-custom-commands to define fast
keyboard access to specific sparse trees. These commands will then be
accessible through the agenda dispatcher (see Agenda dispatcher).
For example:
(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
'(("f" occur-tree "FIXME")))
will define the key C-c a f as a shortcut for creating a sparse tree matching the string ‘FIXME’.
The other sparse tree commands select headings based on TODO keywords, tags, or properties and will be discussed later in this manual.
To print a sparse tree, you can use the Emacs command
ps-print-buffer-with-faces which does not print invisible parts
of the document 9.
Or you can use the command C-c C-e v to export only the visible
part of the document and print the resulting file.
Within an entry of the outline tree, hand-formatted lists can provide additional structure. They also provide a way to create lists of checkboxes (see Checkboxes). Org supports editing such lists, and the HTML exporter (see Exporting) parses and formats them.
Org knows ordered lists, unordered lists, and description lists.
Items belonging to the same list must have the same indentation on the first
line. In particular, if an ordered list reaches number ‘10.’, then the
2–digit numbers must be written left-aligned with the other numbers in the
list. Indentation also determines the end of a list item. It ends before
the next line that is indented like the bullet/number, or less. Empty lines
are part of the previous item, so you can have several paragraphs in one
item. If you would like an empty line to terminate all currently open plain
lists, configure the variable org-empty-line-terminates-plain-lists.
Here is an example:
** Lord of the Rings
My favorite scenes are (in this order)
1. The attack of the Rohirrim
2. Eowyn's fight with the witch king
+ this was already my favorite scene in the book
+ I really like Miranda Otto.
3. Peter Jackson being shot by Legolas
- on DVD only
He makes a really funny face when it happens.
But in the end, no individual scenes matter but the film as a whole.
Important actors in this film are:
- Elijah Wood :: He plays Frodo
- Sean Austin :: He plays Sam, Frodo's friend. I still remember
him very well from his role as Mikey Walsh in The Goonies.
Org supports these lists by tuning filling and wrapping commands to deal with
them correctly11, and by exporting them
properly (see Exporting). Since indentation is what governs the
structure of these lists, many structural constructs like #+BEGIN_...
blocks can be indented to signal that they should be part of a list item.
The following commands act on items when the cursor is in the first line of an item (the line with the bullet or number).
org-cycle-include-plain-lists. The level of an item is then
given by the indentation of the bullet/number. Items are always
subordinate to real headlines, however; the hierarchies remain
completely separated.
If org-cycle-include-plain-lists has not been set, <TAB>
fixes the indentation of the current line in a heuristic way.
org-support-shift-select is off. If not, you can still use paragraph
jumping commands like C-<up> and C-<down> to quite
similar effect.
org-support-shift-select.
Sometimes you want to keep information associated with an entry, but you
normally don't want to see it. For this, Org mode has drawers.
Drawers need to be configured with the variable
org-drawers13. Drawers
look like this:
** This is a headline
Still outside the drawer
:DRAWERNAME:
This is inside the drawer.
:END:
After the drawer.
Visibility cycling (see Visibility cycling) on the headline will hide and
show the entry, but keep the drawer collapsed to a single line. In order to
look inside the drawer, you need to move the cursor to the drawer line and
press <TAB> there. Org mode uses the PROPERTIES drawer for
storing properties (see Properties and Columns), and you can also arrange
for state change notes (see Tracking TODO state changes) and clock times
(see Clocking work time) to be stored in a drawer LOGBOOK.
Org-mode uses begin...end blocks for various purposes from including source
code examples (see Literal examples) to capturing time logging
information (see Clocking work time). These blocks can be folded and
unfolded by pressing TAB in the begin line. You can also get all blocks
folded at startup by configuring the variable org-hide-block-startup
or on a per-file basis by using
#+STARTUP: hideblocks
#+STARTUP: nohideblocks
Org mode supports the creation of footnotes. In contrast to the footnote.el package, Org mode's footnotes are designed for work on a larger document, not only for one-off documents like emails. The basic syntax is similar to the one used by footnote.el, i.e., defined in a paragraph that is started by a footnote marker in square brackets in column 0, no indentation allowed. If you need a paragraph break inside a footnote, use the LaTeX idiom ‘\par’. The footnote reference is simply the marker in square brackets, inside text. For example:
The Org homepage[fn:1] now looks a lot better than it used to.
...
[fn:1] The link is: http://orgmode.org
Org mode extends the number-based syntax to named footnotes and optional inline definition. Using plain numbers as markers (as footnote.el does) is supported for backward compatibility, but not encouraged because of possible conflicts with LaTeX snippets (see Embedded LaTeX). Here are the valid references:
[1][fn:name]name is a unique label word, or, for
simplicity of automatic creation, a number.
[fn:: This is the inline definition of this footnote][fn:name: a definition][fn:name] to create additional references.
Footnote labels can be created automatically, or you can create names yourself.
This is handled by the variable org-footnote-auto-label and its
corresponding #+STARTUP keywords, see the docstring of that variable
for details.
The following command handles footnotes:
When the cursor is on a footnote reference, jump to the definition. When it is at a definition, jump to the (first) reference.
Otherwise, create a new footnote. Depending on the variable
org-footnote-define-inline14, the
definition will be placed right into the text as part of the reference, or
separately into the location determined by the variable
org-footnote-section.
When this command is called with a prefix argument, a menu of additional options is offered:
s Sort the footnote definitions by reference sequence. During editing, Org makes no effort to sort footnote definitions into a particular sequence. If you want them sorted, use this command, which will also move entries according toorg-footnote-section. n Normalize the footnotes by collecting all definitions (including inline definitions) into a special section, and then numbering them in sequence. The references will then also be numbers. This is meant to be the final step before finishing a document (e.g., sending off an email). The exporters do this automatically, and so could something likemessage-send-hook. d Delete the footnote at point, and all definitions of and references to it.
If you like the intuitive way the Org mode structure editing and list
formatting works, you might want to use these commands in other modes like
Text mode or Mail mode as well. The minor mode orgstruct-mode makes
this possible. Toggle the mode with M-x orgstruct-mode, or
turn it on by default, for example in Mail mode, with one of:
(add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'turn-on-orgstruct)
(add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'turn-on-orgstruct++)
When this mode is active and the cursor is on a line that looks to Org like a
headline or the first line of a list item, most structure editing commands
will work, even if the same keys normally have different functionality in the
major mode you are using. If the cursor is not in one of those special
lines, Orgstruct mode lurks silently in the shadow. When you use
orgstruct++-mode, Org will also export indentation and autofill
settings into that mode, and detect item context after the first line of an
item.
Org comes with a fast and intuitive table editor. Spreadsheet-like calculations are supported in connection with the Emacs calc package (see the Emacs Calculator manual for more information about the Emacs calculator).
Org makes it easy to format tables in plain ASCII. Any line with ‘|’ as the first non-whitespace character is considered part of a table. ‘|’ is also the column separator. A table might look like this:
| Name | Phone | Age |
|-------+-------+-----|
| Peter | 1234 | 17 |
| Anna | 4321 | 25 |
A table is re-aligned automatically each time you press <TAB> or <RET> or C-c C-c inside the table. <TAB> also moves to the next field (<RET> to the next row) and creates new table rows at the end of the table or before horizontal lines. The indentation of the table is set by the first line. Any line starting with ‘|-’ is considered as a horizontal separator line and will be expanded on the next re-align to span the whole table width. So, to create the above table, you would only type
|Name|Phone|Age|
|-
and then press <TAB> to align the table and start filling in
fields. Even faster would be to type |Name|Phone|Age followed by
C-c <RET>.
When typing text into a field, Org treats <DEL>,
<Backspace>, and all character keys in a special way, so that
inserting and deleting avoids shifting other fields. Also, when
typing immediately after the cursor was moved into a new field
with <TAB>, S-<TAB> or <RET>, the
field is automatically made blank. If this behavior is too
unpredictable for you, configure the variables
org-enable-table-editor and org-table-auto-blank-field.
org-table-copy-increment, integer field
values will be incremented during copy. Integers that are too large will not
be incremented. Also, a 0 prefix argument temporarily disables the
increment. This key is also used by shift-selection and related modes
(see Conflicts).
org-table-export-default-format. You may also use properties
TABLE_EXPORT_FILE and TABLE_EXPORT_FORMAT to specify the file
name and the format for table export in a subtree. Org supports quite
general formats for exported tables. The exporter format is the same as the
format used by Orgtbl radio tables, see Translator functions, for a
detailed description.
If you don't like the automatic table editor because it gets in your way on lines which you would like to start with ‘|’, you can turn it off with
(setq org-enable-table-editor nil)
Then the only table command that still works is C-c C-c to do a manual re-align.
The width of columns is automatically determined by the table editor. And also the alignment of a column is determined automatically from the fraction of number-like versus non-number fields in the column.
Sometimes a single field or a few fields need to carry more text, leading to inconveniently wide columns. To limit15 the width of a column, one field anywhere in the column may contain just the string ‘<N>’ where ‘N’ is an integer specifying the width of the column in characters. The next re-align will then set the width of this column to no more than this value.
|---+------------------------------| |---+--------|
| | | | | <6> |
| 1 | one | | 1 | one |
| 2 | two | ----\ | 2 | two |
| 3 | This is a long chunk of text | ----/ | 3 | This=> |
| 4 | four | | 4 | four |
|---+------------------------------| |---+--------|
Fields that are wider become clipped and end in the string ‘=>’. Note that the full text is still in the buffer, it is only invisible. To see the full text, hold the mouse over the field—a tool-tip window will show the full content. To edit such a field, use the command C-c ` (that is C-c followed by the backquote). This will open a new window with the full field. Edit it and finish with C-c C-c.
When visiting a file containing a table with narrowed columns, the
necessary character hiding has not yet happened, and the table needs to
be aligned before it looks nice. Setting the option
org-startup-align-all-tables will realign all tables in a file
upon visiting, but also slow down startup. You can also set this option
on a per-file basis with:
#+STARTUP: align
#+STARTUP: noalign
If you would like to overrule the automatic alignment of number-rich columns to the right and of string-rich column to the left, you and use ‘<r>’ or ‘<l>’ in a similar fashion. You may also combine alignment and field width like this: ‘<l10>’.
When Org exports tables, it does so by default without vertical lines because that is visually more satisfying in general. Occasionally however, vertical lines can be useful to structure a table into groups of columns, much like horizontal lines can do for groups of rows. In order to specify column groups, you can use a special row where the first field contains only ‘/’. The further fields can either contain ‘<’ to indicate that this column should start a group, ‘>’ to indicate the end of a column, or ‘<>’ to make a column a group of its own. Boundaries between column groups will upon export be marked with vertical lines. Here is an example:
| | N | N^2 | N^3 | N^4 | sqrt(n) | sqrt[4](N) |
|---+----+-----+-----+-----+---------+------------|
| / | <> | < | | > | < | > |
| # | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| # | 2 | 4 | 8 | 16 | 1.4142 | 1.1892 |
| # | 3 | 9 | 27 | 81 | 1.7321 | 1.3161 |
|---+----+-----+-----+-----+---------+------------|
#+TBLFM: $3=$2^2::$4=$2^3::$5=$2^4::$6=sqrt($2)::$7=sqrt(sqrt(($2)))
It is also sufficient to just insert the column group starters after every vertical line you'd like to have:
| N | N^2 | N^3 | N^4 | sqrt(n) | sqrt[4](N) |
|----+-----+-----+-----+---------+------------|
| / | < | | | < | |
If you like the intuitive way the Org table editor works, you might also want to use it in other modes like Text mode or Mail mode. The minor mode Orgtbl mode makes this possible. You can always toggle the mode with M-x orgtbl-mode. To turn it on by default, for example in mail mode, use
(add-hook 'mail-mode-hook 'turn-on-orgtbl)
Furthermore, with some special setup, it is possible to maintain tables in arbitrary syntax with Orgtbl mode. For example, it is possible to construct LaTeX tables with the underlying ease and power of Orgtbl mode, including spreadsheet capabilities. For details, see Tables in arbitrary syntax.
The table editor makes use of the Emacs calc package to implement spreadsheet-like capabilities. It can also evaluate Emacs Lisp forms to derive fields from other fields. While fully featured, Org's implementation is not identical to other spreadsheets. For example, Org knows the concept of a column formula that will be applied to all non-header fields in a column without having to copy the formula to each relevant field.
To compute fields in the table from other fields, formulas must reference other fields or ranges. In Org, fields can be referenced by name, by absolute coordinates, and by relative coordinates. To find out what the coordinates of a field are, press C-c ? in that field, or press C-c } to toggle the display of a grid.
Formulas can reference the value of another field in two ways. Like in
any other spreadsheet, you may reference fields with a letter/number
combination like B3, meaning the 2nd field in the 3rd row.
Org also uses another, more general operator that looks like this:
@row$column
Column references can be absolute like ‘1’, ‘2’,...‘N’, or relative to the current column like ‘+1’ or ‘-2’.
The row specification only counts data lines and ignores horizontal separator lines (hlines). You can use absolute row numbers ‘1’...‘N’, and row numbers relative to the current row like ‘+3’ or ‘-1’. Or specify the row relative to one of the hlines: ‘I’ refers to the first hline16, ‘II’ to the second, etc. ‘-I’ refers to the first such line above the current line, ‘+I’ to the first such line below the current line. You can also write ‘III+2’ which is the second data line after the third hline in the table. Relative row numbers like ‘-3’ will not cross hlines if the current line is too close to the hline. Instead, the value directly at the hline is used.
‘0’ refers to the current row and column. Also, if you omit either the column or the row part of the reference, the current row/column is implied.
Org's references with unsigned numbers are fixed references in the sense that if you use the same reference in the formula for two different fields, the same field will be referenced each time. Org's references with signed numbers are floating references because the same reference operator can reference different fields depending on the field being calculated by the formula.
As a special case, references like ‘$LR5’ and ‘$LR12’ can be used to refer in a stable way to the 5th and 12th field in the last row of the table.
Here are a few examples:
@2$3 2nd row, 3rd column C2 same as previous $5 column 5 in the current row E& same as previous @2 current column, row 2 @-1$-3 the field one row up, three columns to the left @-I$2 field just under hline above current row, column 2
You may reference a rectangular range of fields by specifying two field
references connected by two dots ‘..’. If both fields are in the
current row, you may simply use ‘$2..$7’, but if at least one field
is in a different row, you need to use the general @row$column
format at least for the first field (i.e the reference must start with
‘@’ in order to be interpreted correctly). Examples:
$1..$3 First three fields in the current row. $P..$Q Range, using column names (see under Advanced) @2$1..@4$3 6 fields between these two fields. A2..C4 Same as above. @-1$-2..@-1 3 numbers from the column to the left, 2 up to current row
Range references return a vector of values that can be fed into Calc vector functions. Empty fields in ranges are normally suppressed, so that the vector contains only the non-empty fields (but see the ‘E’ mode switch below). If there are no non-empty fields, ‘[0]’ is returned to avoid syntax errors in formulas.
‘$name’ is interpreted as the name of a column, parameter or
constant. Constants are defined globally through the variable
org-table-formula-constants, and locally (for the file) through a
line like
#+CONSTANTS: c=299792458. pi=3.14 eps=2.4e-6
Also properties (see Properties and Columns) can be used as constants in table formulas: For a property ‘:Xyz:’ use the name ‘$PROP_Xyz’, and the property will be searched in the current outline entry and in the hierarchy above it. If you have the constants.el package, it will also be used to resolve constants, including natural constants like ‘$h’ for Planck's constant, and units like ‘$km’ for kilometers17. Column names and parameters can be specified in special table lines. These are described below, see Advanced features. All names must start with a letter, and further consist of letters and numbers.
You may also reference constants, fields and ranges from a different table, either in the current file or even in a different file. The syntax is
remote(NAME-OR-ID,REF)
where NAME can be the name of a table in the current file as set by a
#+TBLNAME: NAME line before the table. It can also be the ID of an
entry, even in a different file, and the reference then refers to the first
table in that entry. REF is an absolute field or range reference as
described above, valid in the referenced table.
A formula can be any algebraic expression understood by the Emacs
Calc package. Note that calc has the
non-standard convention that ‘/’ has lower precedence than
‘*’, so that ‘a/b*c’ is interpreted as ‘a/(b*c)’. Before
evaluation by calc-eval (see calc-eval),
variable substitution takes place according to the rules described above.
The range vectors can be directly fed into the Calc vector functions
like ‘vmean’ and ‘vsum’.
A formula can contain an optional mode string after a semicolon. This
string consists of flags to influence Calc and other modes during
execution. By default, Org uses the standard Calc modes (precision
12, angular units degrees, fraction and symbolic modes off). The display
format, however, has been changed to (float 8) to keep tables
compact. The default settings can be configured using the variable
org-calc-default-modes.
p20 switch the internal precision to 20 digits n3 s3 e2 f4 normal, scientific, engineering, or fixed display format D R angle modes: degrees, radians F S fraction and symbolic modes N interpret all fields as numbers, use 0 for non-numbers T force text interpretation E keep empty fields in ranges L literal
In addition, you may provide a printf format specifier to
reformat the final result. A few examples:
$1+$2 Sum of first and second field $1+$2;%.2f Same, format result to two decimals exp($2)+exp($1) Math functions can be used $0;%.1f Reformat current cell to 1 decimal ($3-32)*5/9 Degrees F -> C conversion $c/$1/$cm Hz -> cm conversion, using constants.el tan($1);Dp3s1 Compute in degrees, precision 3, display SCI 1 sin($1);Dp3%.1e Same, but use printf specifier for display vmean($2..$7) Compute column range mean, using vector function vmean($2..$7);EN Same, but treat empty fields as 0 taylor($3,x=7,2) taylor series of $3, at x=7, second degree
Calc also contains a complete set of logical operations. For example
if($1<20,teen,string("")) ``teen'' if age $1 less than 20, else empty
It is also possible to write a formula in Emacs Lisp; this can be useful
for string manipulation and control structures, if Calc's
functionality is not enough. If a formula starts with a single-quote
followed by an opening parenthesis, then it is evaluated as a Lisp form.
The evaluation should return either a string or a number. Just as with
calc formulas, you can specify modes and a printf format after a
semicolon. With Emacs Lisp forms, you need to be conscious about the way
field references are interpolated into the form. By default, a
reference will be interpolated as a Lisp string (in double-quotes)
containing the field. If you provide the ‘N’ mode switch, all
referenced elements will be numbers (non-number fields will be zero) and
interpolated as Lisp numbers, without quotes. If you provide the
‘L’ flag, all fields will be interpolated literally, without quotes.
I.e.,, if you want a reference to be interpreted as a string by the Lisp
form, enclose the reference operator itself in double-quotes, like
"$3". Ranges are inserted as space-separated fields, so you can
embed them in list or vector syntax. A few examples, note how the
‘N’ mode is used when we do computations in Lisp.
Swap the first two characters of the content of column 1 '(concat (substring $1 1 2) (substring $1 0 1) (substring $1 2)) Add columns 1 and 2, equivalent to Calc's$1+$2'(+ $1 $2);N Compute the sum of columns 1-4, like Calc'svsum($1..$4)'(apply '+ '($1..$4));N
To assign a formula to a particular field, type it directly into the field, preceded by ‘:=’, for example ‘:=$1+$2’. When you press <TAB> or <RET> or C-c C-c with the cursor still in the field, the formula will be stored as the formula for this field, evaluated, and the current field replaced with the result.
Formulas are stored in a special line starting with ‘#+TBLFM:’ directly below the table. If you typed the equation in the 4th field of the 3rd data line in the table, the formula will look like ‘@3$4=$1+$2’. When inserting/deleting/swapping column and rows with the appropriate commands, absolute references (but not relative ones) in stored formulas are modified in order to still reference the same field. Of course this is not true if you edit the table structure with normal editing commands—then you must fix the equations yourself. The left-hand side of a formula may also be a named field (see Advanced features), or a last-row reference like ‘$LR3’.
Instead of typing an equation into the field, you may also use the following command
Often in a table, the same formula should be used for all fields in a particular column. Instead of having to copy the formula to all fields in that column, Org allows you to assign a single formula to an entire column. If the table contains horizontal separator hlines, everything before the first such line is considered part of the table header and will not be modified by column formulas.
To assign a formula to a column, type it directly into any field in the column, preceded by an equal sign, like ‘=$1+$2’. When you press <TAB> or <RET> or C-c C-c with the cursor still in the field, the formula will be stored as the formula for the current column, evaluated and the current field replaced with the result. If the field contains only ‘=’, the previously stored formula for this column is used. For each column, Org will only remember the most recently used formula. In the ‘#+TBLFM:’ line, column formulas will look like ‘$4=$1+$2’. The left-hand side of a column formula cannot currently be the name of column, it must be the numeric column reference.
Instead of typing an equation into the field, you may also use the following command:
You can edit individual formulas in the minibuffer or directly in the
field. Org can also prepare a special buffer with all active
formulas of a table. When offering a formula for editing, Org
converts references to the standard format (like B3 or D&)
if possible. If you prefer to only work with the internal format (like
@3$2 or $4), configure the variable
org-table-use-standard-references.
B3) and internal (like @3$2).
B3 and you press S-<right>, it will become C3.
This also works for relative references and for hline references.
Making a table field blank does not remove the formula associated with the field, because that is stored in a different line (the ‘#+TBLFM’ line)—during the next recalculation the field will be filled again. To remove a formula from a field, you have to give an empty reply when prompted for the formula, or to edit the ‘#+TBLFM’ line.
You may edit the ‘#+TBLFM’ directly and re-apply the changed equations with C-c C-c in that line or with the normal recalculation commands in the table.
When the evaluation of a formula leads to an error, the field content
becomes the string ‘#ERROR’. If you would like see what is going
on during variable substitution and calculation in order to find a bug,
turn on formula debugging in the Tbl menu and repeat the
calculation, for example by pressing C-u C-u C-c = <RET> in a
field. Detailed information will be displayed.
Recalculation of a table is normally not automatic, but needs to be triggered by a command. See Advanced features, for a way to make recalculation at least semi-automatic.
In order to recalculate a line of a table or the entire table, use the following commands:
If you want the recalculation of fields to happen automatically, or if you want to be able to assign names to fields and columns, you need to reserve the first column of the table for special marking characters.
Here is an example of a table that collects exam results of students and makes use of these features:
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
| | Student | Prob 1 | Prob 2 | Prob 3 | Total | Note |
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
| ! | | P1 | P2 | P3 | Tot | |
| # | Maximum | 10 | 15 | 25 | 50 | 10.0 |
| ^ | | m1 | m2 | m3 | mt | |
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
| # | Peter | 10 | 8 | 23 | 41 | 8.2 |
| # | Sam | 2 | 4 | 3 | 9 | 1.8 |
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
| | Average | | | | 29.7 | |
| ^ | | | | | at | |
| $ | max=50 | | | | | |
|---+---------+--------+--------+--------+-------+------|
#+TBLFM: $6=vsum($P1..$P3)::$7=10*$Tot/$max;%.1f::$at=vmean(@-II..@-I);%.1f
Important: Please note that for these special tables, recalculating the table with C-u C-c * will only affect rows that are marked ‘#’ or ‘*’, and fields that have a formula assigned to the field itself. The column formulas are not applied in rows with empty first field.
The marking characters have the following meaning:
Finally, just to whet your appetite for what can be done with the
fantastic calc.el package, here is a table that computes the Taylor
series of degree n at location x for a couple of
functions.
|---+-------------+---+-----+--------------------------------------|
| | Func | n | x | Result |
|---+-------------+---+-----+--------------------------------------|
| # | exp(x) | 1 | x | 1 + x |
| # | exp(x) | 2 | x | 1 + x + x^2 / 2 |
| # | exp(x) | 3 | x | 1 + x + x^2 / 2 + x^3 / 6 |
| # | x^2+sqrt(x) | 2 | x=0 | x*(0.5 / 0) + x^2 (2 - 0.25 / 0) / 2 |
| # | x^2+sqrt(x) | 2 | x=1 | 2 + 2.5 x - 2.5 + 0.875 (x - 1)^2 |
| * | tan(x) | 3 | x | 0.0175 x + 1.77e-6 x^3 |
|---+-------------+---+-----+--------------------------------------|
#+TBLFM: $5=taylor($2,$4,$3);n3
Org-Plot can produce 2D and 3D graphs of information stored in org tables
using Gnuplot http://www.gnuplot.info/ and gnuplot-mode
http://cars9.uchicago.edu/~ravel/software/gnuplot-mode.html. To see
this in action, ensure that you have both Gnuplot and Gnuplot mode installed
on your system, then call org-plot/gnuplot on the following table.
#+PLOT: title:"Citas" ind:1 deps:(3) type:2d with:histograms set:"yrange [0:]"
| Sede | Max cites | H-index |
|-----------+-----------+---------|
| Chile | 257.72 | 21.39 |
| Leeds | 165.77 | 19.68 |
| Sao Paolo | 71.00 | 11.50 |
| Stockholm | 134.19 | 14.33 |
| Morelia | 257.56 | 17.67 |
Notice that Org Plot is smart enough to apply the table's headers as labels.
Further control over the labels, type, content, and appearance of plots can
be exercised through the #+PLOT: lines preceding a table. See below
for a complete list of Org-plot options. For more information and examples
see the Org-plot tutorial at
http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-plot.php.
settitleindx axis.
depsdep:(3 4) to graph the third and
fourth columns (defaults to graphing all other columns aside from the ind
column).
type2d, 3d, or grid.
withwith option to be inserted for every col being plotted
(e.g.,
Defaults to lines.
file"path/to/desired/output-file".
labelslinemap3d or grid types, set this to t to graph a
flat mapping rather than a 3d slope.
timefmtscript$datafile in the specified script will be replaced with
the path to the generated data file. Note: Even if you set this option, you
may still want to specify the plot type, as that can impact the content of
the data file.
Like HTML, Org provides links inside a file, external links to other files, Usenet articles, emails, and much more.
Org will recognize plain URL-like links and activate them as clickable links. The general link format, however, looks like this:
[[link][description]] or alternatively [[link]]
Once a link in the buffer is complete (all brackets present), Org
will change the display so that ‘description’ is displayed instead
of ‘[[link][description]]’ and ‘link’ is displayed instead of
‘[[link]]’. Links will be highlighted in the face org-link,
which by default is an underlined face. You can directly edit the
visible part of a link. Note that this can be either the ‘link’
part (if there is no description) or the ‘description’ part. To
edit also the invisible ‘link’ part, use C-c C-l with the
cursor on the link.
If you place the cursor at the beginning or just behind the end of the
displayed text and press <BACKSPACE>, you will remove the
(invisible) bracket at that location. This makes the link incomplete
and the internals are again displayed as plain text. Inserting the
missing bracket hides the link internals again. To show the
internal structure of all links, use the menu entry
Org->Hyperlinks->Literal links.
If the link does not look like a URL, it is considered to be internal in the
current file. The most important case is a link like
‘[[#my-custom-id]]’ which will link to the entry with the
CUSTOM_ID property ‘my-custom-id’. Such custom IDs are very good
for HTML export (see HTML export) where they produce pretty section
links. You are responsible yourself to make sure these custom IDs are unique
in a file.
Links such as ‘[[My Target]]’ or ‘[[My Target][Find my target]]’ lead to a text search in the current file.
The link can be followed with C-c C-o when the cursor is on the link, or with a mouse click (see Handling links). Links to custom IDs will point to the corresponding headline. The preferred match for a text link is a dedicated target: the same string in double angular brackets. Targets may be located anywhere; sometimes it is convenient to put them into a comment line. For example
# <<My Target>>
In HTML export (see HTML export), such targets will become named anchors for direct access through ‘http’ links18.
If no dedicated target exists, Org will search for the words in the link. In the above example the search would be for ‘my target’. Links starting with a star like ‘*My Target’ restrict the search to headlines19. When searching, Org mode will first try an exact match, but then move on to more and more lenient searches. For example, the link ‘[[*My Targets]]’ will find any of the following:
** My targets
** TODO my targets are bright
** my 20 targets are
Following a link pushes a mark onto Org's own mark ring. You can return to the previous position with C-c &. Using this command several times in direct succession goes back to positions recorded earlier.
Org can automatically turn any occurrences of certain target names in normal text into a link. So without explicitly creating a link, the text connects to the target radioing its position. Radio targets are enclosed by triple angular brackets. For example, a target ‘<<<My Target>>>’ causes each occurrence of ‘my target’ in normal text to become activated as a link. The Org file is scanned automatically for radio targets only when the file is first loaded into Emacs. To update the target list during editing, press C-c C-c with the cursor on or at a target.
Org supports links to files, websites, Usenet and email messages, BBDB database entries and links to both IRC conversations and their logs. External links are URL-like locators. They start with a short identifying string followed by a colon. There can be no space after the colon. The following list shows examples for each link type.
http://www.astro.uva.nl/~dominik on the web file:/home/dominik/images/jupiter.jpg file, absolute path /home/dominik/images/jupiter.jpg same as above file:papers/last.pdf file, relative path ./papers/last.pdf same as above file:projects.org another Org file file:projects.org::some words text search in Org file file:projects.org::*task title heading search in Org file id:B7423F4D-2E8A-471B-8810-C40F074717E9 Link to heading by ID news:comp.emacs Usenet link mailto:adent@galaxy.net Mail link vm:folder VM folder link vm:folder#id VM message link vm://myself@some.where.org/folder#id VM on remote machine wl:folder WANDERLUST folder link wl:folder#id WANDERLUST message link mhe:folder MH-E folder link mhe:folder#id MH-E message link rmail:folder RMAIL folder link rmail:folder#id RMAIL message link gnus:group Gnus group link gnus:group#id Gnus article link bbdb:R.*Stallman BBDB link (with regexp) irc:/irc.com/#emacs/bob IRC link shell:ls *.org A shell command elisp:org-agenda Interactive Elisp command elisp:(find-file-other-frame "Elisp.org") Elisp form to evaluate
A link should be enclosed in double brackets and may contain a descriptive text to be displayed instead of the URL (see Link format), for example:
[[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/][GNU Emacs]]
If the description is a file name or URL that points to an image, HTML export (see HTML export) will inline the image as a clickable button. If there is no description at all and the link points to an image, that image will be inlined into the exported HTML file.
Org also finds external links in the normal text and activates them as links. If spaces must be part of the link (for example in ‘bbdb:Richard Stallman’), or if you need to remove ambiguities about the end of the link, enclose them in square brackets.
Org provides methods to create a link in the correct syntax, to insert it into an Org file, and to follow the link.
Org-mode buffers
For Org files, if there is a ‘<<target>>’ at the cursor, the link points
to the target. Otherwise it points to the current headline, which will also
be the description.
If the headline has a CUSTOM_ID property, a link to this custom ID
will be stored. In addition or alternatively (depending on the value of
org-link-to-org-use-id), a globally unique ID property will be
created and/or used to construct a link. So using this command in Org
buffers will potentially create two links: A human-readable from the custom
ID, and one that is globally unique and works even if the entry is moved from
file to file. Later, when inserting the link, you need to decide which one
to use.
Email/News clients: VM, Rmail, Wanderlust, MH-E, Gnus
Pretty much all Emacs mail clients are supported. The link will point to the
current article, or, in some GNUS buffers, to the group. The description is
constructed from the author and the subject.
Web browsers: W3 and W3M
Here the link will be the current URL, with the page title as description.
Contacts: BBDB
Links created in a BBDB buffer will point to the current entry.
Chat: IRC
For IRC links, if you set the variable org-irc-link-to-logs to
t, a ‘file:/’ style link to the relevant point in the logs for
the current conversation is created. Otherwise an ‘irc:/’ style link to
the user/channel/server under the point will be stored.
Other files
For any other files, the link will point to the file, with a search string
(see Search options) pointing to the contents of the current line. If
there is an active region, the selected words will form the basis of the
search string. If the automatically created link is not working correctly or
accurately enough, you can write custom functions to select the search string
and to do the search for particular file types—see Custom searches.
The key binding C-c l is only a suggestion—see Installation.
Inserting stored links
All links stored during the
current session are part of the history for this prompt, so you can access
them with <up> and <down> (or M-p/n).
Completion support
Completion with <TAB> will help you to insert
valid link prefixes like ‘http:’ or ‘ftp:’, including the prefixes
defined through link abbreviations (see Link abbreviations). If you
press <RET> after inserting only the prefix, Org will offer
specific completion support for some link types22 For
example, if you type file <RET>, file name completion (alternative
access: C-u C-c C-l, see below) will be offered, and after bbdb
<RET> you can complete contact names.
org-file-apps. If you want to override the default application and
visit the file with Emacs, use a C-u prefix. If you want to avoid
opening in Emacs, use a C-u C-u prefix.
(add-hook 'org-load-hook
(lambda ()
(define-key 'org-mode-map "\C-n" 'org-next-link)
(define-key 'org-mode-map "\C-p" 'org-previous-link)))
You can insert and follow links that have Org syntax not only in Org, but in any Emacs buffer. For this, you should create two global commands, like this (please select suitable global keys yourself):
(global-set-key "\C-c L" 'org-insert-link-global)
(global-set-key "\C-c o" 'org-open-at-point-global)
Long URLs can be cumbersome to type, and often many similar links are needed in a document. For this you can use link abbreviations. An abbreviated link looks like this
[[linkword:tag][description]]
where the tag is optional. The linkword must be a word; letter, numbers,
‘-’, and ‘_’ are allowed here. Abbreviations are resolved
according to the information in the variable org-link-abbrev-alist
that relates the linkwords to replacement text. Here is an example:
(setq org-link-abbrev-alist
'(("bugzilla" . "http://10.1.2.9/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=")
("google" . "http://www.google.com/search?q=")
("ads" . "http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/
nph-abs_connect?author=%s&db_key=AST")))
If the replacement text contains the string ‘%s’, it will be replaced with the tag. Otherwise the tag will be appended to the string in order to create the link. You may also specify a function that will be called with the tag as the only argument to create the link.
With the above setting, you could link to a specific bug with
[[bugzilla:129]], search the web for ‘OrgMode’ with
[[google:OrgMode]] and find out what the Org author is
doing besides Emacs hacking with [[ads:Dominik,C]].
If you need special abbreviations just for a single Org buffer, you can define them in the file with
#+LINK: bugzilla http://10.1.2.9/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=
#+LINK: google http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
In-buffer completion (see Completion) can be used after ‘[’ to
complete link abbreviations. You may also define a function
org-PREFIX-complete-link that implements special (e.g.,
support for inserting such a link with C-c C-l. Such a function should
not accept any arguments, and return the full link with prefix.
File links can contain additional information to make Emacs jump to a particular location in the file when following a link. This can be a line number or a search option after a double24 colon. For example, when the command C-c l creates a link (see Handling links) to a file, it encodes the words in the current line as a search string that can be used to find this line back later when following the link with C-c C-o.
Here is the syntax of the different ways to attach a search to a file link, together with an explanation:
[[file:~/code/main.c::255]]
[[file:~/xx.org::My Target]]
[[file:~/xx.org::*My Target]]
[[file:~/xx.org::/regexp/]]
255My Target*My Target/regexp/regexp. This uses the Emacs
command occur to list all matches in a separate window. If the
target file is in Org mode, org-occur is used to create a
sparse tree with the matches.
As a degenerate case, a file link with an empty file name can be used
to search the current file. For example, [[file:::find me]] does
a search for ‘find me’ in the current file, just as
‘[[find me]]’ would.
The default mechanism for creating search strings and for doing the actual search related to a file link may not work correctly in all cases. For example, BibTeX database files have many entries like ‘year="1993"’ which would not result in good search strings, because the only unique identification for a BibTeX entry is the citation key.
If you come across such a problem, you can write custom functions to set
the right search string for a particular file type, and to do the search
for the string in the file. Using add-hook, these functions need
to be added to the hook variables
org-create-file-search-functions and
org-execute-file-search-functions. See the docstring for these
variables for more information. Org actually uses this mechanism
for BibTeX database files, and you can use the corresponding code as
an implementation example. See the file org-bibtex.el.
Org mode does not maintain TODO lists as separate documents25. Instead, TODO items are an integral part of the notes file, because TODO items usually come up while taking notes! With Org mode, simply mark any entry in a tree as being a TODO item. In this way, information is not duplicated, and the entire context from which the TODO item emerged is always present.
Of course, this technique for managing TODO items scatters them throughout your notes file. Org mode compensates for this by providing methods to give you an overview of all the things that you have to do.
Any headline becomes a TODO item when it starts with the word ‘TODO’, for example:
*** TODO Write letter to Sam Fortune
The most important commands to work with TODO entries are:
,-> (unmarked) -> TODO -> DONE --.
'--------------------------------'
The same rotation can also be done “remotely” from the timeline and agenda buffers with the t command key (see Agenda commands).
shift-selection-mode. See also the variable
org-treat-S-cursor-todo-selection-as-state-change.
KWD1|KWD2|... to list entries that match any one of these keywords.
With numeric prefix argument N, show the tree for the Nth keyword in the
variable org-todo-keywords. With two prefix arguments, find all TODO
and DONE entries.
agenda-mode, which provides commands to examine and
manipulate the TODO entries from the new buffer (see Agenda commands). See Global TODO list, for more information.
Changing a TODO state can also trigger tag changes. See the docstring of the
option org-todo-state-tags-triggers for details.
By default, marked TODO entries have one of only two states: TODO and
DONE. Org mode allows you to classify TODO items in more complex ways
with TODO keywords (stored in org-todo-keywords). With
special setup, the TODO keyword system can work differently in different
files.
Note that tags are another way to classify headlines in general and TODO items in particular (see Tags).
You can use TODO keywords to indicate different sequential states in the process of working on an item, for example26:
(setq org-todo-keywords
'((sequence "TODO" "FEEDBACK" "VERIFY" "|" "DONE" "DELEGATED")))
The vertical bar separates the TODO keywords (states that need action) from the DONE states (which need no further action). If you don't provide the separator bar, the last state is used as the DONE state. With this setup, the command C-c C-t will cycle an entry from TODO to FEEDBACK, then to VERIFY, and finally to DONE and DELEGATED. You may also use a numeric prefix argument to quickly select a specific state. For example C-3 C-c C-t will change the state immediately to VERIFY. Or you can use S-<left> to go backward through the sequence. If you define many keywords, you can use in-buffer completion (see Completion) or even a special one-key selection scheme (see Fast access to TODO states) to insert these words into the buffer. Changing a TODO state can be logged with a timestamp, see Tracking TODO state changes, for more information.
The second possibility is to use TODO keywords to indicate different types of action items. For example, you might want to indicate that items are for “work” or “home”. Or, when you work with several people on a single project, you might want to assign action items directly to persons, by using their names as TODO keywords. This would be set up like this:
(setq org-todo-keywords '((type "Fred" "Sara" "Lucy" "|" "DONE")))
In this case, different keywords do not indicate a sequence, but rather different types. So the normal work flow would be to assign a task to a person, and later to mark it DONE. Org mode supports this style by adapting the workings of the command C-c C-t27. When used several times in succession, it will still cycle through all names, in order to first select the right type for a task. But when you return to the item after some time and execute C-c C-t again, it will switch from any name directly to DONE. Use prefix arguments or completion to quickly select a specific name. You can also review the items of a specific TODO type in a sparse tree by using a numeric prefix to C-c C-v. For example, to see all things Lucy has to do, you would use C-3 C-c C-v. To collect Lucy's items from all agenda files into a single buffer, you would use the numeric prefix argument as well when creating the global TODO list: C-3 C-c t.
Sometimes you may want to use different sets of TODO keywords in
parallel. For example, you may want to have the basic
TODO/DONE, but also a workflow for bug fixing, and a
separate state indicating that an item has been canceled (so it is not
DONE, but also does not require action). Your setup would then look
like this:
(setq org-todo-keywords
'((sequence "TODO" "|" "DONE")
(sequence "REPORT" "BUG" "KNOWNCAUSE" "|" "FIXED")
(sequence "|" "CANCELED")))
The keywords should all be different, this helps Org mode to keep track
of which subsequence should be used for a given entry. In this setup,
C-c C-t only operates within a subsequence, so it switches from
DONE to (nothing) to TODO, and from FIXED to
(nothing) to REPORT. Therefore you need a mechanism to initially
select the correct sequence. Besides the obvious ways like typing a
keyword or using completion, you may also apply the following commands:
TODO or
DONE to REPORT, and any of the words in the second row to
CANCELED. Note that the C-S- key binding conflict with
shift-selection-mode (see Conflicts).
DONE to REPORT in the example above. See also
Conflicts, for a discussion of the interaction with
shift-selection-mode.
If you would like to quickly change an entry to an arbitrary TODO state instead of cycling through the states, you can set up keys for single-letter access to the states. This is done by adding the section key after each keyword, in parentheses. For example:
(setq org-todo-keywords
'((sequence "TODO(t)" "|" "DONE(d)")
(sequence "REPORT(r)" "BUG(b)" "KNOWNCAUSE(k)" "|" "FIXED(f)")
(sequence "|" "CANCELED(c)")))
If you then press C-c C-t followed by the selection key, the entry
will be switched to this state. <SPC> can be used to remove any TODO
keyword from an entry.28
It can be very useful to use different aspects of the TODO mechanism in different files. For file-local settings, you need to add special lines to the file which set the keywords and interpretation for that file only. For example, to set one of the two examples discussed above, you need one of the following lines, starting in column zero anywhere in the file:
#+TODO: TODO FEEDBACK VERIFY | DONE CANCELED
(you may also write #+SEQ_TODO to be explicit about the
interpretation, but it means the same as #+TODO), or
#+TYP_TODO: Fred Sara Lucy Mike | DONE
A setup for using several sets in parallel would be:
#+TODO: TODO | DONE
#+TODO: REPORT BUG KNOWNCAUSE | FIXED
#+TODO: | CANCELED
To make sure you are using the correct keyword, type ‘#+’ into the buffer and then use M-<TAB> completion.
Remember that the keywords after the vertical bar (or the last keyword if no bar is there) must always mean that the item is DONE (although you may use a different word). After changing one of these lines, use C-c C-c with the cursor still in the line to make the changes known to Org mode29.
Org mode highlights TODO keywords with special faces: org-todo
for keywords indicating that an item still has to be acted upon, and
org-done for keywords indicating that an item is finished. If
you are using more than 2 different states, you might want to use
special faces for some of them. This can be done using the variable
org-todo-keyword-faces. For example:
(setq org-todo-keyword-faces
'(("TODO" . org-warning)
("DEFERRED" . shadow)
("CANCELED" . (:foreground "blue" :weight bold))))
While using a list with face properties as shown for CANCELED should work, this does not aways seem to be the case. If necessary, define a special face and use that.
The structure of Org files (hierarchy and lists) makes it easy to define TODO
dependencies. Usually, a parent TODO task should not be marked DONE until
all subtasks (defined as children tasks) are marked as DONE. And sometimes
there is a logical sequence to a number of (sub)tasks, so that one task
cannot be acted upon before all siblings above it are done. If you customize
the variable org-enforce-todo-dependencies, Org will block entries
from changing state to DONE while they have children that are not DONE.
Furthermore, if an entry has a property ORDERED, each of its children
will be blocked until all earlier siblings are marked DONE. Here is an
example:
* TODO Blocked until (two) is done
** DONE one
** TODO two
* Parent
:PROPERTIES:
:ORDERED: t
:END:
** TODO a
** TODO b, needs to wait for (a)
** TODO c, needs to wait for (a) and (b)
ORDERED property of the current entry. A property is used
for this behavior because this should be local to the current entry, not
inherited like a tag. However, if you would like to track the value of
this property with a tag for better visibility, customize the variable
org-track-ordered-property-with-tag.
If you set the variable org-agenda-dim-blocked-tasks, TODO entries
that cannot be closed because of such dependencies will be shown in a dimmed
font or even made invisible in agenda views (see Agenda Views).
You can also block changes of TODO states by looking at checkboxes
(see Checkboxes). If you set the variable
org-enforce-todo-checkbox-dependencies, an entry that has unchecked
checkboxes will be blocked from switching to DONE.
If you need more complex dependency structures, for example dependencies between entries in different trees or files, check out the contributed module org-depend.el.
Org mode can automatically record a timestamp and possibly a note when you mark a TODO item as DONE, or even each time you change the state of a TODO item. This system is highly configurable, settings can be on a per-keyword basis and can be localized to a file or even a subtree. For information on how to clock working time for a task, see Clocking work time.
The most basic logging is to keep track of when a certain TODO item was finished. This is achieved with30.
(setq org-log-done 'time)
Then each time you turn an entry from a TODO (not-done) state into any of the DONE states, a line ‘CLOSED: [timestamp]’ will be inserted just after the headline. If you turn the entry back into a TODO item through further state cycling, that line will be removed again. If you want to record a note along with the timestamp, use31
(setq org-log-done 'note)
You will then be prompted for a note, and that note will be stored below the entry with a ‘Closing Note’ heading.
In the timeline (see Timeline) and in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda), you can then use the l key to display the TODO items with a ‘CLOSED’ timestamp on each day, giving you an overview of what has been done.
When TODO keywords are used as workflow states (see Workflow states), you
might want to keep track of when a state change occurred and maybe take a
note about this change. You can either record just a timestamp, or a
time-stamped note for a change. These records will be inserted after the
headline as an itemized list, newest first32. When taking a lot of notes, you might
want to get the notes out of the way into a drawer (see Drawers).
Customize the variable org-log-into-drawer to get this
behavior—the recommended drawer for this is called LOGBOOK. You can
also overrule the setting of this variable for a subtree by setting a
LOG_INTO_DRAWER property.
Since it is normally too much to record a note for every state, Org mode expects configuration on a per-keyword basis for this. This is achieved by adding special markers ‘!’ (for a timestamp) and ‘@’ (for a note) in parentheses after each keyword. For example, with the setting
(setq org-todo-keywords
'((sequence "TODO(t)" "WAIT(w@/!)" "|" "DONE(d!)" "CANCELED(c@)")))
you not only define global TODO keywords and fast access keys, but also request that a time is recorded when the entry is set to DONE33, and that a note is recorded when switching to WAIT or CANCELED. The setting for WAIT is even more special: The ‘!’ after the slash means that in addition to the note taken when entering the state, a timestamp should be recorded when leaving the WAIT state, if and only if the target state does not configure logging for entering it. So it has no effect when switching from WAIT to DONE, because DONE is configured to record a timestamp only. But when switching from WAIT back to TODO, the ‘/!’ in the WAIT setting now triggers a timestamp even though TODO has no logging configured.
You can use the exact same syntax for setting logging preferences local to a buffer:
#+TODO: TODO(t) WAIT(w@/!) | DONE(d!) CANCELED(c@)
In order to define logging settings that are local to a subtree or a
single item, define a LOGGING property in this entry. Any non-empty
LOGGING property resets all logging settings to nil. You may then turn
on logging for this specific tree using STARTUP keywords like
lognotedone or logrepeat, as well as adding state specific
settings like TODO(!). For example
* TODO Log each state with only a time
:PROPERTIES:
:LOGGING: TODO(!) WAIT(!) DONE(!) CANCELED(!)
:END:
* TODO Only log when switching to WAIT, and when repeating
:PROPERTIES:
:LOGGING: WAIT(@) logrepeat
:END:
* TODO No logging at all
:PROPERTIES:
:LOGGING: nil
:END:
If you use Org mode extensively, you may end up enough TODO items that it starts to make sense to prioritize them. Prioritizing can be done by placing a priority cookie into the headline of a TODO item, like this
*** TODO [#A] Write letter to Sam Fortune
By default, Org mode supports three priorities: ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. ‘A’ is the highest priority. An entry without a cookie is treated as priority ‘B’. Priorities make a difference only in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda); outside the agenda, they have no inherent meaning to Org mode.
Priorities can be attached to any outline tree entries; they do not need to be TODO items.
shift-selection-mode.
You can change the range of allowed priorities by setting the variables
org-highest-priority, org-lowest-priority, and
org-default-priority. For an individual buffer, you may set
these values (highest, lowest, default) like this (please make sure that
the highest priority is earlier in the alphabet than the lowest
priority):
#+PRIORITIES: A C B
It is often advisable to break down large tasks into smaller, manageable subtasks. You can do this by creating an outline tree below a TODO item, with detailed subtasks on the tree35. To keep the overview over the fraction of subtasks that are already completed, insert either ‘[/]’ or ‘[%]’ anywhere in the headline. These cookies will be updates each time the todo status of a child changes. For example:
* Organize Party [33%]
** TODO Call people [1/2]
*** TODO Peter
*** DONE Sarah
** TODO Buy food
** DONE Talk to neighbor
If a heading has both checkboxes and TODO children below it, the meaning of
the statistics cookie become ambiguous. Set the property
COOKIE_DATA to either ‘checkbox’ or ‘todo’ to resolve
this issue.
If you would like a TODO entry to automatically change to DONE when all children are done, you can use the following setup:
(defun org-summary-todo (n-done n-not-done)
"Switch entry to DONE when all subentries are done, to TODO otherwise."
(let (org-log-done org-log-states) ; turn off logging
(org-todo (if (= n-not-done 0) "DONE" "TODO"))))
(add-hook 'org-after-todo-statistics-hook 'org-summary-todo)
Another possibility is the use of checkboxes to identify (a hierarchy of) a large number of subtasks (see Checkboxes).
Every item in a plain list (see Plain lists) can be made into a checkbox by starting it with the string ‘[ ]’. This feature is similar to TODO items (see TODO Items), but is more lightweight. Checkboxes are not included into the global TODO list, so they are often great to split a task into a number of simple steps. Or you can use them in a shopping list. To toggle a checkbox, use C-c C-c, or use the mouse (thanks to Piotr Zielinski's org-mouse.el).
Here is an example of a checkbox list.
* TODO Organize party [2/4]
- [-] call people [1/3]
- [ ] Peter
- [X] Sarah
- [ ] Sam
- [X] order food
- [ ] think about what music to play
- [X] talk to the neighbors
Checkboxes work hierarchically, so if a checkbox item has children that are checkboxes, toggling one of the children checkboxes will make the parent checkbox reflect if none, some, or all of the children are checked.
The ‘[2/4]’ and ‘[1/3]’ in the first and second line are cookies
indicating how many checkboxes present in this entry have been checked off,
and the total number of checkboxes present. This can give you an idea on
how many checkboxes remain, even without opening a folded entry. The cookies
can be placed into a headline or into (the first line of) a plain list item.
Each cookie covers checkboxes of direct children structurally below the
headline/item on which the cookie appears36. You
have to insert the cookie yourself by typing either ‘[/]’ or ‘[%]’.
With ‘[/]’ you get an ‘n out of m’ result, as in the examples
above. With ‘[%]’ you get information about the percentage of
checkboxes checked (in the above example, this would be ‘[50%]’ and
‘[33%]’, respectively). In a headline, a cookie can count either
checkboxes below the heading or TODO states of children, and it will display
whatever was changed last. Set the property COOKIE_DATA to either
‘checkbox’ or ‘todo’ to resolve this issue.
If the current outline node has an ORDERED property, checkboxes must
be checked off in sequence, and an error will be thrown if you try to check
off a box while there are unchecked boxes bove it.
The following commands work with checkboxes:
ORDERED property of the entry, to toggle if checkboxes must
be checked off in sequence. A property is used for this behavior because
this should be local to the current entry, not inherited like a tag.
However, if you would like to track the value of this property with a tag
for better visibility, customize the variable
org-track-ordered-property-with-tag.
An excellent way to implement labels and contexts for cross-correlating information is to assign tags to headlines. Org mode has extensive support for tags.
Every headline can contain a list of tags; they occur at the end of the
headline. Tags are normal words containing letters, numbers, ‘_’, and
‘@’. Tags must be preceded and followed by a single colon, e.g.,,
‘:work:’. Several tags can be specified, as in ‘:work:urgent:’.
Tags will by default be in bold face with the same color as the headline.
You may specify special faces for specific tags using the variable
org-tag-faces, in much the same way as you can for TODO keywords
(see Faces for TODO keywords).
Tags make use of the hierarchical structure of outline trees. If a heading has a certain tag, all subheadings will inherit the tag as well. For example, in the list
* Meeting with the French group :work:
** Summary by Frank :boss:notes:
*** TODO Prepare slides for him :action:
the final heading will have the tags ‘:work:’, ‘:boss:’, ‘:notes:’, and ‘:action:’ even though the final heading is not explicitly marked with those tags. You can also set tags that all entries in a file should inherit just as if these tags were defined in a hypothetical level zero that surrounds the entire file.
#+FILETAGS: :Peter:Boss:Secret:
To limit tag inheritance to specific tags, or to turn it off entirely, use
the variables org-use-tag-inheritance and
org-tags-exclude-from-inheritance.
When a headline matches during a tags search while tag inheritance is turned
on, all the sublevels in the same tree will (for a simple match form) match
as well37. The list
of matches may then become very long. If you only want to see the first tags
match in a subtree, configure the variable
org-tags-match-list-sublevels (not recommended).
Tags can simply be typed into the buffer at the end of a headline. After a colon, M-<TAB> offers completion on tags. There is also a special command for inserting tags:
org-tags-column. When called with a C-u prefix, all
tags in the current buffer will be aligned to that column, just to make
things look nice. TAGS are automatically realigned after promotion,
demotion, and TODO state changes (see TODO basics).
Org will support tag insertion based on a list of tags. By
default this list is constructed dynamically, containing all tags
currently used in the buffer. You may also globally specify a hard list
of tags with the variable org-tag-alist. Finally you can set
the default tags for a given file with lines like
#+TAGS: @work @home @tennisclub
#+TAGS: laptop car pc sailboat
If you have globally defined your preferred set of tags using the
variable org-tag-alist, but would like to use a dynamic tag list
in a specific file, add an empty TAGS option line to that file:
#+TAGS:
If you have a preferred set of tags that you would like to use in every file,
in addition to those defined on a per-file basis by TAGS option lines, then
you may specify a list of tags with the variable
org-tag-persistent-alist. You may turn this off on a per-file basis
by adding a STARTUP option line to that file:
#+STARTUP: noptag
By default Org mode uses the standard minibuffer completion facilities for
entering tags. However, it also implements another, quicker, tag selection
method called fast tag selection. This allows you to select and
deselect tags with just a single key press. For this to work well you should
assign unique letters to most of your commonly used tags. You can do this
globally by configuring the variable org-tag-alist in your
.emacs file. For example, you may find the need to tag many items in
different files with ‘:@home:’. In this case you can set something
like:
(setq org-tag-alist '(("@work" . ?w) ("@home" . ?h) ("laptop" . ?l)))
If the tag is only relevant to the file you are working on, then you can instead set the TAGS option line as:
#+TAGS: @work(w) @home(h) @tennisclub(t) laptop(l) pc(p)
The tags interface will show the available tags in a splash window. If you want to start a new line after a specific tag, insert ‘\n’ into the tag list
#+TAGS: @work(w) @home(h) @tennisclub(t) \n laptop(l) pc(p)
or write them in two lines:
#+TAGS: @work(w) @home(h) @tennisclub(t)
#+TAGS: laptop(l) pc(p)
You can also group together tags that are mutually exclusive by using braces, as in:
#+TAGS: { @work(w) @home(h) @tennisclub(t) } laptop(l) pc(p)
you indicate that at most one of ‘@work’, ‘@home’, and ‘@tennisclub’ should be selected. Multiple such groups are allowed.
Don't forget to press C-c C-c with the cursor in one of these lines to activate any changes.
To set these mutually exclusive groups in the variable org-tags-alist,
you must use the dummy tags :startgroup and :endgroup instead
of the braces. Similarly, you can use :newline to indicate a line
break. The previous example would be set globally by the following
configuration:
(setq org-tag-alist '((:startgroup . nil)
("@work" . ?w) ("@home" . ?h)
("@tennisclub" . ?t)
(:endgroup . nil)
("laptop" . ?l) ("pc" . ?p)))
If at least one tag has a selection key then pressing C-c C-c will automatically present you with a special interface, listing inherited tags, the tags of the current headline, and a list of all valid tags with corresponding keys38. In this interface, you can use the following keys:
This method lets you assign tags to a headline with very few keys. With the above setup, you could clear the current tags and set ‘@home’, ‘laptop’ and ‘pc’ tags with just the following keys: C-c C-c <SPC> h l p <RET>. Switching from ‘@home’ to ‘@work’ would be done with C-c C-c w <RET> or alternatively with C-c C-c C-c w. Adding the non-predefined tag ‘Sarah’ could be done with C-c C-c <TAB> S a r a h <RET> <RET>.
If you find that most of the time you need only a single key press to
modify your list of tags, set the variable
org-fast-tag-selection-single-key. Then you no longer have to
press <RET> to exit fast tag selection—it will immediately exit
after the first change. If you then occasionally need more keys, press
C-c to turn off auto-exit for the current tag selection process
(in effect: start selection with C-c C-c C-c instead of C-c
C-c). If you set the variable to the value expert, the special
window is not even shown for single-key tag selection, it comes up only
when you press an extra C-c.
Once a system of tags has been set up, it can be used to collect related information into special lists.
org-tags-match-list-sublevels).
These commands all prompt for a match string which allows basic Boolean logic like ‘+boss+urgent-project1’, to find entries with tags ‘boss’ and ‘urgent’, but not ‘project1’, or ‘Kathy|Sally’ to find entries which are tagged, like ‘Kathy’ or ‘Sally’. The full syntax of the search string is rich and allows also matching against TODO keywords, entry levels and properties. For a complete description with many examples, see Matching tags and properties.
Properties are a set of key-value pairs associated with an entry. There
are two main applications for properties in Org mode. First, properties
are like tags, but with a value. Second, you can use properties to
implement (very basic) database capabilities in an Org buffer. For
an example of the first application, imagine maintaining a file where
you document bugs and plan releases for a piece of software. Instead of
using tags like :release_1:, :release_2:, one can use a
property, say :Release:, that in different subtrees has different
values, such as 1.0 or 2.0. For an example of the second
application of properties, imagine keeping track of your music CDs,
where properties could be things such as the album, artist, date of
release, number of tracks, and so on.
Properties can be conveniently edited and viewed in column view (see Column view).
Properties are key-value pairs. They need to be inserted into a special
drawer (see Drawers) with the name PROPERTIES. Each property
is specified on a single line, with the key (surrounded by colons)
first, and the value after it. Here is an example:
* CD collection
** Classic
*** Goldberg Variations
:PROPERTIES:
:Title: Goldberg Variations
:Composer: J.S. Bach
:Artist: Glen Gould
:Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon
:NDisks: 1
:END:
You may define the allowed values for a particular property ‘:Xyz:’ by setting a property ‘:Xyz_ALL:’. This special property is inherited, so if you set it in a level 1 entry, it will apply to the entire tree. When allowed values are defined, setting the corresponding property becomes easier and is less prone to typing errors. For the example with the CD collection, we can predefine publishers and the number of disks in a box like this:
* CD collection
:PROPERTIES:
:NDisks_ALL: 1 2 3 4
:Publisher_ALL: "Deutsche Grammophon" Philips EMI
:END:
If you want to set properties that can be inherited by any entry in a file, use a line like
#+PROPERTY: NDisks_ALL 1 2 3 4
Property values set with the global variable
org-global-properties can be inherited by all entries in all
Org files.
The following commands help to work with properties:
Special properties provide an alternative access method to Org mode features, like the TODO state or the priority of an entry, discussed in the previous chapters. This interface exists so that you can include these states in a column view (see Column view), or to use them in queries. The following property names are special and should not be used as keys in the properties drawer:
TODO The TODO keyword of the entry.
TAGS The tags defined directly in the headline.
ALLTAGS All tags, including inherited ones.
CATEGORY The category of an entry.
PRIORITY The priority of the entry, a string with a single letter.
DEADLINE The deadline time string, without the angular brackets.
SCHEDULED The scheduling timestamp, without the angular brackets.
CLOSED When was this entry closed?
TIMESTAMP The first keyword-less timestamp in the entry.
TIMESTAMP_IA The first inactive timestamp in the entry.
CLOCKSUM The sum of CLOCK intervals in the subtree. org-clock-sum
must be run first to compute the values.
ITEM The content of the entry.
To create sparse trees and special lists with selection based on properties, the same commands are used as for tag searches (see Tag searches).
org-tags-match-list-sublevels).
The syntax for the search string is described in Matching tags and properties.
There is also a special command for creating sparse trees based on a single property:
The outline structure of Org-mode documents lends itself for an
inheritance model of properties: If the parent in a tree has a certain
property, the children can inherit this property. Org mode does not
turn this on by default, because it can slow down property searches
significantly and is often not needed. However, if you find inheritance
useful, you can turn it on by setting the variable
org-use-property-inheritance. It may be set to t to make
all properties inherited from the parent, to a list of properties
that should be inherited, or to a regular expression that matches
inherited properties.
Org mode has a few properties for which inheritance is hard-coded, at least for the special applications for which they are used:
COLUMNS:COLUMNS: property defines the format of column view
(see Column view). It is inherited in the sense that the level
where a :COLUMNS: property is defined is used as the starting
point for a column view table, independently of the location in the
subtree from where columns view is turned on.
CATEGORY:CATEGORY: property
applies to the entire subtree.
ARCHIVE:ARCHIVE: property may define the archive
location for the entire subtree (see Moving subtrees).
LOGGINGA great way to view and edit properties in an outline tree is column view. In column view, each outline item is turned into a table row. Columns in this table provide access to properties of the entries. Org mode implements columns by overlaying a tabular structure over the headline of each item. While the headlines have been turned into a table row, you can still change the visibility of the outline tree. For example, you get a compact table by switching to CONTENTS view (S-<TAB> S-<TAB>, or simply c while column view is active), but you can still open, read, and edit the entry below each headline. Or, you can switch to column view after executing a sparse tree command and in this way get a table only for the selected items. Column view also works in agenda buffers (see Agenda Views) where queries have collected selected items, possibly from a number of files.
Setting up a column view first requires defining the columns. This is done by defining a column format line.
To define a column format for an entire file, use a line like
#+COLUMNS: %25ITEM %TAGS %PRIORITY %TODO
To specify a format that only applies to a specific tree, add a
:COLUMNS: property to the top node of that tree, for example:
** Top node for columns view
:PROPERTIES:
:COLUMNS: %25ITEM %TAGS %PRIORITY %TODO
:END:
If a :COLUMNS: property is present in an entry, it defines columns
for the entry itself, and for the entire subtree below it. Since the
column definition is part of the hierarchical structure of the document,
you can define columns on level 1 that are general enough for all
sublevels, and more specific columns further down, when you edit a
deeper part of the tree.
A column definition sets the attributes of a column. The general definition looks like this:
%[width]property[(title)][{summary-type}]
Except for the percent sign and the property name, all items are optional. The individual parts have the following meaning:
width An integer specifying the width of the column in characters. If omitted, the width will be determined automatically. property The property that should be edited in this column. (title) The header text for the column. If omitted, the property name is used. {summary-type} The summary type. If specified, the column values for parent nodes are computed from the children. Supported summary types are: {+} Sum numbers in this column. {+;%.1f} Like ‘+’, but format result with ‘%.1f’. {$} Currency, short for ‘+;%.2f’. {:} Sum times, HH:MM:SS, plain numbers are hours. {X} Checkbox status, ‘[X]’ if all children are ‘[X]’. {X/} Checkbox status, ‘[n/m]’. {X%} Checkbox status, ‘[n%]’. {min} Smallest number in column. {max} Largest number. {mean} Arithmetic mean of numbers. {:min} Smallest time value in column. {:max} Largest time value. {:mean} Arithmetic mean of time values.
Here is an example for a complete columns definition, along with allowed values.
:COLUMNS: %20ITEM %9Approved(Approved?){X} %Owner %11Status \39
%10Time_Estimate{:} %CLOCKSUM
:Owner_ALL: Tammy Mark Karl Lisa Don
:Status_ALL: "In progress" "Not started yet" "Finished" ""
:Approved_ALL: "[ ]" "[X]"
The first column, ‘%25ITEM’, means the first 25 characters of the item itself, i.e., column definition with the ‘ITEM’ specifier. The other specifiers create columns ‘Owner’ with a list of names as allowed values, for ‘Status’ with four different possible values, and for a checkbox field ‘Approved’. When no width is given after the ‘%’ character, the column will be exactly as wide as it needs to be in order to fully display all values. The ‘Approved’ column does have a modified title (‘Approved?’, with a question mark). Summaries will be created for the ‘Time_Estimate’ column by adding time duration expressions like HH:MM, and for the ‘Approved’ column, by providing an ‘[X]’ status if all children have been checked. The ‘CLOCKSUM’ column is special, it lists the sum of CLOCK intervals in the subtree.
:COLUMNS: property that defines
a format. When one is found, the column view table is established for
the entire tree, starting from the entry that contains the :COLUMNS:
property. If none is found, the format is taken from the #+COLUMNS
line or from the variable org-columns-default-format, and column
view is established for the current entry and its subtree.
Since column view is just an overlay over a buffer, it cannot be
exported or printed directly. If you want to capture a column view, use
a columnview dynamic block (see Dynamic blocks). The frame
of this block looks like this:
* The column view
#+BEGIN: columnview :hlines 1 :id "label"
#+END:
This dynamic block has the following parameters:
:id local use the tree in which the capture block is located
global make a global view, including all headings in the file
"file:path-to-file"
run column view at the top of this file
"ID" call column view in the tree that has an :ID:
property with the value label. You can use
M-x org-id-copy to create a globally unique ID for
the current entry and copy it to the kill-ring.
:hlinest, insert an hline after every line. When a number N, insert
an hline before each headline with level <= N.
:vlinest, force column groups to get vertical lines.
:maxlevel:skip-empty-rowst, skip rows where the only non-empty specifier of the
column view is ITEM.
The following commands insert or update the dynamic block:
#+BEGIN line of the dynamic block.
You can add formulas to the column view table and you may add plotting
instructions in front of the table—these will survive an update of the
block. If there is a #+TBLFM: after the table, the table will
actually be recalculated automatically after an update.
An alternative way to capture and process property values into a table is provided by Eric Schulte's org-collector.el which is a contributed package40. It provides a general API to collect properties from entries in a certain scope, and arbitrary Lisp expressions to process these values before inserting them into a table or a dynamic block.
There is a full API for accessing and changing properties. This API can be used by Emacs Lisp programs to work with properties and to implement features based on them. For more information see Using the property API.
To assist project planning, TODO items can be labeled with a date and/or a time. The specially formatted string carrying the date and time information is called a timestamp in Org mode. This may be a little confusing because timestamp is often used as indicating when something was created or last changed. However, in Org mode this term is used in a much wider sense.
A timestamp is a specification of a date (possibly with a time or a range of times) in a special format, either ‘<2003-09-16 Tue>’ or ‘<2003-09-16 Tue 09:39>’ or ‘<2003-09-16 Tue 12:00-12:30>’41. A timestamp can appear anywhere in the headline or body of an Org tree entry. Its presence causes entries to be shown on specific dates in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda). We distinguish:
* Meet Peter at the movies <2006-11-01 Wed 19:15>
* Discussion on climate change <2006-11-02 Thu 20:00-22:00>
* Pick up Sam at school <2007-05-16 Wed 12:30 +1w>
* The nerd meeting on every 2nd Thursday of the month
<%%(diary-float t 4 2)>
** Meeting in Amsterdam
<2004-08-23 Mon>--<2004-08-26 Thu>
* Gillian comes late for the fifth time [2006-11-01 Wed]
For Org mode to recognize timestamps, they need to be in the specific format. All commands listed below produce timestamps in the correct format.
org-time-stamp-rounding-minutes.
When Org mode prompts for a date/time, the default is shown as an ISO date, and the prompt therefore seems to ask for an ISO date. But it will in fact accept any string containing some date and/or time information, and it is really smart about interpreting your input. You can, for example, use C-y to paste a (possibly multi-line) string copied from an email message. Org mode will find whatever information is in there and derive anything you have not specified from the default date and time. The default is usually the current date and time, but when modifying an existing timestamp, or when entering the second stamp of a range, it is taken from the stamp in the buffer. When filling in information, Org mode assumes that most of the time you will want to enter a date in the future: If you omit the month/year and the given day/month is before today, it will assume that you mean a future date42.
For example, let's assume that today is June 13, 2006. Here is how various inputs will be interpreted, the items filled in by Org mode are in bold.
3-2-5 --> 2003-02-05
14 --> 2006-06-14
12 --> 2006-07-12
Fri --> nearest Friday (defaultdate or later)
sep 15 --> 2006-09-15
feb 15 --> 2007-02-15
sep 12 9 --> 2009-09-12
12:45 --> 2006-06-13 12:45
22 sept 0:34 --> 2006-09-22 0:34
w4 --> ISO week for of the current year 2006
2012 w4 fri --> Friday of ISO week 4 in 2012
2012-w04-5 --> Same as above
Furthermore you can specify a relative date by giving, as the first thing in the input: a plus/minus sign, a number and a letter ([dwmy]) to indicate change in days, weeks, months, or years. With a single plus or minus, the date is always relative to today. With a double plus or minus, it is relative to the default date. If instead of a single letter, you use the abbreviation of day name, the date will be the nth such day. E.g.,
+0 --> today
. --> today
+4d --> four days from today
+4 --> same as above
+2w --> two weeks from today
++5 --> five days from default date
+2tue --> second tuesday from now.
The function understands English month and weekday abbreviations. If
you want to use unabbreviated names and/or other languages, configure
the variables parse-time-months and parse-time-weekdays.
Parallel to the minibuffer prompt, a calendar is popped up43. When you exit the date prompt, either by clicking on a date in the calendar, or by pressing <RET>, the date selected in the calendar will be combined with the information entered at the prompt. You can control the calendar fully from the minibuffer:
> / < Scroll calendar forward/backward by one month. mouse-1 Select date by clicking on it. S-<right>/<left> One day forward/backward. S-<down>/<up> One week forward/backward. M-S-<right>/<left> One month forward/backward. <RET> Choose date in calendar.
The actions of the date/time prompt may seem complex, but I assure you they will grow on you, and you will start getting annoyed by pretty much any other way of entering a date/time out there. To help you understand what is going on, the current interpretation of your input will be displayed live in the minibuffer44.
Org mode uses the standard ISO notation for dates and times as it is
defined in ISO 8601. If you cannot get used to this and require another
representation of date and time to keep you happy, you can get it by
customizing the variables org-display-custom-times and
org-time-stamp-custom-formats.
Org mode needs the default format for scanning, so the custom date/time format does not replace the default format—instead it is put over the default format using text properties. This has the following consequences:
A timestamp may be preceded by special keywords to facilitate planning:
On the deadline date, the task will be listed in the agenda. In
addition, the agenda for today will carry a warning about the
approaching or missed deadline, starting
org-deadline-warning-days before the due date, and continuing
until the entry is marked DONE. An example:
*** TODO write article about the Earth for the Guide
The editor in charge is [[bbdb:Ford Prefect]]
DEADLINE: <2004-02-29 Sun>
You can specify a different lead time for warnings for a specific
deadlines using the following syntax. Here is an example with a warning
period of 5 days DEADLINE: <2004-02-29 Sun -5d>.
The headline will be listed under the given date45. In addition, a reminder that the scheduled date has passed will be present in the compilation for today, until the entry is marked DONE. I.e.,
*** TODO Call Trillian for a date on New Years Eve.
SCHEDULED: <2004-12-25 Sat>
Important: Scheduling an item in Org mode should not be understood in the same way that we understand scheduling a meeting. Setting a date for a meeting is just a simple appointment, you should mark this entry with a simple plain timestamp, to get this item shown on the date where it applies. This is a frequent misunderstanding by Org users. In Org mode, scheduling means setting a date when you want to start working on an action item.
You may use timestamps with repeaters in scheduling and deadline
entries. Org mode will issue early and late warnings based on the
assumption that the timestamp represents the nearest instance of
the repeater. However, the use of diary sexp entries like
<%%(diary-float t 42)>
in scheduling and deadline timestamps is limited. Org mode does not
know enough about the internals of each sexp function to issue early and
late warnings. However, it will show the item on each day where the
sexp entry matches.
The following commands allow you to quickly insert a deadline or to schedule an item:
org-deadline-warning-days.
With C-u prefix, show all deadlines in the file. With a numeric
prefix, check that many days. For example, C-1 C-c / d shows
all deadlines due tomorrow.
Some tasks need to be repeated again and again. Org mode helps to organize such tasks using a so-called repeater in a DEADLINE, SCHEDULED, or plain timestamp. In the following example
** TODO Pay the rent
DEADLINE: <2005-10-01 Sat +1m>
the +1m is a repeater; the intended interpretation is that the task
has a deadline on <2005-10-01> and repeats itself every (one) month starting
from that time. If you need both a repeater and a special warning period in
a deadline entry, the repeater should come first and the warning period last:
DEADLINE: <2005-10-01 Sat +1m -3d>.
Deadlines and scheduled items produce entries in the agenda when they are over-due, so it is important to be able to mark such an entry as completed once you have done so. When you mark a DEADLINE or a SCHEDULE with the TODO keyword DONE, it will no longer produce entries in the agenda. The problem with this is, however, that then also the next instance of the repeated entry will not be active. Org mode deals with this in the following way: When you try to mark such an entry DONE (using C-c C-t), it will shift the base date of the repeating timestamp by the repeater interval, and immediately set the entry state back to TODO. In the example above, setting the state to DONE would actually switch the date like this:
** TODO Pay the rent
DEADLINE: <2005-11-01 Tue +1m>
A timestamp46 will be added under the deadline, to keep a record that you actually acted on the previous instance of this deadline.
As a consequence of shifting the base date, this entry will no longer be visible in the agenda when checking past dates, but all future instances will be visible.
With the ‘+1m’ cookie, the date shift will always be exactly one month. So if you have not paid the rent for three months, marking this entry DONE will still keep it as an overdue deadline. Depending on the task, this may not be the best way to handle it. For example, if you forgot to call you father for 3 weeks, it does not make sense to call him 3 times in a single day to make up for it. Finally, there are tasks like changing batteries which should always repeat a certain time after the last time you did it. For these tasks, Org mode has special repeaters markers with ‘++’ and ‘.+’. For example:
** TODO Call Father
DEADLINE: <2008-02-10 Sun ++1w>
Marking this DONE will shift the date by at least one week,
but also by as many weeks as it takes to get this date into
the future. However, it stays on a Sunday, even if you called
and marked it done on Saturday.
** TODO Check the batteries in the smoke detectors
DEADLINE: <2005-11-01 Tue .+1m>
Marking this DONE will shift the date to one month after
today.
You may have both scheduling and deadline information for a specific task—just make sure that the repeater intervals on both are the same.
An alternative to using a repeater is to create a number of copies of a task subtree, with dates shifted in each copy. The command C-c C-x c was created for this purpose, it is described in Structure editing.
Org mode allows you to clock the time you spend on specific tasks in a project. When you start working on an item, you can start the clock. When you stop working on that task, or when you mark the task done, the clock is stopped and the corresponding time interval is recorded. It also computes the total time spent on each subtree of a project.
Normally, the clock does not survive exiting and re-entereing Emacs, but you can arrange for the clock information to persist across Emacs sessions with
(setq org-clock-persist t)
(org-clock-persistence-insinuate)
:LOGBOOK: drawer (see also the variable
org-clock-into-drawer). When called with a C-u prefix argument,
select the task from a list of recently clocked tasks. With two C-u
C-u prefixes, clock into the task at point and mark it as the default task.
The default task will always be available when selecting a clocking task,
with letter d.CLOCK_MODELINE_TOTAL property. It may have the values current
to show only the current clocking instance, today to show all time
clocked on this tasks today (see also the variable
org-extend-today-until), all to include all time, or
auto which is the default48.org-log-note-clock-out for the
possibility to record an additional note together with the clock-out
timestamp49.
org-remove-highlights-with-change) or press C-c C-c.
#+BEGIN: clocktable :maxlevel 2 :emphasize nil :scope file
#+END: clocktable
If such a block already exists at point, its content is replaced by the new table. The ‘BEGIN’ line can specify options:
:maxlevel Maximum level depth to which times are listed in the table. :emphasize Whent, emphasize level one and level two items. :scope The scope to consider. This can be any of the following: nil the current buffer or narrowed region file the full current buffer subtree the subtree where the clocktable is located treeN the surrounding level N tree, for exampletree3tree the surrounding level 1 tree agenda all agenda files ("file"..) scan these files file-with-archives current file and its archives agenda-with-archives all agenda files, including archives :block The time block to consider. This block is specified either absolute, or relative to the current time and may be any of these formats: 2007-12-31 New year eve 2007 2007-12 December 2007 2007-W50 ISO-week 50 in 2007 2007 the year 2007 today, yesterday, today-N a relative day thisweek, lastweek, thisweek-N a relative week thismonth, lastmonth, thismonth-N a relative month thisyear, lastyear, thisyear-N a relative year Use S-<left>/<right> keys to shift the time interval. :tstart A time string specifying when to start considering times. :tend A time string specifying when to stop considering times. :stepweekorday, to split the table into chunks. To use this,:blockor:tstart,:tendare needed. :link Link the item headlines in the table to their origins. :formula Content of a#+TBLFMline to be added and evaluated. As a special case, ‘:formula %’ adds a column with % time. If you do not specify a formula here, any existing formula. below the clock table will survive updates and be evaluated.
To get a clock summary of the current level 1 tree, for the current day, you could write
#+BEGIN: clocktable :maxlevel 2 :block today :scope tree1 :link t
#+END: clocktable
and to use a specific time range you could write50
#+BEGIN: clocktable :tstart "<2006-08-10 Thu 10:00>"
:tend "<2006-08-10 Thu 12:00>"
#+END: clocktable
A summary of the current subtree with % times would be
#+BEGIN: clocktable :scope subtree :link t :formula %
#+END: clocktable
#+BEGIN line of the dynamic block.
:block interval and update the table. The cursor
needs to be in the #+BEGIN: clocktable line for this command. If
:block is today, it will be shifted to today-1 etc.
The l key may be used in the timeline (see Timeline) and in the agenda (see Weekly/daily agenda) to show which tasks have been worked on or closed during a day.
If you want to plan your work in a very detailed way, or if you need to
produce offers with quotations of the estimated work effort, you may want to
assign effort estimates to entries. If you are also clocking your work, you
may later want to compare the planned effort with the actual working time, a
great way to improve planning estimates. Effort estimates are stored in a
special property ‘Effort’51. Clearly the best way to
work with effort estimates is through column view (see Column view). You
should start by setting up discrete values for effort estimates, and a
COLUMNS format that displays these values together with clock sums (if
you want to clock your time). For a specific buffer you can use
#+PROPERTY: Effort_ALL 0 0:10 0:30 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00 8:00
#+COLUMNS: %40ITEM(Task) %17Effort(Estimated Effort){:} %CLOCKSUM
or, even better, you can set up these values globally by customizing the
variables org-global-properties and org-columns-default-format.
In particular if you want to use this setup also in the agenda, a global
setup may be advised.
The way to assign estimates to individual items is then to switch to column mode, and to use S-<right> and S-<left> to change the value. The values you enter will immediately be summed up in the hierarchy. In the column next to it, any clocked time will be displayed.
If you switch to column view in the daily/weekly agenda, the effort column
will summarize the estimated work effort for each day52, and you can use this to find space in your schedule. To get
an overview of the entire part of the day that is committed, you can set the
option org-agenda-columns-add-appointments-to-effort-sum. The
appointments on a day that take place over a specified time interval will
then also be added to the load estimate of the day.
Effort estimates can be used in secondary agenda filtering that is triggered with the / key in the agenda (see Agenda commands). If you have these estimates defined consistently, two or three key presses will narrow down the list to stuff that fits into an available time slot.
When taking notes during, for example, a meeting or a video viewing, it can be useful to have access to times relative to a starting time. Org provides such a relative timer and make it easy to create timed notes.
An important part of any organization system is the ability to quickly capture new ideas and tasks, and to associate reference material with them. Org uses the remember.el package to create tasks, and stores files related to a task (attachments) in a special directory.
The Remember package by John Wiegley lets you store quick notes with little interruption of your work flow. See http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/RememberMode for more information. It is an excellent way to add new notes and tasks to Org files. Org significantly expands the possibilities of Remember: You may define templates for different note types, and associate target files and headlines with specific templates. It also allows you to select the location where a note should be stored interactively, on the fly.
The following customization will tell Remember to use Org files as target, and to create annotations compatible with Org links.
(org-remember-insinuate)
(setq org-directory "~/path/to/my/orgfiles/")
(setq org-default-notes-file (concat org-directory "/notes.org"))
(define-key global-map "\C-cr" 'org-remember)
The last line binds the command org-remember to a global
key53. org-remember basically just calls Remember,
but it makes a few things easier: If there is an active region, it will
automatically copy the region into the Remember buffer. It also allows
to jump to the buffer and location where Remember notes are being
stored: Just call org-remember with a prefix argument. If you
use two prefix arguments, Org jumps to the location where the last
remember note was stored.
The Remember buffer will actually use org-mode as its major mode, so
that all editing features of Org mode are available. In addition to this, a
minor mode org-remember-mode is turned on, for the single purpose that
you can use its keymap org-remember-mode-map to overwrite some of
Org mode's key bindings.
You can also call org-remember in a special way from the agenda,
using the k r key combination. With this access, any timestamps
inserted by the selected Remember template (see below) will default to
the cursor date in the agenda, rather than to the current date.
In combination with Org, you can use templates to generate different types of Remember notes. For example, if you would like to use one template to create general TODO entries, another one for journal entries, and a third one for collecting random ideas, you could use:
(setq org-remember-templates
'(("Todo" ?t "* TODO %?\n %i\n %a" "~/org/TODO.org" "Tasks")
("Journal" ?j "* %U %?\n\n %i\n %a" "~/org/JOURNAL.org")
("Idea" ?i "* %^{Title}\n %i\n %a" "~/org/JOURNAL.org" "New Ideas")))
In these entries, the first string is just a name, and the
character specifies how to select the template. It is useful if the
character is also the first letter of the name. The next string specifies
the template. Two more (optional) strings give the file in which, and the
headline under which, the new note should be stored. The file (if not present
or nil) defaults to org-default-notes-file, the heading to
org-remember-default-headline. If the file name is not an absolute
path, it will be interpreted relative to org-directory. The heading
can also be the symbols top or bottom to send notes as level 1
entries to the beginning or end of the file, respectively.
An optional sixth element specifies the contexts in which the user can select
the template. This element can be a list of major modes or a function.
org-remember will first check whether the function returns t or
if we are in any of the listed major modes, and exclude templates for which
this condition is not fulfilled. Templates that do not specify this element
at all, or that use nil or t as a value will always be
selectable.
So for example:
(setq org-remember-templates
'(("Bug" ?b "* BUG %?\n %i\n %a" "~/org/BUGS.org" "Bugs" (emacs-lisp-mode))
("Journal" ?j "* %U %?\n\n %i\n %a" "~/org/JOURNAL.org" "X" my-check)
("Idea" ?i "* %^{Title}\n %i\n %a" "~/org/JOURNAL.org" "New Ideas")))
The first template will only be available when invoking org-remember
from an buffer in emacs-lisp-mode. The second template will only be
available when the function my-check returns t. The third
template will be proposed in any context.
When you call M-x org-remember (or M-x remember) to remember something, Org will prompt for a key to select the template (if you have more than one template) and then prepare the buffer like
* TODO
[[file:link to where you called remember]]
During expansion of the template, special %-escapes allow dynamic insertion of content:
%^{prompt} prompt the user for a string and replace this sequence with it.
You may specify a default value and a completion table with
%^{prompt|default|completion2|completion3...}
The arrow keys access a prompt-specific history.
%a annotation, normally the link created with org-store-link
%A like %a, but prompt for the description part
%i initial content, the region when remember is called with C-u.
The entire text will be indented like %i itself.
%t timestamp, date only
%T timestamp with date and time
%u, %U like the above, but inactive timestamps
%^t like %t, but prompt for date. Similarly %^T, %^u, %^U
You may define a prompt like %^{Birthday}t
%n user name (taken from user-full-name)
%c Current kill ring head.
%x Content of the X clipboard.
%^C Interactive selection of which kill or clip to use.
%^L Like %^C, but insert as link.
%^g prompt for tags, with completion on tags in target file.
%k title of currently clocked task
%K link to currently clocked task
%^G prompt for tags, with completion all tags in all agenda files.
%^{prop}p Prompt the user for a value for property prop
%:keyword specific information for certain link types, see below
%[file] insert the contents of the file given by file
%(sexp) evaluate Elisp sexp and replace with the result
%! immediately store note after completing the template
(skipping the C-c C-c that normally triggers storing)
%& jump to target location immediately after storing note
For specific link types, the following keywords will be defined54:
Link type | Available keywords
-------------------+----------------------------------------------
bbdb | %:name %:company
bbdb | %::server %:port %:nick
vm, wl, mh, rmail | %:type %:subject %:message-id
| %:from %:fromname %:fromaddress
| %:to %:toname %:toaddress
| %:fromto (either "to NAME" or "from NAME")55
gnus | %:group, for messages also all email fields
w3, w3m | %:url
info | %:file %:node
calendar | %:date"
To place the cursor after template expansion use:
%? After completing the template, position cursor here.
If you change your mind about which template to use, call
org-remember in the remember buffer. You may then select a new
template that will be filled with the previous context information.
When you are finished preparing a note with Remember, you have to press C-c C-c to file the note away. If you have started the clock in the Remember buffer, you will first be asked if you want to clock out now56. If you answer n, the clock will continue to run after the note was filed away.
The handler will then store the note in the file and under the headline specified in the template, or it will use the default file and headline. The window configuration will be restored, sending you back to the working context before the call to Remember. To re-use the location found during the last call to Remember, exit the Remember buffer with C-0 C-c C-c, i.e., Another special case is C-2 C-c C-c which files the note as a child of the currently clocked item.
If you want to store the note directly to a different place, use C-1 C-c C-c instead to exit Remember57. The handler will then first prompt for a target file—if you press <RET>, the value specified for the template is used. Then the command offers the headings tree of the selected file, with the cursor position at the default headline (if you specified one in the template). You can either immediately press <RET> to get the note placed there. Or you can use the following keys to find a different location:
<TAB> Cycle visibility. <down> / <up> Next/previous visible headline. n / p Next/previous visible headline. f / b Next/previous headline same level. u One level up.
Pressing <RET> or <left> or <right> then leads to the following result.
| Cursor position | Key | Note gets inserted
|
| on headline | <RET> | as sublevel of the heading at cursor, first or last
|
depending on org-reverse-note-order.
| ||
| <left>/<right> | as same level, before/after current heading
| |
| buffer-start | <RET> | as level 2 heading at end of file or level 1 at beginning
|
depending on org-reverse-note-order.
| ||
| not on headline | <RET> | at cursor position, level taken from context.
|
Before inserting the text into a tree, the function ensures that the text has a headline, i.e., headline is constructed from the current date. If you have indented the text of the note below the headline, the indentation will be adapted if inserting the note into the tree requires demotion from level 1.
Remember is usually used to quickly capture notes and tasks into one or a few capture lists. When reviewing the captured data, you may want to refile some of the entries into a different list, for example into a project. Cutting, finding the right location, and then pasting the note is cumbersome. To simplify this process, you can use the following special command:
org-reverse-note-order, it will be either the first or
last subitem.org-refile-targets for details. If you would like to
select a location via a file-path-like completion along the outline path, see
the variables org-refile-use-outline-path and
org-outline-path-complete-in-steps. If you would like to be able to
create new nodes as new parents for for refiling on the fly, check the
variable org-refile-allow-creating-parent-nodes.
org-refile last moved a tree to.
It is often useful to associate reference material with an outline node/task.
Small chunks of plain text can simply be stored in the subtree of a project.
Hyperlinks (see Hyperlinks) can be used to establish associations with
files that live elsewhere on your computer or in the cloud, like emails or
source code files belonging to a project. Another method is attachments,
which are files located in a directory belonging to an outline node. Org
uses directories named by the unique ID of each entry. These directories are
located in the data directory which lives in the same directory where
your Org file lives58. If you initialize this directory with
git init, Org will automatically commit changes when it sees them.
The attachment system has been contributed to Org by John Wiegley.
In cases where it seems better to do so, you can also attach a directory of your choice to an entry. You can also make children inherit the attachment directory from a parent, so that an entire subtree uses the same attached directory.
The following commands deal with attachments.
org-attach-method.
Note that hard links are not supported on all systems.
org-file-apps.
For more details, see the information on following hyperlinks
(see Handling links).
ATTACH_DIR property.
ATTACH_DIR_INHERIT property, so that children will use the
same directory for attachments as the parent does.
Org has the capablity to add and change entries based on information found in
RSS feeds. You could use this to make a task out of each new podcast in a
podcast feed. Or you could use a phone-based note-creating service on the
web to import tasks into Org. To access feeds, you need to configure the
variable org-feed-alist. The docstring of this variable has detailed
information. Here is just an example:
(setq org-feed-alist
'(("ReQall" "http://www.reqall.com/user/feeds/rss/a1b2c3....."
"~/org/feeds.org" "ReQall Entries")
will configure that new items from the feed provided by reqall.com will result in new entries in the file ~/org/feeds.org under the heading ‘ReQall Entries’, whenever the following command is used:
org-feed-alist and act upon
them.
Under the same headline, Org will create a drawer ‘FEEDSTATUS’ in which it will store information about the status of items in the feed, to avoid adding the same item several times. You should add ‘FEEDSTATUS’ to the list of drawers in that file:
#+DRAWERS: LOGBOOK PROPERTIES FEEDSTATUS
For more information, see org-feed.el and the docstring of
org-feed-alist.
You can set up Org for handling protocol calls from outside applications that are passed to Emacs through the emacsserver. For example, you can configure bookmarks in your web browser to send a link to the current page to Org and create a note from it using Remember (see Remember). Or you could create a bookmark that will tell Emacs to open the local source file of a remote website you are looking at with the browser. See http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-protocol.php for detailed documentation and setup instructions.
Due to the way Org works, TODO items, time-stamped items, and tagged headlines can be scattered throughout a file or even a number of files. To get an overview of open action items, or of events that are important for a particular date, this information must be collected, sorted and displayed in an organized way.
Org can select items based on various criteria and display them in a separate buffer. Seven different view types are provided:
The extracted information is displayed in a special agenda buffer. This buffer is read-only, but provides commands to visit the corresponding locations in the original Org files, and even to edit these files remotely.
Two variables control how the agenda buffer is displayed and whether the
window configuration is restored when the agenda exits:
org-agenda-window-setup and
org-agenda-restore-windows-after-quit.
The information to be shown is normally collected from all agenda
files, the files listed in the variable
org-agenda-files59. If a directory is part of this list,
all files with the extension .org in this directory will be part
of the list.
Thus, even if you only work with a single Org file, that file should
be put into the list60. You can customize org-agenda-files, but
the easiest way to maintain it is through the following commands
iswitchb-like interface to switch to and between Org
buffers.
The Org menu contains the current list of files and can be used to visit any of them.
If you would like to focus the agenda temporarily on a file not in this list, or on just one file in the list, or even on only a subtree in a file, then this can be done in different ways. For a single agenda command, you may press < once or several times in the dispatcher (see Agenda dispatcher). To restrict the agenda scope for an extended period, use the following commands:
When working with speedbar.el, you can use the following commands in the Speedbar frame:
The views are created through a dispatcher, which should be bound to a global key—for example C-c a (see Installation). In the following we will assume that C-c a is indeed how the dispatcher is accessed and list keyboard access to commands accordingly. After pressing C-c a, an additional letter is required to execute a command. The dispatcher offers the following default commands:
org-agenda-text-search-extra-files. This
uses the Emacs command multi-occur. A prefix argument can be
used to specify the number of context lines for each match, default is
1.
You can also define custom commands that will be accessible through the dispatcher, just like the default commands. This includes the possibility to create extended agenda buffers that contain several blocks together, for example the weekly agenda, the global TODO list and a number of special tags matches. See Custom agenda views.
In this section we describe the built-in views.
The purpose of the weekly/daily agenda is to act like a page of a paper agenda, showing all the tasks for the current week or day.
org-agenda-ndays)
Remote editing from the agenda buffer means, for example, that you can change the dates of deadlines and appointments from the agenda buffer. The commands available in the Agenda buffer are listed in Agenda commands.
Emacs contains the calendar and diary by Edward M. Reingold. The calendar displays a three-month calendar with holidays from different countries and cultures. The diary allows you to keep track of anniversaries, lunar phases, sunrise/set, recurrent appointments (weekly, monthly) and more. In this way, it is quite complementary to Org. It can be very useful to combine output from Org with the diary.
In order to include entries from the Emacs diary into Org mode's agenda, you only need to customize the variable
(setq org-agenda-include-diary t)
After that, everything will happen automatically. All diary entries including holidays, anniversaries, etc., will be included in the agenda buffer created by Org mode. <SPC>, <TAB>, and <RET> can be used from the agenda buffer to jump to the diary file in order to edit existing diary entries. The i command to insert new entries for the current date works in the agenda buffer, as well as the commands S, M, and C to display Sunrise/Sunset times, show lunar phases and to convert to other calendars, respectively. c can be used to switch back and forth between calendar and agenda.
If you are using the diary only for sexp entries and holidays, it is faster to not use the above setting, but instead to copy or even move the entries into an Org file. Org mode evaluates diary-style sexp entries, and does it faster because there is no overhead for first creating the diary display. Note that the sexp entries must start at the left margin, no whitespace is allowed before them. For example, the following segment of an Org file will be processed and entries will be made in the agenda:
* Birthdays and similar stuff
#+CATEGORY: Holiday
%%(org-calendar-holiday) ; special function for holiday names
#+CATEGORY: Ann
%%(diary-anniversary 14 5 1956) Arthur Dent is %d years old
%%(diary-anniversary 2 10 1869) Mahatma Gandhi would be %d years old
If you are using the Big Brothers Database to store your contacts, you will very likely prefer to store anniversaries in BBDB rather than in a separate Org or diary file. Org supports this and will show BBDB anniversaries as part of the agenda. All you need to do is to add the following to one your your agenda files:
* Anniversaries
:PROPERTIES:
:CATEGORY: Anniv
:END
%%(org-bbdb-anniversaries)
You can then go ahead and define anniversaries for a BBDB record. Basically,
you need to press C-o anniversary <RET> with the cursor in a BBDB
record and then add the date in the format YYYY-MM-DD, followed by a
space and the class of the anniversary (‘birthday’ or ‘wedding’, or
a format string). If you omit the class, it will default to ‘birthday’.
Here are a few examples, the header for the file org-bbdb.el contains
more detailed information.
1973-06-22
1955-08-02 wedding
2008-04-14 %s released version 6.01 of org-mode, %d years ago
After a change to BBDB, or for the first agenda display during an Emacs session, the agenda display will suffer a short delay as Org updates its hash with anniversaries. However, from then on things will be very fast—much faster in fact than a long list of ‘%%(diary-anniversary)’ entries in an Org or Diary file.
Org can interact with Emacs appointments notification facility. To add all
the appointments of your agenda files, use the command
org-agenda-to-appt. This command also lets you filter through the
list of your appointments and add only those belonging to a specific category
or matching a regular expression. See the docstring for details.
The global TODO list contains all unfinished TODO items formatted and collected into a single place.
agenda-mode, so there are commands to examine and manipulate
the TODO entries directly from that buffer (see Agenda commands).
org-todo-keywords is selected.
The r key in the agenda buffer regenerates it, and you can give
a prefix argument to this command to change the selected TODO keyword,
for example 3 r. If you often need a search for a specific
keyword, define a custom command for it (see Agenda dispatcher).Remote editing of TODO items means that you can change the state of a TODO entry with a single key press. The commands available in the TODO list are described in Agenda commands.
Normally the global TODO list simply shows all headlines with TODO keywords. This list can become very long. There are two ways to keep it more compact:
org-agenda-todo-ignore-scheduled,
org-agenda-todo-ignore-deadlines, and/or
org-agenda-todo-ignore-with-date to exclude such items from the
global TODO list.
org-agenda-todo-list-sublevels to get this behavior.
If headlines in the agenda files are marked with tags (see Tags), or have properties (see Properties and Columns), you can select headlines based on this metadata and collect them into an agenda buffer. The match syntax described here also applies when creating sparse trees with C-c / m.
org-tags-match-list-sublevels).
To exclude scheduled/deadline items, see the variable
org-agenda-tags-todo-honor-ignore-options. Matching specific TODO
keywords together with a tags match is also possible, see Tag searches.
The commands available in the tags list are described in Agenda commands.
A search string can use Boolean operators ‘&’ for AND and ‘|’ for
OR. ‘&’ binds more strongly than ‘|’. Parentheses are currently
not implemented. Each element in the search is either a tag, a regular
expression matching tags, or an expression like PROPERTY OPERATOR
VALUE with a comparison operator, accessing a property value. Each element
may be preceded by ‘-’, to select against it, and ‘+’ is syntactic
sugar for positive selection. The AND operator ‘&’ is optional when
‘+’ or ‘-’ is present. Here are some examples, using only tags.
Instead of a tag, you may also specify a regular expression enclosed in curly braces. For example, ‘work+{^boss.*}’ matches headlines that contain the tag ‘:work:’ and any tag starting with ‘boss’.
You may also test for properties (see Properties and Columns) at the same
time as matching tags. The properties may be real properties, or special
properties that represent other metadata (see Special properties). For
example, the “property” TODO represents the TODO keyword of the
entry. Or, the “property” LEVEL represents the level of an entry.
So a search ‘+LEVEL=3+boss-TODO="DONE"’ lists all level three headlines
that have the tag ‘boss’ and are not marked with the TODO keyword
DONE. In buffers with org-odd-levels-only set, ‘LEVEL’ does not
count the number of stars, but ‘LEVEL=2’ will correspond to 3 stars etc.
Here are more examples:
When matching properties, a number of different operators can be used to test the value of a property. Here is a complex example:
+work-boss+PRIORITY="A"+Coffee="unlimited"+Effort<2 \
+With={Sarah\|Denny}+SCHEDULED>="<2008-10-11>"
The type of comparison will depend on how the comparison value is written:
"<now>" for now (including time), and "<today>", and
"<tomorrow>" for these days at 0:00 hours, i.e.,
specification. Also strings like "<+5d>" or "<-2m>" with units
d, w, m, and y for day, week, month, and year,
respectively, can be used.
So the search string in the example finds entries tagged ‘:work:’ but not ‘:boss:’, which also have a priority value ‘A’, a ‘:Coffee:’ property with the value ‘unlimited’, an ‘Effort’ property that is numerically smaller than 2, a ‘:With:’ property that is matched by the regular expression ‘Sarah\|Denny’, and that are scheduled on or after October 11, 2008.
Accessing TODO, LEVEL, and CATEGORY during a search is fast. Accessing any other properties will slow down the search. However, once you have paid the price by accessing one property, testing additional properties is cheap again.
You can configure Org mode to use property inheritance during a search, but beware that this can slow down searches considerably. See Property inheritance, for details.
For backward compatibility, and also for typing speed, there is also a different way to test TODO states in a search. For this, terminate the tags/property part of the search string (which may include several terms connected with ‘|’) with a ‘/’ and then specify a Boolean expression just for TODO keywords. The syntax is then similar to that for tags, but should be applied with care: For example, a positive selection on several TODO keywords cannot meaningfully be combined with boolean AND. However, negative selection combined with AND can be meaningful. To make sure that only lines are checked that actually have any TODO keyword (resulting in a speed-up), use C-c a M, or equivalently start the TODO part after the slash with ‘!’. Examples:
The timeline summarizes all time-stamped items from a single Org mode file in a time-sorted view. The main purpose of this command is to give an overview over events in a project.
The commands available in the timeline buffer are listed in Agenda commands.
This agenda view is a general text search facility for Org mode entries. It is particularly useful to find notes.
+computer +wifi -ethernet -{8\.11[bg]}
will search for note entries that contain the keywords computer
and wifi, but not the keyword ethernet, and which are also
not matched by the regular expression 8\.11[bg], meaning to
exclude both 8.11b and 8.11g.
Note that in addition to the agenda files, this command will also search
the files listed in org-agenda-text-search-extra-files.
If you are following a system like David Allen's GTD to organize your work, one of the “duties” you have is a regular review to make sure that all projects move along. A stuck project is a project that has no defined next actions, so it will never show up in the TODO lists Org mode produces. During the review, you need to identify such projects and define next actions for them.
org-stuck-projects to define what a stuck
project is and how to find it.
You almost certainly will have to configure this view before it will work for you. The built-in default assumes that all your projects are level-2 headlines, and that a project is not stuck if it has at least one entry marked with a TODO keyword TODO or NEXT or NEXTACTION.
Let's assume that you, in your own way of using Org mode, identify projects with a tag PROJECT, and that you use a TODO keyword MAYBE to indicate a project that should not be considered yet. Let's further assume that the TODO keyword DONE marks finished projects, and that NEXT and TODO indicate next actions. The tag @SHOP indicates shopping and is a next action even without the NEXT tag. Finally, if the project contains the special word IGNORE anywhere, it should not be listed either. In this case you would start by identifying eligible projects with a tags/todo match64 ‘+PROJECT/-MAYBE-DONE’, and then check for TODO, NEXT, @SHOP, and IGNORE in the subtree to identify projects that are not stuck. The correct customization for this is
(setq org-stuck-projects
'("+PROJECT/-MAYBE-DONE" ("NEXT" "TODO") ("@SHOP")
"\\<IGNORE\\>"))
Note that if a project is identified as non-stuck, the subtree of this entry will still be searched for stuck projets.
Before displaying items in an agenda view, Org mode visually prepares
the items and sorts them. Each item occupies a single line. The line
starts with a prefix that contains the category
(see Categories) of the item and other important information. You can
customize the prefix using the option org-agenda-prefix-format.
The prefix is followed by a cleaned-up version of the outline headline
associated with the item.
The category is a broad label assigned to each agenda item. By default, the category is simply derived from the file name, but you can also specify it with a special line in the buffer, like this65:
#+CATEGORY: Thesis
If you would like to have a special CATEGORY for a single entry or a
(sub)tree, give the entry a :CATEGORY: property with the
special category you want to apply as the value.
The display in the agenda buffer looks best if the category is not longer than 10 characters.
Org mode checks each agenda item for a time-of-day specification. The time can be part of the timestamp that triggered inclusion into the agenda, for example as in ‘<2005-05-10 Tue 19:00>’. Time ranges can be specified with two timestamps, like ‘<2005-05-10 Tue 20:30>--<2005-05-10 Tue 22:15>’.
In the headline of the entry itself, a time(range) may also appear as plain text (like ‘12:45’ or a ‘8:30-1pm’). If the agenda integrates the Emacs diary (see Weekly/daily agenda), time specifications in diary entries are recognized as well.
For agenda display, Org mode extracts the time and displays it in a standard 24 hour format as part of the prefix. The example times in the previous paragraphs would end up in the agenda like this:
8:30-13:00 Arthur Dent lies in front of the bulldozer
12:45...... Ford Prefect arrives and takes Arthur to the pub
19:00...... The Vogon reads his poem
20:30-22:15 Marvin escorts the Hitchhikers to the bridge
If the agenda is in single-day mode, or for the display of today, the timed entries are embedded in a time grid, like
8:00...... ------------------
8:30-13:00 Arthur Dent lies in front of the bulldozer
10:00...... ------------------
12:00...... ------------------
12:45...... Ford Prefect arrives and takes Arthur to the pub
14:00...... ------------------
16:00...... ------------------
18:00...... ------------------
19:00...... The Vogon reads his poem
20:00...... ------------------
20:30-22:15 Marvin escorts the Hitchhikers to the bridge
The time grid can be turned on and off with the variable
org-agenda-use-time-grid, and can be configured with
org-agenda-time-grid.
Before being inserted into a view, the items are sorted. How this is done depends on the type of view.
org-agenda-files.
Within each category, items are sorted by priority (see Priorities),
which is composed of the base priority (2000 for priority ‘A’, 1000
for ‘B’, and 0 for ‘C’), plus additional increments for
overdue scheduled or deadline items.
Sorting can be customized using the variable
org-agenda-sorting-strategy, and may also include criteria based on
the estimated effort of an entry (see Effort estimates).
Entries in the agenda buffer are linked back to the Org file or diary file where they originate. You are not allowed to edit the agenda buffer itself, but commands are provided to show and jump to the original entry location, and to edit the Org files “remotely” from the agenda buffer. In this way, all information is stored only once, removing the risk that your agenda and note files may diverge.
Some commands can be executed with mouse clicks on agenda lines. For the other commands, the cursor needs to be in the desired line.
org-agenda-start-with-follow-mode.
org-log-done) are shown in the agenda, as are
entries that have been clocked on that day. You can configure the entry
types that should be included in log mode using the variable
org-agenda-log-mode-items. When called with a C-u prefix, show
all possible logbook entries, including state changes. When called with two
prefix args C-u C-u, show only logging information, nothing else.
ARCHIVED are also scanned when producing the agenda. When you use the
capital A, even all archive files are included. To exit archives mode,
press v a again.
org-agenda-start-with-clockreport-mode.
org-agenda-use-time-grid and org-agenda-time-grid.
org-agenda-ndays days. For example, if
the display covers a week, switch to the following week. With prefix
arg, go forward that many times org-agenda-ndays days.
#+COLUMNS line, or from the default variable
org-columns-default-format), will be used in the agenda.
You will be prompted for a tag selection letter. Pressing <TAB> at that prompt will offer use completion to select a tag (including any tags that do not have a selection character). The command then hides all entries that do not contain or inherit this tag. When called with prefix arg, remove the entries that do have the tag. A second / at the prompt will turn off the filter and unhide any hidden entries. If the first key you press is either + or -, the previous filter will be narrowed by requiring or forbidding the selected additional tag. Instead of pressing + or - after /, you can also immediately use the \ command.
In order to filter for effort estimates, you should set-up allowed efforts globally, for example
(setq org-global-properties
'(("Effort_ALL". "0 0:10 0:30 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00")))
You can then filter for an effort by first typing an operator, one of
<, >, and =, and then the one-digit index of an effort
estimate in your array of allowed values, where 0 means the 10th value.
The filter will then restrict to entries with effort smaller-or-equal, equal,
or larger-or-equal than the selected value. If the digits 0-9 are not used
as fast access keys to tags, you can also simply press the index digit
directly without an operator. In this case, < will be assumed. For
application of the operator, entries without a defined effort will be treated
according to the value of org-sort-agenda-noeffort-is-high. To filter
for tasks without effort definition, press ? as the operator.
org-agenda-confirm-kill.
org-agenda-show-inherited-tags, but still want to see all
tags of a headline occasionally.
org-log-into-drawer, this maybe inside a drawer.
m Mark the entry at point for action. You can also make entries
in Org files with C-c C-x C-k.
d Set the deadline of the marked entry to the date at point.
s Schedule the marked entry at the date at point.
r Call org-remember with the cursor date as default date.
Press r afterward to refresh the agenda and see the effect of the
command.
r Prompt for a single refile target and move all entries. The entries will no longer be in the agenda, refresh (g) to bring them back. $ Archive all selected entries. A Archive entries by moving them to their respective archive siblings. t Change TODO state. This prompts for a single TODO keyword and changes the state of all selected entries, bypassing blocking and suppressing logging notes (but not time stamps). + Add a tag to all selected entries. - Remove a tag from all selected entries.
org-agenda-exporter-settings to set options for ps-print and
for htmlize to be used during export.
Custom agenda commands serve two purposes: to store and quickly access frequently used TODO and tags searches, and to create special composite agenda buffers. Custom agenda commands will be accessible through the dispatcher (see Agenda dispatcher), just like the default commands.
The first application of custom searches is the definition of keyboard
shortcuts for frequently used searches, either creating an agenda
buffer, or a sparse tree (the latter covering of course only the current
buffer).
Custom commands are configured in the variable
org-agenda-custom-commands. You can customize this variable, for
example by pressing C-c a C. You can also directly set it with
Emacs Lisp in .emacs. The following example contains all valid
search types:
(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
'(("w" todo "WAITING")
("W" todo-tree "WAITING")
("u" tags "+boss-urgent")
("v" tags-todo "+boss-urgent")
("U" tags-tree "+boss-urgent")
("f" occur-tree "\\<FIXME\\>")
("h" . "HOME+Name tags searches") ; description for "h" prefix
("hl" tags "+home+Lisa")
("hp" tags "+home+Peter")
("hk" tags "+home+Kim")))
The initial string in each entry defines the keys you have to press after the dispatcher command C-c a in order to access the command. Usually this will be just a single character, but if you have many similar commands, you can also define two-letter combinations where the first character is the same in several combinations and serves as a prefix key67. The second parameter is the search type, followed by the string or regular expression to be used for the matching. The example above will therefore define:
Another possibility is the construction of agenda views that comprise
the results of several commands, each of which creates a block in
the agenda buffer. The available commands include agenda for the
daily or weekly agenda (as created with C-c a a), alltodo
for the global TODO list (as constructed with C-c a t), and the
matching commands discussed above: todo, tags, and
tags-todo. Here are two examples:
(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
'(("h" "Agenda and Home-related tasks"
((agenda "")
(tags-todo "home")
(tags "garden")))
("o" "Agenda and Office-related tasks"
((agenda "")
(tags-todo "work")
(tags "office")))))
This will define C-c a h to create a multi-block view for stuff you need to attend to at home. The resulting agenda buffer will contain your agenda for the current week, all TODO items that carry the tag ‘home’, and also all lines tagged with ‘garden’. Finally the command C-c a o provides a similar view for office tasks.
Org mode contains a number of variables regulating agenda construction
and display. The global variables define the behavior for all agenda
commands, including the custom commands. However, if you want to change
some settings just for a single custom view, you can do so. Setting
options requires inserting a list of variable names and values at the
right spot in org-agenda-custom-commands. For example:
(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
'(("w" todo "WAITING"
((org-agenda-sorting-strategy '(priority-down))
(org-agenda-prefix-format " Mixed: ")))
("U" tags-tree "+boss-urgent"
((org-show-following-heading nil)
(org-show-hierarchy-above nil)))
("N" search ""
((org-agenda-files '("~org/notes.org"))
(org-agenda-text-search-extra-files nil)))))
Now the C-c a w command will sort the collected entries only by priority, and the prefix format is modified to just say ‘ Mixed: ’ instead of giving the category of the entry. The sparse tags tree of C-c a U will now turn out ultra-compact, because neither the headline hierarchy above the match, nor the headline following the match will be shown. The command C-c a N will do a text search limited to only a single file.
For command sets creating a block agenda,
org-agenda-custom-commands has two separate spots for setting
options. You can add options that should be valid for just a single
command in the set, and options that should be valid for all commands in
the set. The former are just added to the command entry, the latter
must come after the list of command entries. Going back to the block
agenda example (see Block agenda), let's change the sorting strategy
for the C-c a h commands to priority-down, but let's sort
the results for GARDEN tags query in the opposite order,
priority-up. This would look like this:
(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
'(("h" "Agenda and Home-related tasks"
((agenda)
(tags-todo "home")
(tags "garden"
((org-agenda-sorting-strategy '(priority-up)))))
((org-agenda-sorting-strategy '(priority-down))))
("o" "Agenda and Office-related tasks"
((agenda)
(tags-todo "work")
(tags "office")))))
As you see, the values and parentheses setting is a little complex. When in doubt, use the customize interface to set this variable—it fully supports its structure. Just one caveat: When setting options in this interface, the values are just Lisp expressions. So if the value is a string, you need to add the double-quotes around the value yourself.
If you are away from your computer, it can be very useful to have a printed version of some agenda views to carry around. Org mode can export custom agenda views as plain text, HTML68, Postscript, PDF69, and iCalendar files. If you want to do this only occasionally, use the command
org-agenda-exporter-settings to
set options for ps-print and for htmlize to be used during
export, for example
(setq org-agenda-exporter-settings
'((ps-number-of-columns 2)
(ps-landscape-mode t)
(org-agenda-add-entry-text-maxlines 5)
(htmlize-output-type 'css)))
If you need to export certain agenda views frequently, you can associate any custom agenda command with a list of output file names 70. Here is an example that first defines custom commands for the agenda and the global TODO list, together with a number of files to which to export them. Then we define two block agenda commands and specify file names for them as well. File names can be relative to the current working directory, or absolute.
(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
'(("X" agenda "" nil ("agenda.html" "agenda.ps"))
("Y" alltodo "" nil ("todo.html" "todo.txt" "todo.ps"))
("h" "Agenda and Home-related tasks"
((agenda "")
(tags-todo "home")
(tags "garden"))
nil
("~/views/home.html"))
("o" "Agenda and Office-related tasks"
((agenda)
(tags-todo "work")
(tags "office"))
nil
("~/views/office.ps" "~/calendars/office.ics"))))
The extension of the file name determines the type of export. If it is
.html, Org mode will use the htmlize.el package to convert
the buffer to HTML and save it to this file name. If the extension is
.ps, ps-print-buffer-with-faces is used to produce
Postscript output. If the extension is .ics, iCalendar export is
run export over all files that were used to construct the agenda, and
limit the export to entries listed in the agenda. Any other
extension produces a plain ASCII file.
The export files are not created when you use one of those commands interactively because this might use too much overhead. Instead, there is a special command to produce all specified files in one step:
You can use the options section of the custom agenda commands to also set options for the export commands. For example:
(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
'(("X" agenda ""
((ps-number-of-columns 2)
(ps-landscape-mode t)
(org-agenda-prefix-format " [ ] ")
(org-agenda-with-colors nil)
(org-agenda-remove-tags t))
("theagenda.ps"))))
This command sets two options for the Postscript exporter, to make it
print in two columns in landscape format—the resulting page can be cut
in two and then used in a paper agenda. The remaining settings modify
the agenda prefix to omit category and scheduling information, and
instead include a checkbox to check off items. We also remove the tags
to make the lines compact, and we don't want to use colors for the
black-and-white printer. Settings specified in
org-agenda-exporter-settings will also apply, but the settings
in org-agenda-custom-commands take precedence.
From the command line you may also use
emacs -f org-batch-store-agenda-views -kill
or, if you need to modify some parameters71
emacs -eval '(org-batch-store-agenda-views \
org-agenda-ndays 30 \
org-agenda-start-day "2007-11-01" \
org-agenda-include-diary nil \
org-agenda-files (quote ("~/org/project.org")))' \
-kill
which will create the agenda views restricted to the file ~/org/project.org, without diary entries and with a 30-day extent.
You can also extract agenda information in a way that allows further processing by other programs. See Extracting agenda information, for more information.
Column view (see Column view) is normally used to view and edit properties embedded in the hierarchical structure of an Org file. It can be quite useful to use column view also from the agenda, where entries are collected by certain criteria.
To understand how to use this properly, it is important to realize that the entries in the agenda are no longer in their proper outline environment. This causes the following issues:
COLUMNS format to use. Since the
entries in the agenda are collected from different files, and different files
may have different COLUMNS formats, this is a non-trivial problem.
Org first checks if the variable org-overriding-columns-format is
currently set, and if so, takes the format from there. Otherwise it takes
the format associated with the first item in the agenda, or, if that item
does not have a specific format (defined in a property, or in its file), it
uses org-columns-default-format.
CLOCKSUM property. Org will then sum the
values displayed in the agenda. In the daily/weekly agenda, the sums will
cover a single day, in all other views they cover the entire block. It is
vital to realize that the agenda may show the same entry twice (for
example as scheduled and as a deadline), and it may show two entries from the
same hierarchy (for example a parent and its child). In these
cases, the summation in the agenda will lead to incorrect results because
some values will count double.
CLOCKSUM, that is always
the entire clocked time for this item. So even in the daily/weekly agenda,
the clocksum listed in column view may originate from times outside the
current view. This has the advantage that you can compare these values with
a column listing the planned total effort for a task—one of the major
applications for column view in the agenda. If you want information about
clocked time in the displayed period use clock table mode (press R in
the agenda).
Plain ASCII is normally sufficient for almost all note taking. One exception, however, are scientific notes which need to be able to contain mathematical symbols and the occasional formula. LaTeX72 is widely used to typeset scientific documents. Org mode supports embedding LaTeX code into its files, because many academics are used to reading LaTeX source code, and because it can be readily processed into images for HTML production.
It is not necessary to mark LaTeX macros and code in any special way. If you observe a few conventions, Org mode knows how to find it and what to do with it.
You can use LaTeX macros to insert special symbols like ‘\alpha’ to indicate the Greek letter, or ‘\to’ to indicate an arrow. Completion for these macros is available, just type ‘\’ and maybe a few letters, and press M-<TAB> to see possible completions. Unlike LaTeX code, Org mode allows these macros to be present without surrounding math delimiters, for example:
Angles are written as Greek letters \alpha, \beta and \gamma.
During HTML export (see HTML export), these symbols are translated into the proper syntax for HTML, for the above examples this is ‘α’ and ‘→’, respectively. If you need such a symbol inside a word, terminate it like this: ‘\Aacute{}stor’.
Just like in LaTeX, ‘^’ and ‘_’ are used to indicate super- and subscripts. Again, these can be used without embedding them in math-mode delimiters. To increase the readability of ASCII text, it is not necessary (but OK) to surround multi-character sub- and superscripts with curly braces. For example
The mass if the sun is M_sun = 1.989 x 10^30 kg. The radius of
the sun is R_{sun} = 6.96 x 10^8 m.
To avoid interpretation as raised or lowered text, you can quote ‘^’ and ‘_’ with a backslash: ‘\^’ and ‘\_’.
During HTML export (see HTML export), subscript and superscripts
are surrounded with <sub> and <sup> tags, respectively.
With symbols, sub- and superscripts, HTML is pretty much at its end when
it comes to representing mathematical formulas73. More complex expressions need a dedicated
formula processor. To this end, Org mode can contain arbitrary LaTeX
fragments. It provides commands to preview the typeset result of these
fragments, and upon export to HTML, all fragments will be converted to
images and inlined into the HTML document74. For this to work you
need to be on a system with a working LaTeX installation. You also
need the dvipng program, available at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvipng/. The LaTeX header that
will be used when processing a fragment can be configured with the
variable org-format-latex-header.
LaTeX fragments don't need any special marking at all. The following snippets will be identified as LaTeX source code:
\begin statement appears on a new line, preceded by only
whitespace.
For example:
\begin{equation} % arbitrary environments,
x=\sqrt{b} % even tables, figures
\end{equation} % etc
If $a^2=b$ and \( b=2 \), then the solution must be
either $$ a=+\sqrt{2} $$ or \[ a=-\sqrt{2} \].
If you need any of the delimiter ASCII sequences for other purposes, you
can configure the option org-format-latex-options to deselect the
ones you do not wish to have interpreted by the LaTeX converter.
LaTeX fragments can be processed to produce preview images of the typeset expressions:
During HTML export (see HTML export), all LaTeX fragments are converted into images and inlined into the document if the following setting is active:
(setq org-export-with-LaTeX-fragments t)
CDLaTeX mode is a minor mode that is normally used in combination with a
major LaTeX mode like AUCTeX in order to speed-up insertion of
environments and math templates. Inside Org mode, you can make use of
some of the features of CDLaTeX mode. You need to install
cdlatex.el and texmathp.el (the latter comes also with
AUCTeX) from http://www.astro.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools/cdlatex.
Don't use CDLaTeX mode itself under Org mode, but use the light
version org-cdlatex-mode that comes as part of Org mode. Turn it
on for the current buffer with M-x org-cdlatex-mode, or for all
Org files with
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook 'turn-on-org-cdlatex)
When this mode is enabled, the following features are present (for more details see the documentation of CDLaTeX mode):
fr to \frac{}{} and position the cursor
correctly inside the first brace. Another <TAB> will get you into
the second brace. Even outside fragments, <TAB> will expand
environment abbreviations at the beginning of a line. For example, if
you write ‘equ’ at the beginning of a line and press <TAB>,
this abbreviation will be expanded to an equation environment.
To get a list of all abbreviations, type M-x cdlatex-command-help.
cdlatex-simplify-sub-super-scripts).
Org-mode documents can be exported into a variety of other formats. For printing and sharing of notes, ASCII export produces a readable and simple version of an Org file. HTML export allows you to publish a notes file on the web, while the XOXO format provides a solid base for exchange with a broad range of other applications. LaTeX export lets you use Org mode and its structured editing functions to easily create LaTeX files. DocBook export makes it possible to convert Org files to many other formats using DocBook tools. To incorporate entries with associated times like deadlines or appointments into a desktop calendar program like iCal, Org mode can also produce extracts in the iCalendar format. Currently Org mode only supports export, not import of these different formats.
Org supports export of selected regions when transient-mark-mode is
enabled (default in Emacs 23).
When exporting Org-mode documents, the exporter tries to reflect the structure of the document as accurately as possible in the backend. Since export targets like HTML, LaTeX, or DocBook allow much richer formatting, Org mode has rules on how to prepare text for rich export. This section summarizes the markup rules used in an Org-mode buffer.
The title of the exported document is taken from the special line
#+TITLE: This is the title of the document
If this line does not exist, the title is derived from the first non-empty, non-comment line in the buffer. If no such line exists, or if you have turned off exporting of the text before the first headline (see below), the title will be the file name without extension.
If you are exporting only a subtree by marking is as the region, the heading
of the subtree will become the title of the document. If the subtree has a
property EXPORT_TITLE, that will take precedence.
The outline structure of the document as described in Document Structure, forms the basis for defining sections of the exported document.
However, since the outline structure is also used for (for example) lists of
tasks, only the first three outline levels will be used as headings. Deeper
levels will become itemized lists. You can change the location of this
switch globally by setting the variable org-headline-levels, or on a
per-file basis with a line
#+OPTIONS: H:4
The table of contents is normally inserted directly before the first headline
of the file. If you would like to get it to a different location, insert the
string [TABLE-OF-CONTENTS] on a line by itself at the desired
location. The depth of the table of contents is by default the same as the
number of headline levels, but you can choose a smaller number, or turn off
the table of contents entirely, by configuring the variable
org-export-with-toc, or on a per-file basis with a line like
#+OPTIONS: toc:2 (only to two levels in TOC)
#+OPTIONS: toc:nil (no TOC at all)
Org mode normally exports the text before the first headline, and even uses the first line as the document title. The text will be fully marked up. If you need to include literal HTML, LaTeX, or DocBook code, use the special constructs described below in the sections for the individual exporters.
Some people like to use the space before the first headline for setup and
internal links and therefore would like to control the exported text before
the first headline in a different way. You can do so by setting the variable
org-export-skip-text-before-1st-heading to t. On a per-file
basis, you can get the same effect with ‘#+OPTIONS: skip:t’.
If you still want to have some text before the first headline, use the
#+TEXT construct:
#+OPTIONS: skip:t
#+TEXT: This text will go before the *first* headline.
#+TEXT: [TABLE-OF-CONTENTS]
#+TEXT: This goes between the table of contents and the first headline
Plain lists as described in Plain lists, are translated to the backend's syntax for such lists. Most backends support unordered, ordered, and description lists.
Paragraphs are separated by at least one empty line. If you need to enforce a line break within a paragraph, use ‘\\’ at the end of a line.
To keep the line breaks in a region, but otherwise use normal formatting, you can use this construct, which can also be used to format poetry.
#+BEGIN_VERSE
Great clouds overhead
Tiny black birds rise and fall
Snow covers Emacs
-- AlexSchroeder
#+END_VERSE
When quoting a passage from another document, it is customary to format this as a paragraph that is indented on both the left and the right margin. You can include quotations in Org-mode documents like this:
#+BEGIN_QUOTE
Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not any simpler -- Albert Einstein
#+END_QUOTE
If you would like to center some text, do it like this:
#+BEGIN_CENTER
Everything should be made as simple as possible, \\
but not any simpler
#+END_CENTER
You can include literal examples that should not be subjected to markup. Such examples will be typeset in monospace, so this is well suited for source code and similar examples.
#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
Some example from a text file.
#+END_EXAMPLE
Note that such blocks may be indented in order to align nicely with indented text and in particular with plain list structure (see Plain lists). For simplicity when using small examples, you can also start the example lines with a colon followed by a space. There may also be additional whitespace before the colon:
Here is an example
: Some example from a text file.
If the example is source code from a programming language, or any other text that can be marked up by font-lock in Emacs, you can ask for the example to look like the fontified Emacs buffer76. This is done with the ‘src’ block, where you also need to specify the name of the major mode that should be used to fontify the example:
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(defun org-xor (a b)
"Exclusive or."
(if a (not b) b))
#+END_SRC
Both in example and in src snippets, you can add a -n
switch to the end of the BEGIN line, to get the lines of the example
numbered. If you use a +n switch, the numbering from the previous
numbered snippet will be continued in the current one. In literal examples,
Org will interpret strings like ‘(ref:name)’ as labels, and use them as
targets for special hyperlinks like [[(name)]] (i.e.,
name enclosed in single parenthesis). In HTML, hovering the mouse over such
a link will remote-highlight the corresponding code line, which is kind of
cool. If the example/src snippet is numbered, you can also add a -r
switch. Then labels will be removed from the source code and the links
will be replaced77 with line numbers from the code listing. Here is
an example:
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp -n -r
(save-excursion (ref:sc)
(goto-char (point-min)) (ref:jump)
#+END SRC
In line [[(sc)]] we remember the current positon. [[(jump)][Line (jump)]]
jumps to point-min.
If the syntax for the label format conflicts with the language syntax, use a
-l switch to change the format, for example ‘#+BEGIN_SRC pascal
-n -r -l "((%s))"’. See also the variable org-coderef-label-format.
HTML export also allows examples to be published as text areas, See Text areas in HTML export.
artist-mode79 to allow creating ASCII
drawings easily. Using this command in an empty line will create a new
fixed-width region.
org-store-link while editing a source code example in a
temporary buffer created with C-c ' will prompt for a label, make sure
that it is unique in the current buffer, and insert it with the proper
formatting like ‘(ref:label)’ at the end of the current line. Then the
label is stored as a link ‘(label)’, for retrieval with C-c C-l.
During export, you can include the content of another file. For example, to include your .emacs file, you could use:
#+INCLUDE: "~/.emacs" src emacs-lisp
The optional second and third parameter are the markup (‘quote’,
‘example’, or ‘src’), and, if the markup is ‘src’, the
language for formatting the contents. The markup is optional, if it is not
given, the text will be assumed to be in Org mode format and will be
processed normally. The include line will also allow additional keyword
parameters :prefix1 and :prefix to specify prefixes for the
first line and for each following line, as well as any options accepted by
the selected markup. For example, to include a file as an item, use
#+INCLUDE: "~/snippets/xx" :prefix1 " + " :prefix " "
Both the native Org mode tables (see Tables) and tables formatted with the table.el package will be exported properly. For Org mode tables, the lines before the first horizontal separator line will become table header lines. You can use the following lines somewhere before the table to assign a caption and a label for cross references:
#+CAPTION: This is the caption for the next table (or link)
#+LABEL: tbl:basic-data
Some backends (HTML, LaTeX, and DocBook) allow you to directly include images
into the exported document. Org does this, if a link to an image files does
not have a description part, for example [[./img/a.jpg]]. If you wish
to define a caption for the image and maybe a label for internal cross
references, you can use (before, but close to the link)
#+CAPTION: This is the caption for the next figure link (or table)
#+LABEL: fig:SED-HR4049
You may also define additional attributes for the figure. As this is backend-specific, see the sections about the individual backends for more information.
Footnotes defined in the way described in Footnotes, will be exported by all backends. Org allows multiple references to the same note, and different backends support this to varying degrees.
You can make words *bold*, /italic/, _underlined_, =code=
and ~verbatim~, and, if you must, ‘+strike-through+’. Text
in the code and verbatim string is not processed for Org-mode specific
syntax, it is exported verbatim.
A TeX-like syntax is used to specify special characters. Where possible,
these will be transformed into the native format of the exporter backend.
Strings like \alpha will be exported as α in the HTML
output, and as $\alpha$ in the LaTeX output. Similarly,
\nbsp will become in HTML and ~ in LaTeX.
This applies for a large number of entities, with names taken from both HTML
and LaTeX, see the variable org-html-entities for the complete
list. If you are unsure about a name, use M-<TAB> for completion
after having typed the backslash and optionally a few characters
(see Completion).
LaTeX fragments are converted into images for HTML export, and they are written literally into the LaTeX export. See also Embedded LaTeX.
Finally, ‘\-’ is treated as a shy hyphen, and ‘--’, ‘---’, and ‘...’ are all converted into special commands creating hyphens of different lengths or a compact set of dots.
A line consisting of only dashes, and at least 5 of them, will be exported as a horizontal line (‘<hr/>’ in HTML).
Lines starting with ‘#’ in column zero are treated as comments and will never be exported. Also entire subtrees starting with the word ‘COMMENT’ will never be exported. Finally, regions surrounded by ‘#+BEGIN_COMMENT’ ... ‘#+END_COMMENT’ will not be exported.
You can define text snippets with
#+MACRO: name replacement text $1, $2 are arguments
which can be referenced anywhere in the document (even in
code examples) with {{{name(arg1,arg2)}}}. In addition to
defined macros, {{{title}}}, {{{author}}}, etc.,
will reference information set by the #+TITLE:, #+AUTHOR:, and
similar lines. Also, {{{date(FORMAT)}}} and
{{{modification-time(FORMAT)}}} refer to current date time
and to the modification time of the file being exported, respectively.
FORMAT should be a format string understood by
format-time-string.
You may use tags to select the parts of a document that should be exported,
or to exclude parts from export. This behavior is governed by two variables:
org-export-select-tags and org-export-exclude-tags.
Org first checks if any of the select tags is present in the buffer. If yes, all trees that do not carry one of these tags will be excluded. If a selected tree is a subtree, the heading hierarchy above it will also be selected for export, but not the text below those headings.
If none of the select tags is found, the whole buffer will be selected for export.
Finally, all subtrees that are marked by any of the exclude tags will be removed from the export buffer.
The exporter recognizes special lines in the buffer which provide
additional information. These lines may be put anywhere in the file.
The whole set of lines can be inserted into the buffer with C-c
C-e t. For individual lines, a good way to make sure the keyword is
correct is to type ‘#+’ and then use M-<TAB> completion
(see Completion). For a summary of other in-buffer settings not
specifically related to export, see In-buffer settings.
In particular, note that you can place commonly-used (export) options in
a separate file which can be included using #+SETUPFILE.
#+TITLE: the title to be shown (default is the buffer name)
#+AUTHOR: the author (default taken from user-full-name)
#+DATE: a date, fixed, of a format string for format-time-string
#+EMAIL: his/her email address (default from user-mail-address)
#+DESCRIPTION: the page description, e.g.,
#+KEYWORDS: the page keywords, e.g.,
#+LANGUAGE: language for HTML, e.g.,
#+TEXT: Some descriptive text to be inserted at the beginning.
#+TEXT: Several lines may be given.
#+OPTIONS: H:2 num:t toc:t \n:nil @:t ::t |:t ^:t f:t TeX:t ...
#+LINK_UP: the ``up'' link of an exported page
#+LINK_HOME: the ``home'' link of an exported page
#+LATEX_HEADER: extra line(s) for the LaTeX header, like \usepackage{xyz}
#+EXPORT_SELECT_TAGS: Tags that select a tree for export
#+EXPORT_EXCLUDE_TAGS: Tags that exclude a tree from export
The OPTIONS line is a compact80 form to specify export settings. Here you can:
H: set the number of headline levels for export num: turn on/off section-numbers toc: turn on/off table of contents, or set level limit (integer) \n: turn on/off line-break-preservation @: turn on/off quoted HTML tags :: turn on/off fixed-width sections |: turn on/off tables ^: turn on/off TeX-like syntax for sub- and superscripts. If you write "^:{}",a_{b}will be interpreted, but the simplea_bwill be left as it is. -: turn on/off conversion of special strings. f: turn on/off footnotes like this[1]. todo: turn on/off inclusion of TODO keywords into exported text pri: turn on/off priority cookies tags: turn on/off inclusion of tags, may also benot-in-toc<: turn on/off inclusion of any time/date stamps like DEADLINES *: turn on/off emphasized text (bold, italic, underlined) TeX: turn on/off simple TeX macros in plain text LaTeX: turn on/off LaTeX fragments skip: turn on/off skipping the text before the first heading author: turn on/off inclusion of author name/email into exported file creator: turn on/off inclusion of creator info into exported file timestamp: turn on/off inclusion creation time into exported file d: turn on/off inclusion of drawers
These options take effect in both the HTML and LaTeX export, except
for TeX and LaTeX, which are respectively t and
nil for the LaTeX export.
When exporting only a single subtree by selecting it with C-c @ before
calling an export command, the subtree can overrule some of the file's export
settings with properties EXPORT_FILE_NAME, EXPORT_TITLE,
EXPORT_TEXT, EXPORT_AUTHOR, EXPORT_DATE, and
EXPORT_OPTIONS.
All export commands can be reached using the export dispatcher, which is a prefix key that prompts for an additional key specifying the command. Normally the entire file is exported, but if there is an active region that contains one outline tree, the first heading is used as document title and the subtrees are exported.
org-export-run-in-background, i.e.,
not set, or force processing in the current Emacs process if set.
ASCII export produces a simple and very readable version of an Org-mode file.
EXPORT_FILE_NAME property, that name will be used for the
export.
In the exported version, the first 3 outline levels will become headlines, defining a general document structure. Additional levels will be exported as itemized lists. If you want that transition to occur at a different level, specify it with a prefix argument. For example,
C-1 C-c C-e a
creates only top level headlines and does the rest as items. When headlines are converted to items, the indentation of the text following the headline is changed to fit nicely under the item. This is done with the assumption that the first body line indicates the base indentation of the body text. Any indentation larger than this is adjusted to preserve the layout relative to the first line. Should there be lines with less indentation than the first, these are left alone.
Links will be exported in a footnote-like style, with the descriptive part in
the text and the link in a note before the next heading. See the variable
org-export-ascii-links-to-notes for details and other options.
Org mode contains an HTML (XHTML 1.0 strict) exporter with extensive HTML formatting, in ways similar to John Gruber's markdown language, but with additional support for tables.
EXPORT_FILE_NAME
property, that name will be used for the export.
In the exported version, the first 3 outline levels will become headlines, defining a general document structure. Additional levels will be exported as itemized lists. If you want that transition to occur at a different level, specify it with a numeric prefix argument. For example,
C-2 C-c C-e b
creates two levels of headings and does the rest as items.
Plain ‘<’ and ‘>’ are always transformed to ‘<’ and ‘>’ in HTML export. If you want to include simple HTML tags which should be interpreted as such, mark them with ‘@’ as in ‘@<b>bold text@</b>’. Note that this really works only for simple tags. For more extensive HTML that should be copied verbatim to the exported file use either
#+HTML: Literal HTML code for export
#+BEGIN_HTML
All lines between these markers are exported literally
#+END_HTML
Internal links (see Internal links) will continue to work in HTML. This includes automatic links created by radio targets (see Radio targets). Links to external files will still work if the target file is on the same relative path as the published Org file. Links to other .org files will be translated into HTML links under the assumption that an HTML version also exists of the linked file, at the same relative path. ‘id:’ links can then be used to jump to specific entries across files. For information related to linking files while publishing them to a publishing directory see Publishing links.
If you want to specify attributes for links, you can do so using a special
#+ATTR_HTML line to define attributes that will be added to the
<a> or <img> tags. Here is an example that sets title
and style attributes for a link:
#+ATTR_HTML: title="The Org-mode homepage" style="color:red;"
[[http://orgmode.org]]
Org-mode tables are exported to HTML using the table tag defined in
org-export-html-table-tag. The default setting makes tables without
cell borders and frame. If you would like to change this for individual
tables, place somthing like the following before the table:
#+CAPTION: This is a table with lines around and between cells
#+ATTR_HTML: border="2" rules="all" frame="all"
HTML export can inline images given as links in the Org file, and
it can make an image the clickable part of a link. By
default86, images are inlined if a link does
not have a description. So ‘[[file:myimg.jpg]]’ will be inlined,
while ‘[[file:myimg.jpg][the image]]’ will just produce a link
‘the image’ that points to the image. If the description part
itself is a file: link or a http: URL pointing to an
image, this image will be inlined and activated so that clicking on the
image will activate the link. For example, to include a thumbnail that
will link to a high resolution version of the image, you could use:
[[file:highres.jpg][file:thumb.jpg]]
If you need to add attributes to an inlines image, use a #+ATTR_HTML,
for example:
#+CAPTION: A black cat stalking a spider
#+ATTR_HTML: alt="cat/spider image" title="one second before action"
[[./img/a.jpg]]
and you could use http addresses just as well.
An alternative way to publish literal code examples in HTML is to use text
areas, where the example can even be edited before pasting it into an
application. It is triggered by a -t switch at an example or
src block. Using this switch disables any options for syntax and
label highlighting, and line numbering, which may be present. You may also
use -h and -w switches to specify the height and width of the
text area, which default to the number of lines in the example, and 80,
respectively. For example
#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE -t -w 40
(defun org-xor (a b)
"Exclusive or."
(if a (not b) b))
#+END_EXAMPLE
You can also give style information for the exported file. The HTML exporter assigns the following special CSS classes87 to appropriate parts of the document—your style specifications may change these, in addition to any of the standard classes like for headlines, tables, etc.
p.author author information, including email p.date publishing date p.creator creator info, about org-mode version .title document title .todo TODO keywords, all not-done states .done the DONE keywords, all stated the count as done .WAITING each TODO keyword also uses a class named after itself .timestamp timestamp .timestamp-kwd keyword associated with a timestamp, like SCHEDULED .timestamp-wrapper span around keyword plus timestamp .tag tag in a headline ._HOME each tag uses itself as a class, "@" replaced by "_" .target target for links .linenr the line number in a code example .code-highlighted for highlighting referenced code lines div.outline-N div for outline level N (headline plus text)) div.outline-text-N extra div for text at outline level N .section-number-N section number in headlines, different for each level div.figure how to format an inlined image pre.src formatted source code pre.example normal example p.verse verse paragraph div.footnotes footnote section headline p.footnote footnote definition paragraph, containing a footnote .footref a footnote reference number (always a <sup>) .footnum footnote number in footnote definition (always <sup>)
Each exported file contains a compact default style that defines these
classes in a basic way88. You may overwrite these
settings, or add to them by using the variables org-export-html-style
(for Org-wide settings) and org-export-html-style-extra (for more
granular settings, like file-local settings). To set the latter variable
individually for each file, you can use
#+STYLE: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css" />
For longer style definitions, you can use several such lines. You could also
directly write a <style> </style> section in this way, without
referring to an external file.
Sebastian Rose has written a JavaScript program especially designed to enhance the web viewing experience of HTML files created with Org. This program allows you to view large files in two different ways. The first one is an Info-like mode where each section is displayed separately and navigation can be done with the n and p keys (and some other keys as well, press ? for an overview of the available keys). The second view type is a folding view much like Org provides inside Emacs. The script is available at http://orgmode.org/org-info.js and you can find the documentation for it at http://orgmode.org/worg/code/org-info-js/. We host the script at our site, but if you use it a lot, you might not want to be dependent on orgmode.org and prefer to install a local copy on your own web server.
To use the script, you need to make sure that the org-jsinfo.el module gets loaded. It should be loaded by default, but you can try M-x customize-variable <RET> org-modules <RET> to convince yourself that this is indeed the case. All it then takes to make use of the program is adding a single line to the Org file:
#+INFOJS_OPT: view:info toc:nil
If this line is found, the HTML header will automatically contain the code needed to invoke the script. Using the line above, you can set the following viewing options:
path: The path to the script. The default is to grab the script from http://orgmode.org/org-info.js, but you might want to have a local copy and use a path like ‘../scripts/org-info.js’. view: Initial view when website is first shown. Possible values are: info Info-like interface with one section per page. overview Folding interface, initially showing only top-level. content Folding interface, starting with all headlines visible. showall Folding interface, all headlines and text visible. sdepth: Maximum headline level that will still become an independent section for info and folding modes. The default is taken fromorg-headline-levels(= theHswitch in#+OPTIONS). If this is smaller than inorg-headline-levels, each info/folding section can still contain child headlines. toc: Should the table of content initially be visible? Even whennil, you can always get to the "toc" with i. tdepth: The depth of the table of contents. The defaults are taken from the variablesorg-headline-levelsandorg-export-with-toc. ftoc: Does the css of the page specify a fixed position for the "toc"? If yes, the toc will never be displayed as a section. ltoc: Should there be short contents (children) in each section? Make thisaboveif the section should be above initial text. mouse: Headings are highlighted when the mouse is over them. Should be ‘underline’ (default) or a background color like ‘#cccccc’. buttons: Should view-toggle buttons be everywhere? Whennil(the default), only one such button will be present.
You can choose default values for these options by customizing the variable
org-infojs-options. If you always want to apply the script to your
pages, configure the variable org-export-html-use-infojs.
Org mode contains a LaTeX exporter written by Bastien Guerry. With further processing, this backend is also used to produce PDF output. Since the LaTeX output uses hyperref to implement links and cross references, the PDF output file will be fully linked.
EXPORT_FILE_NAME
property, that name will be used for the export.
In the exported version, the first 3 outline levels will become
headlines, defining a general document structure. Additional levels
will be exported as description lists. The exporter can ignore them or
convert them to a custom string depending on
org-latex-low-levels.
If you want that transition to occur at a different level, specify it with a numeric prefix argument. For example,
C-2 C-c C-e l
creates two levels of headings and does the rest as items.
Embedded LaTeX as described in Embedded LaTeX, will be correctly inserted into the LaTeX file. This includes simple macros like ‘\ref{LABEL}’ to create a cross reference to a figure. Furthermore, you can add special code that should only be present in LaTeX export with the following constructs:
#+LaTeX: Literal LaTeX code for export
#+BEGIN_LaTeX
All lines between these markers are exported literally
#+END_LaTeX
By default, the LaTeX output uses the class article.
You can change this globally by setting a different value for
org-export-latex-default-class or locally by adding an option like
#+LaTeX_CLASS: myclass in your file, or with a :LaTeX_CLASS:
property that applies when exporting a region containing only this (sub)tree.
The class should be listed in org-export-latex-classes, where you can
also define the sectioning structure for each class, as well as defining
additional classes. You can also use #+LATEX_HEADER:
\usepackage{xyz} to add lines to the header.
For LaTeX export of a table, you can specify a label and a caption
(see Markup rules). You can also use the ATTR_LaTeX line to
request a longtable environment for the table, so that it may span several
pages. Finally, you can set the alignment string:
#+CAPTION: A long table
#+LABEL: tbl:long
#+ATTR_LaTeX: longtable align=l|lp{3cm}r|l
| ..... | ..... |
| ..... | ..... |
Images that are linked to without a description part in the link, like
‘[[file:img.jpg]]’ or ‘[[./img.jpg]]’ will be inserted into the PDF
output files resulting from LaTeX output. Org will use an
\includegraphics macro to insert the image. If you have specified a
caption and/or a label as described in Markup rules, the figure will
be wrapped into a figure environment and thus become a floating
element. Finally, you can use an #+ATTR_LaTeX: line to specify the
options that can be used in the optional argument of the
\includegraphics macro.
#+CAPTION: The black-body emission of the disk around HR 4049
#+LABEL: fig:SED-HR4049
#+ATTR_LaTeX: width=5cm,angle=90
[[./img/sed-hr4049.pdf]]
If you need references to a label created in this way, write
‘\ref{fig:SED-HR4049}’ just like in LaTeX. The default settings will
recognize files types that can be included as images during processing by
pdflatex (png, jpg, and pdf files). If you process your
files in a different way, you may need to customize the variable
org-export-latex-inline-image-extensions.
Org contains a DocBook exporter written by Baoqiu Cui. Once an Org file is exported to DocBook format, it can be further processed to produce other formats, including PDF, HTML, man pages, etc., using many available DocBook tools and stylesheets.
Currently DocBook exporter only supports DocBook V5.0.
EXPORT_FILE_NAME
property, that name will be used for the export.
Note that, in order to produce PDF output based on exported DocBook file, you
need to have XSLT processor and XSL-FO processor software installed on your
system. Check variables org-export-docbook-xslt-proc-command and
org-export-docbook-xsl-fo-proc-command.
You can quote DocBook code in Org files and copy it verbatim into exported DocBook file with the following constructs:
#+DOCBOOK: Literal DocBook code for export
#+BEGIN_DOCBOOK
All lines between these markers are exported by DocBook exporter
literally.
#+END_DOCBOOK
For example, you can use the following lines to include a DocBook warning admonition. As to what this warning says, you should pay attention to the document context when quoting DocBook code in Org files. You may make exported DocBook XML files invalid by not quoting DocBook code correctly.
#+BEGIN_DOCBOOK
<warning>
<para>You should know what you are doing when quoting DocBook XML code
in your Org file. Invalid DocBook XML file may be generated by
DocBook exporter if you are not careful!</para>
</warning>
#+END_DOCBOOK
DocBook exporter exports Org files as articles using the article
element in DocBook. Recursive sections, i.e.,
used in exported articles. Top level headlines in Org files are exported as
top level sections, and lower level headlines are exported as nested
sections. The entire structure of Org files will be exported completely, no
matter how many nested levels of headlines there are.
Using recursive sections makes it easy to port and reuse exported DocBook
code in other DocBook document types like book or set.
Tables in Org files are exported as HTML tables, which have been supported since DocBook V4.3.
If a table does not have a caption, an informal table is generated using the
informaltable element; otherwise, a formal table will be generated
using the table element.
Images that are linked to without a description part in the link, like
‘[[file:img.jpg]]’ or ‘[[./img.jpg]]’, will be exported to DocBook
using mediaobject elements. Each mediaobject element contains
an imageobject that wraps an imagedata element. If you have
specified a caption for an image as described in Markup rules, a
caption element will be added in mediaobject. If a label is
also specified, it will be exported as an xml:id attribute of the
mediaobject element.
Image attributes supported by the imagedata element, like align
or width, can be specified in two ways: you can either customize
variable org-export-docbook-default-image-attributes or use the
#+ATTR_DOCBOOK: line. Attributes sepcified in variable
org-export-docbook-default-image-attributes are applied to all inline
images in the Org file to be exported (unless they are overwritten by image
attributes specified in #+ATTR_DOCBOOK: lines).
The #+ATTR_DOCBOOK: line can be used to specify additional image
attributes or overwrite default image attributes for individual images. If
the same attribute appears in both the #+ATTR_DOCBOOK: line and
variable org-export-docbook-default-image-attributes, the former
overwrites the latter. Here is an example about how image attributes can be
set:
#+CAPTION: The logo of Org mode
#+LABEL: unicorn-svg
#+ATTR_DOCBOOK: scalefit="1" width="100%" depth="100%"
[[./img/org-mode-unicorn.svg]]
By default, DocBook exporter recognizes the following image file types:
jpeg, jpg, png, gif, and svg. You can
customize variable org-export-docbook-inline-image-extensions to add
more types to this list as long as DocBook supports them.
Special characters that are written in TeX-like syntax, such as \alpha,
\Gamma, and \Zeta, are supported by DocBook exporter. These
characters are rewritten to XML entities, like α,
Γ, and Ζ, based on the list saved in variable
org-html-entities. As long as the generated DocBook file includes the
corresponding entities, these special characters are recognized.
You can customize variable org-export-docbook-doctype to include the
entities you need. For example, you can set variable
org-export-docbook-doctype to the following value to recognize all
special characters included in XHTML entities:
"<!DOCTYPE article [
<!ENTITY % xhtml1-symbol PUBLIC
\"-//W3C//ENTITIES Symbol for HTML//EN//XML\"
\"http://www.w3.org/2003/entities/2007/xhtml1-symbol.ent\"
>
%xhtml1-symbol;
]>
"
Org mode contains an exporter that produces XOXO-style output. Currently, this exporter only handles the general outline structure and does not interpret any additional Org-mode features.
Some people use Org mode for keeping track of projects, but still prefer a
standard calendar application for anniversaries and appointments. In this
case it can be useful to show deadlines and other time-stamped items in Org
files in the calendar application. Org mode can export calendar information
in the standard iCalendar format. If you also want to have TODO entries
included in the export, configure the variable
org-icalendar-include-todo. Plain timestamps are exported as VEVENT,
and TODO items as VTODO. It will also create events from deadlines that are
in non-TODO items. Deadlines and scheduling dates in TODO items will be used
to set the start and due dates for the TODO entry93.
As categories, it will use the tags locally defined in the heading, and the
file/tree category94.
The iCalendar standard requires each entry to have a globally unique
identifier (UID). Org creates these identifiers during export. If you set
the variable org-icalendar-store-UID, the UID will be stored in the
:ID: property of the entry and re-used next time you report this
entry. Since a single entry can give rise to multiple iCalendar entries (as
a timestamp, a deadline, a scheduled item, and as a TODO item), Org adds
prefixes to the UID, depending on what triggered the inclusion of the entry.
In this way the UID remains unique, but a synchronization program can still
figure out from which entry all the different instances originate.
org-agenda-files. For each of these files, a separate iCalendar
file will be written.
org-agenda-files and write it to the file given by
org-combined-agenda-icalendar-file.
The export will honor SUMMARY, DESCRIPTION and LOCATION95 properties if the selected
entries have them. If not, the summary will be derived from the headline,
and the description from the body (limited to
org-icalendar-include-body characters).
How this calendar is best read and updated, depends on the application you are using. The FAQ covers this issue.
Org includes a publishing management system that allows you to configure automatic HTML conversion of projects composed of interlinked org files. You can also configure Org to automatically upload your exported HTML pages and related attachments, such as images and source code files, to a web server.
You can also use Org to convert files into PDF, or even combine HTML and PDF conversion so that files are available in both formats on the server.
Publishing has been contributed to Org by David O'Toole.
Publishing needs significant configuration to specify files, destination and many other properties of a project.
org-publish-project-alist
Publishing is configured almost entirely through setting the value of one
variable, called org-publish-project-alist. Each element of the list
configures one project, and may be in one of the two following forms:
("project-name" :property value :property value ...)
or
("project-name" :components ("project-name" "project-name" ...))
In both cases, projects are configured by specifying property values. A
project defines the set of files that will be published, as well as the
publishing configuration to use when publishing those files. When a project
takes the second form listed above, the individual members of the
:components property are taken to be sub-projects, which group
together files requiring different publishing options. When you publish such
a “meta-project”, all the components will also be published, in the
sequence given.
Most properties are optional, but some should always be set. In particular, Org needs to know where to look for source files, and where to put published files.
:base-directory
| Directory containing publishing source files
|
:publishing-directory
| Directory where output files will be published. You can directly
publish to a webserver using a file name syntax appropriate for
the Emacs tramp package. Or you can publish to a local directory and
use external tools to upload your website (see Uploading files).
|
:preparation-function
| Function called before starting the publishing process, for example, to
run make for updating files to be published.
|
:completion-function
| Function called after finishing the publishing process, for example, to
change permissions of the resulting files.
|
By default, all files with extension .org in the base directory are considered part of the project. This can be modified by setting the properties
:base-extension
| Extension (without the dot!) of source files. This actually is a
regular expression. Set this to the symbol any if you want to get all
files in :base-directory, even without extension.
|
:exclude
| Regular expression to match file names that should not be
published, even though they have been selected on the basis of their
extension.
|
:include
| List of files to be included regardless of :base-extension
and :exclude.
|
Publishing means that a file is copied to the destination directory and
possibly transformed in the process. The default transformation is to export
Org files as HTML files, and this is done by the function
org-publish-org-to-html which calls the HTML exporter (see HTML export). But you also can publish your content as PDF files using
org-publish-org-to-pdf. If you want to publish the Org file itself,
but with archived, commented, and tag-excluded trees removed, use
org-publish-org-to-org and set the parameters :plain-source
and/or :htmlized-source. This will produce file.org and
file.org.html in the publishing
directory96. Other files like images only
need to be copied to the publishing destination, for this you may use
org-publish-attachment. For non-Org files, you always need to
specify the publishing function:
:publishing-function
| Function executing the publication of a file. This may also be a
list of functions, which will all be called in turn.
|
:plain-source
| Non-nil means, publish plain source.
|
:htmlized-source
| Non-nil means, publish htmlized source.
|
The function must accept two arguments: a property list containing at least a
:publishing-directory property, and the name of the file to be
published. It should take the specified file, make the necessary
transformation (if any) and place the result into the destination folder.
The property list can be used to set many export options for the HTML and LaTeX exporters. In most cases, these properties correspond to user variables in Org. The table below lists these properties along with the variable they belong to. See the documentation string for the respective variable for details.
:link-up | org-export-html-link-up
|
:link-home | org-export-html-link-home
|
:language | org-export-default-language
|
:customtime | org-display-custom-times
|
:headline-levels | org-export-headline-levels
|
:section-numbers | org-export-with-section-numbers
|
:section-number-format | org-export-section-number-format
|
:table-of-contents | org-export-with-toc
|
:preserve-breaks | org-export-preserve-breaks
|
:archived-trees | org-export-with-archived-trees
|
:emphasize | org-export-with-emphasize
|
:sub-superscript | org-export-with-sub-superscripts
|
:special-strings | org-export-with-special-strings
|
:footnotes | org-export-with-footnotes
|
:drawers | org-export-with-drawers
|
:tags | org-export-with-tags
|
:todo-keywords | org-export-with-todo-keywords
|
:priority | org-export-with-priority
|
:TeX-macros | org-export-with-TeX-macros
|
:LaTeX-fragments | org-export-with-LaTeX-fragments
|
:skip-before-1st-heading | org-export-skip-text-before-1st-heading
|
:fixed-width | org-export-with-fixed-width
|
:timestamps | org-export-with-timestamps
|
:author-info | org-export-author-info
|
:creator-info | org-export-creator-info
|
:tables | org-export-with-tables
|
:table-auto-headline | org-export-highlight-first-table-line
|
:style-include-default | org-export-html-style-include-default
|
:style | org-export-html-style
|
:style-extra | org-export-html-style-extra
|
:convert-org-links | org-export-html-link-org-files-as-html
|
:inline-images | org-export-html-inline-images
|
:html-extension | org-export-html-extension
|
:xml-declaration | org-export-html-xml-declaration
|
:html-table-tag | org-export-html-table-tag
|
:expand-quoted-html | org-export-html-expand
|
:timestamp | org-export-html-with-timestamp
|
:publishing-directory | org-export-publishing-directory
|
:preamble | org-export-html-preamble
|
:postamble | org-export-html-postamble
|
:auto-preamble | org-export-html-auto-preamble
|
:auto-postamble | org-export-html-auto-postamble
|
:author | user-full-name
|
:email | user-mail-address : addr;addr;..
|
:select-tags | org-export-select-tags
|
:exclude-tags | org-export-exclude-tags
|
:latex-image-options | org-export-latex-image-default-option
|
Most of the org-export-with-* variables have the same effect in
both HTML and LaTeX exporters, except for :TeX-macros and
:LaTeX-fragments, respectively nil and t in the
LaTeX export.
When a property is given a value in org-publish-project-alist,
its setting overrides the value of the corresponding user variable (if
any) during publishing. Options set within a file (see Export options), however, override everything.
To create a link from one Org file to another, you would use
something like ‘[[file:foo.org][The foo]]’ or simply
‘file:foo.org.’ (see Hyperlinks). When published, this link
becomes a link to foo.html. In this way, you can interlink the
pages of your "org web" project and the links will work as expected when
you publish them to HTML. If you also publish the Org source file and want
to link to that, use an http: link instead of a file: link,
because file: links are converted to link to the corresponding
html file.
You may also link to related files, such as images. Provided you are careful with relative file names, and provided you have also configured Org to upload the related files, these links will work too. See Complex example, for an example of this usage.
Sometimes an Org file to be published may contain links that are only valid in your production environment, but not in the publishing location. In this case, use the property
:link-validation-function
| Function to validate links
|
to define a function for checking link validity. This function must
accept two arguments, the file name and a directory relative to which
the file name is interpreted in the production environment. If this
function returns nil, then the HTML generator will only insert a
description into the HTML file, but no link. One option for this
function is org-publish-validate-link which checks if the given
file is part of any project in org-publish-project-alist.
The following properties may be used to control publishing of an index of files or a summary page for a given project.
:auto-index
| When non-nil, publish an index during org-publish-current-project
or org-publish-all.
|
:index-filename
| Filename for output of index. Defaults to sitemap.org (which
becomes sitemap.html).
|
:index-title
| Title of index page. Defaults to name of file.
|
:index-function
| Plug-in function to use for generation of index.
Defaults to org-publish-org-index, which generates a plain list
of links to all files in the project.
|
For those people already utilising third party sync tools such as rsync or unison, it might be preferable not to use the built in remote publishing facilities of Org mode which rely heavily on Tramp. Tramp, while very useful and powerful, tends not to be so efficient for multiple file transfer and has been known to cause problems under heavy usage.
Specialised synchronization utilities offer several advantages. In addition to timestamp comparison, they also do content and permissions/attribute checks. For this reason you might prefer to publish your web to a local directory (possibly even in place with your Org files) and then use unison or rsync to do the synchronisation with the remote host.
Since Unison (for example) can be configured as to which files to transfer to
a certain remote destination, it can greatly simplify the project publishing
definition. Simply keep all files in the correct location, process your Org
files with org-publish and let the synchronization tool do the rest.
You do not need, in this scenario, to include attachments such as jpg,
css or gif files in the project definition since the 3rd party
tool syncs them.
Publishing to a local directory is also much faster than to a remote one, so
that you can afford more easily to republish entire projects. If you set
org-publish-use-timestamps-flag to nil, you gain the main
benefit of re-including any changed external files such as source example
files you might include with #+INCLUDE. The timestamp mechanism in
Org is not smart enough to detect if included files have been modified.
Below we provide two example configurations. The first one is a simple project publishing only a set of Org files. The second example is more complex, with a multi-component project.
This example publishes a set of Org files to the public_html directory on the local machine.
(setq org-publish-project-alist
'(("org"
:base-directory "~/org/"
:publishing-directory "~/public_html"
:section-numbers nil
:table-of-contents nil
:style "<link rel=\"stylesheet\"
href=\"../other/mystyle.css\"
type=\"text/css\">")))
This more complicated example publishes an entire website, including Org files converted to HTML, image files, Emacs Lisp source code, and style sheets. The publishing directory is remote and private files are excluded.
To ensure that links are preserved, care should be taken to replicate your directory structure on the web server, and to use relative file paths. For example, if your Org files are kept in ~/org and your publishable images in ~/images, you'd link to an image with
file:../images/myimage.png
On the web server, the relative path to the image should be the same. You can accomplish this by setting up an "images" folder in the right place on the web server, and publishing images to it.
(setq org-publish-project-alist
'(("orgfiles"
:base-directory "~/org/"
:base-extension "org"
:publishing-directory "/ssh:user@host:~/html/notebook/"
:publishing-function org-publish-org-to-html
:exclude "PrivatePage.org" ;; regexp
:headline-levels 3
:section-numbers nil
:table-of-contents nil
:style "<link rel=\"stylesheet\"
href=\"../other/mystyle.css\" type=\"text/css\">"
:auto-preamble t
:auto-postamble nil)
("images"
:base-directory "~/images/"
:base-extension "jpg\\|gif\\|png"
:publishing-directory "/ssh:user@host:~/html/images/"
:publishing-function org-publish-attachment)
("other"
:base-directory "~/other/"
:base-extension "css\\|el"
:publishing-directory "/ssh:user@host:~/html/other/"
:publishing-function org-publish-attachment)
("website" :components ("orgfiles" "images" "other"))))
Once properly configured, Org can publish with the following commands:
Org uses timestamps to track when a file has changed. The above functions
normally only publish changed files. You can override this and force
publishing of all files by giving a prefix argument, or by customizing the
variable org-publish-use-timestamps-flag. This may be necessary in
particular if files include other files via #+SETUPFILE: or
#+INCLUDE:.
Org supports in-buffer completion. This type of completion does not make use of the minibuffer. You simply type a few letters into the buffer and use the key to complete text right there.
org-tag-alist (possibly set through the
‘#+TAGS’ in-buffer option, see Setting tags), or it is created
dynamically from all tags used in the current buffer.
There are more than 180 variables that can be used to customize
Org. For the sake of compactness of the manual, I am not
describing the variables here. A structured overview of customization
variables is available with M-x org-customize. Or select
Browse Org Group from the Org->Customization menu. Many
settings can also be activated on a per-file basis, by putting special
lines into the buffer (see In-buffer settings).
Org mode uses special lines in the buffer to define settings on a per-file basis. These lines start with a ‘#+’ followed by a keyword, a colon, and then individual words defining a setting. Several setting words can be in the same line, but you can also have multiple lines for the keyword. While these settings are described throughout the manual, here is a summary. After changing any of those lines in the buffer, press C-c C-c with the cursor still in the line to activate the changes immediately. Otherwise they become effective only when the file is visited again in a new Emacs session.
org-archive-location.
COLUMNS property
applies.
org-table-formula-constants-local.
The global version of this variable is
org-table-formula-constants.
org-drawers.
org-link-abbrev-alist.
org-startup-folded, with a default
value t, which means overview.
overview top-level headlines only content all headlines showall no folding at all, show everything
Then there are options for aligning tables upon visiting a file. This
is useful in files containing narrowed table columns. The corresponding
variable is org-startup-align-all-tables, with a default value
nil.
align align all tables noalign don't align tables on startup
Logging the closing and reopening of TODO items and clock intervals can be
configured using these options (see variables org-log-done,
org-log-note-clock-out and org-log-repeat)
logdone record a timestamp when an item is marked DONE lognotedone record timestamp and a note when DONE nologdone don't record when items are marked DONE logrepeat record a time when reinstating a repeating item lognoterepeat record a note when reinstating a repeating item nologrepeat do not record when reinstating repeating item lognoteclock-out record a note when clocking out nolognoteclock-out don't record a note when clocking out
Here are the options for hiding leading stars in outline headings, and for
indenting outlines. The corresponding variables are
org-hide-leading-stars and org-odd-levels-only, both with a
default setting nil (meaning showstars and oddeven).
hidestars make all but one of the stars starting a headline invisible. showstars show all stars starting a headline indent virtual indentation according to outline level noindent no virtual indentation according to outline level odd allow only odd outline levels (1,3,...) oddeven allow all outline levels
To turn on custom format overlays over timestamps (variables
org-put-time-stamp-overlays and
org-time-stamp-overlay-formats), use
customtime overlay custom time format
The following options influence the table spreadsheet (variable
constants-unit-system).
constcgs constants.el should use the c-g-s unit system constSI constants.el should use the SI unit system
To influence footnote settings, use the following keywords. The
corresponding variables are org-footnote-define-inline and
org-footnote-auto-label.
fninline define footnotes inline fnnoinline define footnotes in separate section fnlocal define footnotes near first reference, but not inline fnprompt prompt for footnote labels fnauto create [fn:1]-like labels automatically (default) fnconfirm offer automatic label for editing or confirmation fnplain create [1]-like labels automatically
To hide blocks on startup, use these keywords. The corresponding variable is
org-hide-block-startup.
hideblocks Hide all begin/end blocks on startup nohideblocks Do not hide blocks on startup
org-tag-alist.
org-todo-keywords.
The key C-c C-c has many purposes in Org, which are all mentioned scattered throughout this manual. One specific function of this key is to add tags to a headline (see Tags). In many other circumstances it means something like “Hey Org, look here and update according to what you see here”. Here is a summary of what this means in different contexts.
#+KEYWORD lines, this
triggers scanning the buffer for these lines and updating the
information.
#+TBLFM line, re-apply the formulas to
the entire table.
<<<target>>>, update radio targets and
corresponding links in this buffer.
#+BEGIN line of a dynamic block, the
block is updated.
Some people find it noisy and distracting that the Org headlines start with a potentially large number of stars, and that text below the headlines is not indented. This is not really a problem when you are writing a book where the outline headings are really section headlines. However, in a more list-oriented outline, it is clear that an indented structure is a lot cleaner, as can be seen by comparing the two columns in the following example:
* Top level headline | * Top level headline
** Second level | * Second level
*** 3rd level | * 3rd level
some text | some text
*** 3rd level | * 3rd level
more text | more text
* Another top level headline | * Another top level headline
It is non-trivial to make such a look work in Emacs, but Org contains three separate features that, combined, achieve just that.
*** 3rd level
more text, now indented
A good way to get this indentation is by hand, and Org supports this with paragraph filling, line wrapping, and structure editing97 preserving or adapting the indentation as appropriate. A different approach would be to have a way to automatically indent lines according to outline structure by adding overlays or text properties. But I have not yet found a robust and efficient way to do this in large files.
org-hide-leading-stars or change this on a per-file basis
with
#+STARTUP: hidestars
Note that the opposite behavior is selected with showstars.
With hidden stars, the tree becomes:
* Top level headline
* Second level
* 3rd level
...
Note that the leading stars are not truly replaced by whitespace, they
are only fontified with the face org-hide that uses the
background color as font color. If you are not using either white or
black background, you may have to customize this face to get the wanted
effect. Another possibility is to set this font such that the extra
stars are almost invisible, for example using the color
grey90 on a white background.
org-odd-levels-only, or set this on
a per-file basis with one of the following lines:
#+STARTUP: odd
#+STARTUP: oddeven
You can convert an Org file from single-star-per-level to the double-star-per-level convention with M-x org-convert-to-odd-levels RET in that file. The reverse operation is M-x org-convert-to-oddeven-levels.
Because Org contains a large number of commands, by default many of Org's core commands are bound to keys that are generally not accessible on a tty, such as the cursor keys (<left>, <right>, <up>, <down>), <TAB> and <RET>, in particular when used together with modifiers like <Meta> and/or <Shift>. To access these commands on a tty when special keys are unavailable, the following alternative bindings can be used. The tty bindings below will likely be more cumbersome; you may find for some of the bindings below that a customized workaround suits you better. For example, changing a timestamp is really only fun with S-<cursor> keys, whereas on a tty you would rather use C-c . to re-insert the timestamp.
| Default | Alternative 1 | Alternative 2
|
| S-<TAB> | C-u <TAB> |
|
| M-<left> | C-c C-x l | <Esc> <left>
|
| M-S-<left> | C-c C-x L |
|
| M-<right> | C-c C-x r | <Esc> <right>
|
| M-S-<right> | C-c C-x R |
|
| M-<up> | C-c C-x u | <Esc> <up>
|
| M-S-<up> | C-c C-x U |
|
| M-<down> | C-c C-x d | <Esc> <down>
|
| M-S-<down> | C-c C-x D |
|
| S-<RET> | C-c C-x c |
|
| M-<RET> | C-c C-x m | <Esc> <RET>
|
| M-S-<RET> | C-c C-x M |
|
| S-<left> | C-c <left> |
|
| S-<right> | C-c <right> |
|
| S-<up> | C-c <up> |
|
| S-<down> | C-c <down> |
|
| C-S-<left> | C-c C-x <left> |
|
| C-S-<right> | C-c C-x <right> |
|
Org lives in the world of GNU Emacs and interacts in various ways with other code out there.
calc-eval which will have been autoloaded during setup if Calc has
been installed properly. As of Emacs 22, Calc is part of the Emacs
distribution. Another possibility for interaction between the two
packages is using Calc for embedded calculations. See Embedded Mode.
org-table-formula-constants, install
the constants package which defines a large number of constants
and units, and lets you use unit prefixes like ‘M’ for
‘Mega’, etc. You will need version 2.0 of this package, available
at http://www.astro.uva.nl/~dominik/Tools. Org checks for
the function constants-get, which has to be autoloaded in your
setup. See the installation instructions in the file
constants.el.
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook
(lambda () (imenu-add-to-menubar "Imenu")))
By default the index is two levels deep—you can modify the depth using
the option org-imenu-depth.
org-convert-table for the restrictions under which this is
possible.
shift-selection-mode is on by default, meaning that
cursor motions combined with the shift key should start or enlarge regions.
This conflicts with the use of S-<cursor> commands in Org to change
timestamps, TODO keywords, priorities, and item bullet types if the cursor is
at such a location. By default, S-<cursor> commands outside
special contexts don't do anything, but you can customize the variable
org-support-shift-select. Org mode then tries to accommodate shift
selection by (i) using it outside of the special contexts where special
commands apply, and by (ii) extending an existing active region even if the
cursor moves across a special context.
pc-select-mode and s-region-mode) to select and extend the
region. In fact, Emacs 23 has this built-in in the form of
shift-selection-mode, see previous paragraph. If you are using Emacs
23, you probably don't want to use another package for this purpose. However,
if you prefer to leave these keys to a different package while working in
Org mode, configure the variable org-replace-disputed-keys. When set,
Org will move the following key bindings in Org files, and in the agenda
buffer (but not during date selection).
S-UP -> M-p S-DOWN -> M-n
S-LEFT -> M-- S-RIGHT -> M-+
C-S-LEFT -> M-S-- C-S-RIGHT -> M-S-+
Yes, these are unfortunately more difficult to remember. If you want
to have other replacement keys, look at the variable
org-disputed-keys.
[tab] instead of
"\t") overrules yasnippets' access to this key. The following code
fixed this problem:
(add-hook 'org-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(org-set-local 'yas/trigger-key [tab])
(define-key yas/keymap [tab] 'yas/next-field-group)))
This appendix covers some aspects where users can extend the functionality of Org.
Org has a large number of hook variables that can be used to add functionality. This appendix about hacking is going to illustrate the use of some of them. A complete list of all hooks with documentation is maintained by the Worg project and can be found at http://orgmode.org/worg/org-configs/org-hooks.php.
A large number of add-on packages have been written by various authors. These packages are not part of Emacs, but they are distributed as contributed packages with the separate release available at the Org mode home page at http://orgmode.org. The list of contributed packages, along with documentation about each package, is maintained by the Worg project at http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/.
Org has a large number of hyperlink types built-in (see Hyperlinks). If you would like to add new link types, Org provides an interface for doing so. Let's look at an example file, org-man.el, that will add support for creating links like ‘[[man:printf][The printf manpage]]’ to show Unix manual pages inside Emacs:
;;; org-man.el - Support for links to manpages in Org
(require 'org)
(org-add-link-type "man" 'org-man-open)
(add-hook 'org-store-link-functions 'org-man-store-link)
(defcustom org-man-command 'man
"The Emacs command to be used to display a man page."
:group 'org-link
:type '(choice (const man) (const woman)))
(defun org-man-open (path)
"Visit the manpage on PATH.
PATH should be a topic that can be thrown at the man command."
(funcall org-man-command path))
(defun org-man-store-link ()
"Store a link to a manpage."
(when (memq major-mode '(Man-mode woman-mode))
;; This is a man page, we do make this link
(let* ((page (org-man-get-page-name))
(link (concat "man:" page))
(description (format "Manpage for %s" page)))
(org-store-link-props
:type "man"
:link link
:description description))))
(defun org-man-get-page-name ()
"Extract the page name from the buffer name."
;; This works for both `Man-mode' and `woman-mode'.
(if (string-match " \\(\\S-+\\)\\*" (buffer-name))
(match-string 1 (buffer-name))
(error "Cannot create link to this man page")))
(provide 'org-man)
;;; org-man.el ends here
You would activate this new link type in .emacs with
(require 'org-man)
Let's go through the file and see what it does.
(require 'org) to make sure that org.el has been
loaded.
org-add-link-type to define a new link type
with prefix ‘man’. The call also contains the name of a function
that will be called to follow such a link.
org-store-link-functions, in
order to allow the command C-c l to record a useful link in a
buffer displaying a man page.
The rest of the file defines the necessary variables and functions.
First there is a customization variable that determines which Emacs
command should be used to display man pages. There are two options,
man and woman. Then the function to follow a link is
defined. It gets the link path as an argument—in this case the link
path is just a topic for the manual command. The function calls the
value of org-man-command to display the man page.
Finally the function org-man-store-link is defined. When you try
to store a link with C-c l, this function will be called to
try to make a link. The function must first decide if it is supposed to
create the link for this buffer type; we do this by checking the value
of the variable major-mode. If not, the function must exit and
return the value nil. If yes, the link is created by getting the
manual topic from the buffer name and prefixing it with the string
‘man:’. Then it must call the command org-store-link-props
and set the :type and :link properties. Optionally you
can also set the :description property to provide a default for
the link description when the link is later inserted into an Org
buffer with C-c C-l.
When is makes sense for your new link type, you may also define a function
org-PREFIX-complete-link that implements special (e.g.,
support for inserting such a link with C-c C-l. Such a function should
not accept any arguments, and return the full link with prefix.
Org has several commands that act differently depending on context. The most important example it the C-c C-c (see The very busy C-c C-c key). Also the M-cursor and M-S-cursor keys have this property.
Add-ons can tap into this functionality by providing a function that detects
special context for that add-on and executes functionality appropriate for
the context. Here is an example from Dan Davison's org-R.el which
allows you to evaluate commands based on the R programming language. For
this package, special contexts are lines that start with #+R: or
#+RR:.
(defun org-R-apply-maybe ()
"Detect if this is context for org-R and execute R commands."
(if (save-excursion
(beginning-of-line 1)
(looking-at "#\\+RR?:"))
(progn (call-interactively 'org-R-apply)
t) ;; to signal that we took action
nil)) ;; to signal that we did not
(add-hook 'org-ctrl-c-ctrl-c-hook 'org-R-apply-maybe)
The function first checks if the cursor is in such a line. If that is the
case, org-R-apply is called and the function returns t to
signal that action was taken, and C-c C-c will stop looking for other
contexts. If the function finds it should do nothing locally, it returns nil so that other, similar functions can have a try.
Since Orgtbl mode can be used as a minor mode in arbitrary buffers, a frequent feature request has been to make it work with native tables in specific languages, for example LaTeX. However, this is extremely hard to do in a general way, would lead to a customization nightmare, and would take away much of the simplicity of the Orgtbl-mode table editor.
This appendix describes a different approach. We keep the Orgtbl mode table in its native format (the source table), and use a custom function to translate the table to the correct syntax, and to install it in the right location (the target table). This puts the burden of writing conversion functions on the user, but it allows for a very flexible system.
Bastien added the ability to do the same with lists. You can use Org's
facilities to edit and structure lists by turning orgstruct-mode
on, then locally exporting such lists in another format (HTML, LaTeX
or Texinfo.)
To define the location of the target table, you first need to create two lines that are comments in the current mode, but contain magic words for Orgtbl mode to find. Orgtbl mode will insert the translated table between these lines, replacing whatever was there before. For example:
/* BEGIN RECEIVE ORGTBL table_name */
/* END RECEIVE ORGTBL table_name */
Just above the source table, we put a special line that tells Orgtbl mode how to translate this table and where to install it. For example:
#+ORGTBL: SEND table_name translation_function arguments....
table_name is the reference name for the table that is also used
in the receiver lines. translation_function is the Lisp function
that does the translation. Furthermore, the line can contain a list of
arguments (alternating key and value) at the end. The arguments will be
passed as a property list to the translation function for
interpretation. A few standard parameters are already recognized and
acted upon before the translation function is called:
:skip N:skipcols (n1 n2 ...)The one problem remaining is how to keep the source table in the buffer without disturbing the normal workings of the file, for example during compilation of a C file or processing of a LaTeX file. There are a number of different solutions:
The best way to wrap the source table in LaTeX is to use the
comment environment provided by comment.sty. It has to be
activated by placing \usepackage{comment} into the document
header. Orgtbl mode can insert a radio table skeleton99 with the command M-x orgtbl-insert-radio-table. You will
be prompted for a table name, let's say we use ‘salesfigures’. You
will then get the following template:
% BEGIN RECEIVE ORGTBL salesfigures
% END RECEIVE ORGTBL salesfigures
\begin{comment}
#+ORGTBL: SEND salesfigures orgtbl-to-latex
| | |
\end{comment}
The #+ORGTBL: SEND line tells Orgtbl mode to use the function
orgtbl-to-latex to convert the table into LaTeX and to put it
into the receiver location with name salesfigures. You may now
fill in the table, feel free to use the spreadsheet features100:
% BEGIN RECEIVE ORGTBL salesfigures
% END RECEIVE ORGTBL salesfigures
\begin{comment}
#+ORGTBL: SEND salesfigures orgtbl-to-latex
| Month | Days | Nr sold | per day |
|-------+------+---------+---------|
| Jan | 23 | 55 | 2.4 |
| Feb | 21 | 16 | 0.8 |
| March | 22 | 278 | 12.6 |
#+TBLFM: $4=$3/$2;%.1f
% $ (optional extra dollar to keep font-lock happy, see footnote)
\end{comment}
When you are done, press C-c C-c in the table to get the converted table inserted between the two marker lines.
Now let's assume you want to make the table header by hand, because you want to control how columns are aligned, etc. In this case we make sure that the table translator skips the first 2 lines of the source table, and tell the command to work as a splice, i.e., header and footer commands of the target table:
\begin{tabular}{lrrr}
Month & \multicolumn{1}{c}{Days} & Nr.\ sold & per day\\
% BEGIN RECEIVE ORGTBL salesfigures
% END RECEIVE ORGTBL salesfigures
\end{tabular}
%
\begin{comment}
#+ORGTBL: SEND salesfigures orgtbl-to-latex :splice t :skip 2
| Month | Days | Nr sold | per day |
|-------+------+---------+---------|
| Jan | 23 | 55 | 2.4 |
| Feb | 21 | 16 | 0.8 |
| March | 22 | 278 | 12.6 |
#+TBLFM: $4=$3/$2;%.1f
\end{comment}
The LaTeX translator function orgtbl-to-latex is already part of
Orgtbl mode. It uses a tabular environment to typeset the table
and marks horizontal lines with \hline. Furthermore, it
interprets the following parameters (see also see Translator functions):
:splice nil/t:fmt fmt%s for the
original field value. For example, to wrap each field value in dollars,
you could use :fmt "$%s$". This may also be a property list with
column numbers and formats. for example :fmt (2 "$%s$" 4 "%s\\%%").
A function of one argument can be used in place of the strings; the
function must return a formatted string.
:efmt efmt%s twice for inserting mantissa and exponent, for example
"%s\\times10^{%s}". The default is "%s\\,(%s)". This
may also be a property list with column numbers and formats, for example
:efmt (2 "$%s\\times10^{%s}$" 4 "$%s\\cdot10^{%s}$"). After
efmt has been applied to a value, fmt will also be
applied. Similar to fmt, functions of two arguments can be
supplied instead of strings.
Orgtbl mode has several translator functions built-in: orgtbl-to-csv
(comma-separated values), orgtbl-to-tsv (TAB-separated values)
orgtbl-to-latex, orgtbl-to-html, and orgtbl-to-texinfo.
Except for orgtbl-to-html101, these all use a generic
translator, orgtbl-to-generic. For example, orgtbl-to-latex
itself is a very short function that computes the column definitions for the
tabular environment, defines a few field and line separators and then
hands processing over to the generic translator. Here is the entire code:
(defun orgtbl-to-latex (table params)
"Convert the Orgtbl mode TABLE to LaTeX."
(let* ((alignment (mapconcat (lambda (x) (if x "r" "l"))
org-table-last-alignment ""))
(params2
(list
:tstart (concat "\\begin{tabular}{" alignment "}")
:tend "\\end{tabular}"
:lstart "" :lend " \\\\" :sep " & "
:efmt "%s\\,(%s)" :hline "\\hline")))
(orgtbl-to-generic table (org-combine-plists params2 params))))
As you can see, the properties passed into the function (variable PARAMS) are combined with the ones newly defined in the function (variable PARAMS2). The ones passed into the function (i.e., ones set by the ‘ORGTBL SEND’ line) take precedence. So if you would like to use the LaTeX translator, but wanted the line endings to be ‘\\[2mm]’ instead of the default ‘\\’, you could just overrule the default with
#+ORGTBL: SEND test orgtbl-to-latex :lend " \\\\[2mm]"
For a new language, you can either write your own converter function in analogy with the LaTeX translator, or you can use the generic function directly. For example, if you have a language where a table is started with ‘!BTBL!’, ended with ‘!ETBL!’, and where table lines are started with ‘!BL!’, ended with ‘!EL!’, and where the field separator is a TAB, you could call the generic translator like this (on a single line!):
#+ORGTBL: SEND test orgtbl-to-generic :tstart "!BTBL!" :tend "!ETBL!"
:lstart "!BL! " :lend " !EL!" :sep "\t"
Please check the documentation string of the function
orgtbl-to-generic for a full list of parameters understood by
that function, and remember that you can pass each of them into
orgtbl-to-latex, orgtbl-to-texinfo, and any other function
using the generic function.
Of course you can also write a completely new function doing complicated
things the generic translator cannot do. A translator function takes
two arguments. The first argument is the table, a list of lines, each
line either the symbol hline or a list of fields. The second
argument is the property list containing all parameters specified in the
‘#+ORGTBL: SEND’ line. The function must return a single string
containing the formatted table. If you write a generally useful
translator, please post it on emacs-orgmode@gnu.org so that
others can benefit from your work.
Sending and receiving radio lists works exactly the same way than
sending and receiving radio tables (see Radio tables) 102. As for radio tables, you
can insert radio lists templates in HTML, LaTeX and Texinfo modes by
calling org-list-insert-radio-list.
Here are the differences with radio tables:
ORGLST instead of ORGTBL.
Here is a LaTeX example. Let's say that you have this in your LaTeX file:
% BEGIN RECEIVE ORGLST to-buy
% END RECEIVE ORGLST to-buy
\begin{comment}
#+ORGLIST: SEND to-buy orgtbl-to-latex
- a new house
- a new computer
+ a new keyboard
+ a new mouse
- a new life
\end{comment}
Pressing `C-c C-c' on a new house and will insert the converted
LaTeX list between the two marker lines.
Org documents can contain dynamic blocks. These are specially marked regions that are updated by some user-written function. A good example for such a block is the clock table inserted by the command C-c C-x C-r (see Clocking work time).
Dynamic block are enclosed by a BEGIN-END structure that assigns a name to the block and can also specify parameters for the function producing the content of the block.
#+BEGIN:dynamic block
#+BEGIN: myblock :parameter1 value1 :parameter2 value2 ...
#+END:
Dynamic blocks are updated with the following commands
Updating a dynamic block means to remove all the text between BEGIN and
END, parse the BEGIN line for parameters and then call the specific
writer function for this block to insert the new content. If you want
to use the original content in the writer function, you can use the
extra parameter :content.
For a block with name myblock, the writer function is
org-dblock-write:myblock with as only parameter a property list
with the parameters given in the begin line. Here is a trivial example
of a block that keeps track of when the block update function was last
run:
#+BEGIN: block-update-time :format "on %m/%d/%Y at %H:%M"
#+END:
The corresponding block writer function could look like this:
(defun org-dblock-write:block-update-time (params)
(let ((fmt (or (plist-get params :format) "%d. %m. %Y")))
(insert "Last block update at: "
(format-time-string fmt (current-time)))))
If you want to make sure that all dynamic blocks are always up-to-date,
you could add the function org-update-all-dblocks to a hook, for
example before-save-hook. org-update-all-dblocks is
written in a way such that it does nothing in buffers that are not in
org-mode.
Org provides a special hook that can be used to narrow down the selection made by any of the agenda views. You may specify a function that is used at each match to verify if the match should indeed be part of the agenda view, and if not, how much should be skipped.
Let's say you want to produce a list of projects that contain a WAITING tag anywhere in the project tree. Let's further assume that you have marked all tree headings that define a project with the TODO keyword PROJECT. In this case you would run a TODO search for the keyword PROJECT, but skip the match unless there is a WAITING tag anywhere in the subtree belonging to the project line.
To achieve this, you must write a function that searches the subtree for
the tag. If the tag is found, the function must return nil to
indicate that this match should not be skipped. If there is no such
tag, return the location of the end of the subtree, to indicate that
search should continue from there.
(defun my-skip-unless-waiting ()
"Skip trees that are not waiting"
(let ((subtree-end (save-excursion (org-end-of-subtree t))))
(if (re-search-forward ":waiting:" subtree-end t)
nil ; tag found, do not skip
subtree-end))) ; tag not found, continue after end of subtree
Now you may use this function in an agenda custom command, for example like this:
(org-add-agenda-custom-command
'("b" todo "PROJECT"
((org-agenda-skip-function 'my-skip-unless-waiting)
(org-agenda-overriding-header "Projects waiting for something: "))))
Note that this also binds org-agenda-overriding-header to get a
meaningful header in the agenda view.
A general way to create custom searches is to base them on a search for
entries with a certain level limit. If you want to study all entries with
your custom search function, simply do a search for
‘LEVEL>0’103, and then use org-agenda-skip-function to select the entries
you really want to have.
You may also put a Lisp form into org-agenda-skip-function. In
particular, you may use the functions org-agenda-skip-entry-if
and org-agenda-skip-subtree-if in this form, for example:
'(org-agenda-skip-entry-if 'scheduled)'(org-agenda-skip-entry-if 'notscheduled)'(org-agenda-skip-entry-if 'deadline)'(org-agenda-skip-entry-if 'scheduled 'deadline)'(org-agenda-skip-entry-if 'timestamp)'(org-agenda-skip-entry 'regexp "regular expression")'(org-agenda-skip-entry 'notregexp "regular expression")'(org-agenda-skip-subtree-if 'regexp "regular expression")Therefore we could also have written the search for WAITING projects like this, even without defining a special function:
(org-add-agenda-custom-command
'("b" todo "PROJECT"
((org-agenda-skip-function '(org-agenda-skip-subtree-if
'regexp ":waiting:"))
(org-agenda-overriding-header "Projects waiting for something: "))))
Org provides commands to access agenda information for the command
line in Emacs batch mode. This extracted information can be sent
directly to a printer, or it can be read by a program that does further
processing of the data. The first of these commands is the function
org-batch-agenda, that produces an agenda view and sends it as
ASCII text to STDOUT. The command takes a single string as parameter.
If the string has length 1, it is used as a key to one of the commands
you have configured in org-agenda-custom-commands, basically any
key you can use after C-c a. For example, to directly print the
current TODO list, you could use
emacs -batch -l ~/.emacs -eval '(org-batch-agenda "t")' | lpr
If the parameter is a string with 2 or more characters, it is used as a tags/TODO match string. For example, to print your local shopping list (all items with the tag ‘shop’, but excluding the tag ‘NewYork’), you could use
emacs -batch -l ~/.emacs \
-eval '(org-batch-agenda "+shop-NewYork")' | lpr
You may also modify parameters on the fly like this:
emacs -batch -l ~/.emacs \
-eval '(org-batch-agenda "a" \
org-agenda-ndays 30 \
org-agenda-include-diary nil \
org-agenda-files (quote ("~/org/project.org")))' \
| lpr
which will produce a 30-day agenda, fully restricted to the Org file ~/org/projects.org, not even including the diary.
If you want to process the agenda data in more sophisticated ways, you
can use the command org-batch-agenda-csv to get a comma-separated
list of values for each agenda item. Each line in the output will
contain a number of fields separated by commas. The fields in a line
are:
category The category of the item head The headline, without TODO keyword, TAGS and PRIORITY type The type of the agenda entry, can be todo selected in TODO match tagsmatch selected in tags match diary imported from diary deadline a deadline scheduled scheduled timestamp appointment, selected by timestamp closed entry was closed on date upcoming-deadline warning about nearing deadline past-scheduled forwarded scheduled item block entry has date block including date todo The TODO keyword, if any tags All tags including inherited ones, separated by colons date The relevant date, like 2007-2-14 time The time, like 15:00-16:50 extra String with extra planning info priority-l The priority letter if any was given priority-n The computed numerical priority
Time and date will only be given if a timestamp (or deadline/scheduled) led to the selection of the item.
A CSV list like this is very easy to use in a post-processing script. For example, here is a Perl program that gets the TODO list from Emacs/Org and prints all the items, preceded by a checkbox:
#!/usr/bin/perl
# define the Emacs command to run
$cmd = "emacs -batch -l ~/.emacs -eval '(org-batch-agenda-csv \"t\")'";
# run it and capture the output
$agenda = qx{$cmd 2>/dev/null};
# loop over all lines
foreach $line (split(/\n/,$agenda)) {
# get the individual values
($category,$head,$type,$todo,$tags,$date,$time,$extra,
$priority_l,$priority_n) = split(/,/,$line);
# process and print
print "[ ] $head\n";
}
Here is a description of the functions that can be used to work with properties.
Get all properties of the entry at point-or-marker POM.
This includes the TODO keyword, the tags, time strings for deadline, scheduled, and clocking, and any additional properties defined in the entry. The return value is an alist, keys may occur multiple times if the property key was used several times.
POM may also be nil, in which case the current entry is used. If WHICH is nil or `all', get all properties. If WHICH is `special' or `standard', only get that subclass.
Get value of PROPERTY for entry at point-or-marker POM. By default, this only looks at properties defined locally in the entry. If INHERIT is non-nil and the entry does not have the property, then also check higher levels of the hierarchy. If INHERIT is the symbol
selective, use inheritance if and only if the setting oforg-use-property-inheritanceselects PROPERTY for inheritance.
Delete the property PROPERTY from entry at point-or-marker POM.
Set PROPERTY to VALUE for entry at point-or-marker POM.
Get all property keys in the current buffer.
Set PROPERTY at point-or-marker POM to VALUES. VALUES should be a list of strings. They will be concatenated, with spaces as separators.
Treat the value of the property PROPERTY as a whitespace-separated list of values and return the values as a list of strings.
Treat the value of the property PROPERTY as a whitespace-separated list of values and make sure that VALUE is in this list.
Treat the value of the property PROPERTY as a whitespace-separated list of values and make sure that VALUE is not in this list.
Treat the value of the property PROPERTY as a whitespace-separated list of values and check if VALUE is in this list.
Org has sophisticated mapping capabilities to find all entries satisfying certain criteria. Internally, this functionality is used to produce agenda views, but there is also an API that can be used to execute arbitrary functions for each or selected entries. The main entry point for this API is:
Call FUNC at each headline selected by MATCH in SCOPE.
FUNC is a function or a Lisp form. The function will be called without arguments, with the cursor positioned at the beginning of the headline. The return values of all calls to the function will be collected and returned as a list.
The call to FUNC will be wrapped into a save-excursion form, so FUNC does not need to preserve point. After evaluaton, the cursor will be moved to the end of the line (presumably of the headline of the processed entry) and search continues from there. Under some circumstances, this may not produce the wanted results. For example, if you have removed (e.g., mean that the next entry will be skipped entirely. In such cases, you can specify the position from where search should continue by making FUNC set the variable `org-map-continue-from' to the desired buffer position.
MATCH is a tags/property/todo match as it is used in the agenda match view. Only headlines that are matched by this query will be considered during the iteration. When MATCH is nil or t, all headlines will be visited by the iteration.
SCOPE determines the scope of this command. It can be any of:
nil the current buffer, respecting the restriction if any tree the subtree started with the entry at point file the current buffer, without restriction file-with-archives the current buffer, and any archives associated with it agenda all agenda files agenda-with-archives all agenda files with any archive files associated with them (file1 file2 ...) if this is a list, all files in the list will be scannedThe remaining args are treated as settings for the skipping facilities of the scanner. The following items can be given here:
archive skip trees with the archive tag comment skip trees with the COMMENT keyword function or Lisp form will be used as value fororg-agenda-skip-function, so whenever the function returns t, FUNC will not be called for that entry and search will continue from the point where the function leaves it
The function given to that mapping routine can really do anything you like. It can use the property API (see Using the property API) to gather more information about the entry, or in order to change metadata in the entry. Here are a couple of functions that might be handy:
Change the TODO state of the entry, see the docstring of the functions for the many possible values for the argument ARG.
Change the priority of the entry, see the docstring of this function for the possible values for ACTION.
Toggle the tag TAG in the current entry. Setting ONOFF to either
onoroffwill not toggle tag, but ensure that it is either on or off.
Here is a simple example that will turn all entries in the current file with
a tag TOMORROW into TODO entries with the keyword UPCOMING.
Entries in comment trees and in archive trees will be ignored.
(org-map-entries
'(org-todo "UPCOMING")
"+TOMORROW" 'file 'archive 'comment)
The following example counts the number of entries with TODO keyword
WAITING, in all agenda files.
(length (org-map-entries t "/+WAITING" 'agenda))
Org was born in 2003, out of frustration over the user interface of the Emacs Outline mode. I was trying to organize my notes and projects, and using Emacs seemed to be the natural way to go. However, having to remember eleven different commands with two or three keys per command, only to hide and show parts of the outline tree, that seemed entirely unacceptable to me. Also, when using outlines to take notes, I constantly wanted to restructure the tree, organizing it parallel to my thoughts and plans. Visibility cycling and structure editing were originally implemented in the package outline-magic.el, but quickly moved to the more general org.el. As this environment became comfortable for project planning, the next step was adding TODO entries, basic timestamps, and table support. These areas highlighted the two main goals that Org still has today: To be a new, outline-based, plain text mode with innovative and intuitive editing features, and to incorporate project planning functionality directly into a notes file.
A special thanks goes to Bastien Guerry who has not only written a large number of extensions to Org (most of them integrated into the core by now), but who has also helped in the development and maintenance of Org so much that he should be considered the main co-contributor to this package.
Since the first release, literally thousands of emails to me or to emacs-orgmode@gnu.org have provided a constant stream of bug reports, feedback, new ideas, and sometimes patches and add-on code. Many thanks to everyone who has helped to improve this package. I am trying to keep here a list of the people who had significant influence in shaping one or more aspects of Org. The list may not be complete, if I have forgotten someone, please accept my apologies and let me know.
keymapp nil bug, a
conflict with allout.el.
align, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsconstcgs, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsconstSI, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingscontent, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingscustomtime, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingseven, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsfnauto, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsfnconfirm, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsfninline, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsfnlocal, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsfnnoinline, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsfnplain, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsfnprompt, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingshideblocks, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingshideblocks, STARTUP keyword: Blockshidestars, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingslogdone, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingslognoteclock-out, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingslognotedone, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingslognoterepeat, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingslogrepeat, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsnoalign, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsnohideblocks, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsnohideblocks, STARTUP keyword: Blocksnologdone, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsnolognoteclock-out, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsnologrepeat, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsodd, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsoverview, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsshift-selection-mode: Conflictsshowall, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settingsshowstars, STARTUP keyword: In-buffer settings$: Agenda commands': CDLaTeX mode+: Agenda commands,: Agenda commands-: Agenda commands.: Agenda commands/: Agenda commands:: Agenda commands<: Agenda files<: The date/time prompt<: Using column view<left>: Agenda commands<RET>: Agenda commands<RET>: The date/time prompt<RET>: Setting tags<RET>: Built-in table editor<right>: Agenda commands<SPC>: Agenda commands<SPC>: Setting tags<TAB>: CDLaTeX mode<TAB>: Agenda commands<TAB>: Setting tags<TAB>: Editing and debugging formulas<TAB>: Built-in table editor<TAB>: Plain lists<TAB>: Visibility cycling>: Agenda commands>: Agenda files>: The date/time prompt>: Using column view[: Agenda commands\: Agenda commands]: Agenda commands^: CDLaTeX mode_: CDLaTeX mode`: CDLaTeX modeA: Agenda commandsa: Agenda commandsa: Using column viewB: Agenda commandsb: Agenda commandsC: Agenda commandsc: Agenda commandsC-#: Advanced featuresC-': Agenda filesC-,: Agenda filesC-<RET>: Structure editingC-_: Agenda commandsC-c !: Creating timestampsC-c #: CheckboxesC-c $: Moving subtreesC-c %: Handling linksC-c &: Handling linksC-c ': Include filesC-c ': Literal examplesC-c ': Editing and debugging formulasC-c *: Updating the tableC-c *: Structure editingC-c +: Built-in table editorC-c -: Built-in table editorC-c -: Plain listsC-c .: Creating timestampsC-c /: Sparse treesC-c / a: Inserting deadline/scheduleC-c / b: Inserting deadline/scheduleC-c / d: Inserting deadline/scheduleC-c / m: Property searchesC-c / m: Tag searchesC-c / p: Property searchesC-c / r: Sparse treesC-c / t: TODO basicsC-c ;: Comment linesC-c <: Creating timestampsC-c <RET>: Built-in table editorC-c =: Editing and debugging formulasC-c =: Column formulasC-c >: Creating timestampsC-c ?: Editing and debugging formulasC-c [: Agenda filesC-c \: Property searchesC-c \: Tag searchesC-c ]: Agenda filesC-c ^: Built-in table editorC-c ^: Plain listsC-c ^: Structure editingC-c `: Built-in table editorC-c a !: Stuck projectsC-c a #: Stuck projectsC-c a a: Weekly/daily agendaC-c a C: Storing searchesC-c a e: Exporting Agenda ViewsC-c a L: TimelineC-c a M: Matching tags and propertiesC-c a m: Matching tags and propertiesC-c a M: Property searchesC-c a m: Property searchesC-c a M: Tag searchesC-c a m: Tag searchesC-c a s: Keyword searchC-c a T: Global TODO listC-c a t: Global TODO listC-c a t: TODO basicsC-c C-a: Agenda commandsC-c C-a: AttachmentsC-c C-a a: AttachmentsC-c C-a c: AttachmentsC-c C-a D: AttachmentsC-c C-a d: AttachmentsC-c C-a F: AttachmentsC-c C-a f: AttachmentsC-c C-a i: AttachmentsC-c C-a l: AttachmentsC-c C-a m: AttachmentsC-c C-a n: AttachmentsC-c C-a O: AttachmentsC-c C-a o: AttachmentsC-c C-a s: AttachmentsC-c C-a z: AttachmentsC-c C-b: MotionC-c C-c: CooperationC-c C-c: The very busy C-c C-c keyC-c C-c: Processing LaTeX fragmentsC-c C-c: Clocking work timeC-c C-c: Capturing column viewC-c C-c: Using column viewC-c C-c: Property syntaxC-c C-c: Setting tagsC-c C-c: CheckboxesC-c C-c: Editing and debugging formulasC-c C-c: Built-in table editorC-c C-c: FootnotesC-c C-c: Plain listsC-c C-d: Agenda commandsC-c C-d: Inserting deadline/scheduleC-c C-e: The export dispatcherC-c C-e A: ASCII exportC-c C-e a: ASCII exportC-c C-e b: HTML Export commandsC-c C-e C: Triggering publicationC-c C-e c: iCalendar exportC-c C-e D: DocBook export commandsC-c C-e d: LaTeX/PDF export commandsC-c C-e E: Triggering publicationC-c C-e F: Triggering publicationC-c C-e H: HTML Export commandsC-c C-e h: HTML Export commandsC-c C-e I: iCalendar exportC-c C-e i: iCalendar exportC-c C-e L: LaTeX/PDF export commandsC-c C-e l: LaTeX/PDF export commandsC-c C-e P: Triggering publicationC-c C-e p: LaTeX/PDF export commandsC-c C-e R: HTML Export commandsC-c C-e t: Export optionsC-c C-e v: XOXO exportC-c C-e V: DocBook export commandsC-c C-e v: The export dispatcherC-c C-e v: Sparse treesC-c C-e v a: ASCII exportC-c C-e v b: HTML Export commandsC-c C-e v D: DocBook export commandsC-c C-e v H: HTML Export commandsC-c C-e v h: HTML Export commandsC-c C-e v L: LaTeX/PDF export commandsC-c C-e v l: LaTeX/PDF export commandsC-c C-e v R: HTML Export commandsC-c C-e x: XOXO exportC-c C-f: MotionC-c C-j: MotionC-c C-l: Handling linksC-c C-n: MotionC-c C-o: Creating timestampsC-c C-o: Handling linksC-c C-o: FootnotesC-c C-p: MotionC-c C-q: Setting tagsC-c C-q: Editing and debugging formulasC-c C-r: Editing and debugging formulasC-c C-r: Visibility cyclingC-c C-s: Agenda commandsC-c C-s: Inserting deadline/scheduleC-c C-t: Clocking work timeC-c C-t: TODO basicsC-c C-u: MotionC-c C-v: TODO basicsC-c C-w: Agenda commandsC-c C-w: Refiling notesC-c C-w: Structure editingC-c C-x ,: Relative timerC-c C-x -: Relative timerC-c C-x .: Relative timerC-c C-x 0: Relative timerC-c C-x <: Agenda filesC-c C-x >: Agenda commandsC-c C-x >: Agenda filesC-c C-x A: Moving subtreesC-c C-x a: ARCHIVE tagC-c C-x b: Visibility cyclingC-c C-x c: Structure editingC-c C-x C-b: CheckboxesC-c C-x C-c: Agenda column viewC-c C-x C-c: Agenda commandsC-c C-x C-c: Using column viewC-c C-x C-d: Clocking work timeC-c C-x C-e: Clocking work timeC-c C-x C-i: Clocking work timeC-c C-x C-j: Clocking work timeC-c C-x C-k: Inserting deadline/scheduleC-c C-x C-l: Processing LaTeX fragmentsC-c C-x C-n: Handling linksC-c C-x C-o: Clocking work timeC-c C-x C-p: Handling linksC-c C-x C-r: Clocking work timeC-c C-x C-s: Moving subtreesC-c C-x C-t: Custom time formatC-c C-x C-u: Dynamic blocksC-c C-x C-u: Clocking work timeC-c C-x C-u: Capturing column viewC-c C-x C-w: Built-in table editorC-c C-x C-w: Structure editingC-c C-x C-x: Clocking work timeC-c C-x C-y: Built-in table editorC-c C-x C-y: Structure editingC-c C-x f: FootnotesC-c C-x G: RSS FeedsC-c C-x g: RSS FeedsC-c C-x i: Capturing column viewC-c C-x M-w: Built-in table editorC-c C-x M-w: Structure editingC-c C-x o: CheckboxesC-c C-x o: TODO dependenciesC-c C-x p: Property syntaxC-c C-y: Clocking work timeC-c C-y: Creating timestampsC-c l: Literal examplesC-c l: Handling linksC-c {: CDLaTeX modeC-c {: Editing and debugging formulasC-c |: Built-in table editorC-c }: Editing and debugging formulasC-c ~: CooperationC-k: Agenda commandsC-S-<left>: Multiple sets in one fileC-S-<RET>: Structure editingC-S-<right>: Multiple sets in one fileC-TAB: ARCHIVE tagC-u C-c !: Creating timestampsC-u C-c *: Updating the tableC-u C-c .: Creating timestampsC-u C-c =: Editing and debugging formulasC-u C-c =: Field formulasC-u C-c C-c: Updating the tableC-u C-c C-l: Handling linksC-u C-c C-t: TODO basicsC-u C-c C-w: Refiling notesC-u C-c C-x ,: Relative timerC-u C-c C-x a: ARCHIVE tagC-u C-c C-x C-s: Moving subtreesC-u C-c C-x C-u: Dynamic blocksC-u C-c C-x C-u: Clocking work timeC-u C-c C-x C-u: Capturing column viewC-u C-u <TAB>: Visibility cyclingC-u C-u C-c *: Updating the tableC-u C-u C-c =: Editing and debugging formulasC-u C-u C-c C-c: Updating the tableC-u C-u C-c C-e: The export dispatcherC-u C-u C-c C-t: Multiple sets in one fileC-u C-u C-c C-w: Refiling notesC-u C-u C-u <TAB>: Visibility cyclingC-u C-u C-u C-c C-t: TODO dependenciesC-x C-s: Agenda commandsC-x C-s: Editing and debugging formulasC-x C-w: Exporting Agenda ViewsC-x C-w: Agenda commandsC-x n s: Structure editingC-x n w: Structure editingC-y: Structure editingD: Agenda commandsd: Agenda commandse: Using column viewf: Agenda commandsg: Agenda commandsG: Agenda commandsg: Using column viewH: Agenda commandsi: Agenda commandsI: Agenda commandsJ: Agenda commandsj: Agenda commandsk: Agenda commandsk a: Inserting deadline/schedulek s: Inserting deadline/schedulel: Agenda commandsL: Agenda commandsM: Agenda commandsm: Agenda commandsM-<down>: Editing and debugging formulasM-<down>: Built-in table editorM-<left>: Built-in table editorM-<left>: Structure editingM-<RET>: Relative timerM-<RET>: Built-in table editorM-<RET>: Plain listsM-<RET>: Structure editingM-<right>: Built-in table editorM-<right>: Structure editingM-<TAB>: CompletionM-<TAB>: Property syntaxM-<TAB>: Setting tagsM-<TAB>: Per-file keywordsM-<TAB>: Editing and debugging formulasM-<up>: Editing and debugging formulasM-<up>: Built-in table editorM-a: Built-in table editorM-e: Built-in table editorM-S-<down>: Editing and debugging formulasM-S-<down>: Built-in table editorM-S-<down>: Plain listsM-S-<down>: Structure editingM-S-<left>: The date/time promptM-S-<left>: Built-in table editorM-S-<left>: Plain listsM-S-<left>: Structure editingM-S-<RET>: CheckboxesM-S-<RET>: Plain listsM-S-<RET>: Structure editingM-S-<right>: The date/time promptM-S-<right>: Built-in table editorM-S-<right>: Plain listsM-S-<right>: Structure editingM-S-<up>: Editing and debugging formulasM-S-<up>: Built-in table editorM-S-<up>: Plain listsM-S-<up>: Structure editingM-x org-iswitchb: Agenda filesmouse-1: Agenda commandsmouse-1: The date/time promptmouse-1: Handling linksmouse-1: Footnotesmouse-2: Agenda commandsmouse-2: Handling linksmouse-2: Footnotesmouse-3: Agenda commandsmouse-3: Handling linksn: Agenda commandsn: Using column viewO: Agenda commandso: Agenda commandsP: Agenda commandsp: Agenda commandsp: Using column viewq: Agenda commandsq: Using column viewr: Agenda commandsR: Agenda commandsr: Global TODO listr: Using column viewRET: Handling linksS: Agenda commandss: Agenda commandsS-<down>: Agenda commandsS-<down>: The date/time promptS-<down>: Creating timestampsS-<down>: PrioritiesS-<down>: Editing and debugging formulasS-<down>: Plain listsS-<left>: Agenda commandsS-<left>: Clocking work timeS-<left>: The date/time promptS-<left>: Creating timestampsS-<left>: Using column viewS-<left>: Property syntaxS-<left>: Multiple sets in one fileS-<left>: TODO basicsS-<left>: Editing and debugging formulasS-<left>: Plain listsS-<RET>: Built-in table editorS-<right>: Agenda commandsS-<right>: Clocking work timeS-<right>: The date/time promptS-<right>: Creating timestampsS-<right>: Using column viewS-<right>: Property syntaxS-<right>: Multiple sets in one fileS-<right>: TODO basicsS-<right>: Editing and debugging formulasS-<right>: Plain listsS-<TAB>: Built-in table editorS-<TAB>: Visibility cyclingS-<up>: Agenda commandsS-<up>: The date/time promptS-<up>: Creating timestampsS-<up>: PrioritiesS-<up>: Editing and debugging formulasS-<up>: Plain listsS-M-<left>: Using column viewS-M-<RET>: TODO basicsS-M-<right>: Using column viewT: Agenda commandst: Agenda commandsU: Agenda commandsu: Agenda commandsv: Using column viewv A: Agenda commandsv a: Agenda commandsv d: Agenda commandsv l: Agenda commandsv m: Agenda commandsv w: Agenda commandsv y: Agenda commandsw: Agenda commandsx: Agenda commandsX: Agenda commandsz: Agenda commands{: Agenda commands}: Agenda commandsThis is not a complete index of variables and faces, only the ones that are mentioned in the manual. For a more complete list, use M-x org-customize <RET> and then klick yourself through the tree.
cdlatex-simplify-sub-super-scripts: CDLaTeX modeconstants-unit-system: In-buffer settingsconstants-unit-system: Referenceshtmlize-output-type: Exporting Agenda ViewsLaTeX-verbatim-environments: A LaTeX exampleorg-adapt-indentation: Clean vieworg-agenda-add-entry-text-maxlines: Exporting Agenda Viewsorg-agenda-columns-add-appointments-to-effort-sum: Effort estimatesorg-agenda-confirm-kill: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-custom-commands: Extracting agenda informationorg-agenda-custom-commands: Setting Optionsorg-agenda-custom-commands: Storing searchesorg-agenda-custom-commands: Sparse treesorg-agenda-dim-blocked-tasks: TODO dependenciesorg-agenda-exporter-settings: Exporting Agenda Viewsorg-agenda-exporter-settings: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-files: iCalendar exportorg-agenda-files: Sorting of agenda itemsorg-agenda-files: Agenda filesorg-agenda-filter-preset: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-log-mode-items: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-ndays: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-ndays: Weekly/daily agendaorg-agenda-overriding-header: Special agenda viewsorg-agenda-prefix-format: Presentation and sortingorg-agenda-restore-windows-after-quit: Agenda Viewsorg-agenda-show-inherited-tags: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-skip-archived-trees: ARCHIVE tagorg-agenda-skip-function: Using the mapping APIorg-agenda-skip-function: Special agenda viewsorg-agenda-skip-scheduled-if-done: Deadlines and schedulingorg-agenda-sorting-strategy: Sorting of agenda itemsorg-agenda-start-with-clockreport-mode: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-start-with-follow-mode: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-tags-todo-honor-ignore-options: Matching tags and propertiesorg-agenda-text-search-extra-files: Keyword searchorg-agenda-text-search-extra-files: Agenda dispatcherorg-agenda-time-grid: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-time-grid: Time-of-day specificationsorg-agenda-todo-ignore-deadlines: Global TODO listorg-agenda-todo-ignore-scheduled: Global TODO listorg-agenda-todo-ignore-with-date: Global TODO listorg-agenda-todo-list-sublevels: Global TODO listorg-agenda-todo-list-sublevels: Breaking down tasksorg-agenda-use-time-grid: Agenda commandsorg-agenda-use-time-grid: Time-of-day specificationsorg-agenda-window-setup: Agenda Viewsorg-archive-location: In-buffer settingsorg-archive-location: Moving subtreesorg-archive-save-context-info: Moving subtreesorg-attach-directory: Attachmentsorg-attach-method: Attachmentsorg-calc-default-modes: Formula syntax for Calcorg-clock-into-drawer: Clocking work timeorg-clock-modeline-total: Clocking work timeorg-coderef-label-format: Literal examplesorg-columns-default-format: Agenda column vieworg-columns-default-format: Agenda commandsorg-columns-default-format: Effort estimatesorg-columns-default-format: Using column vieworg-columns-skip-arrchived-trees: ARCHIVE tagorg-combined-agenda-icalendar-file: iCalendar exportorg-create-file-search-functions: Custom searchesorg-ctrl-c-ctrl-c-hook: Context-sensitive commandsorg-cycle-emulate-tab: Visibility cyclingorg-cycle-global-at-bob: Visibility cyclingorg-cycle-include-plain-lists: Plain listsorg-cycle-open-archived-trees: ARCHIVE tagorg-cycle-separator-lines: Headlinesorg-deadline-warning-days: Inserting deadline/scheduleorg-deadline-warning-days: Deadlines and schedulingorg-default-priority: In-buffer settingsorg-default-priority: Prioritiesorg-directory: Remember templatesorg-display-custom-times: Publishing optionsorg-display-custom-times: Custom time formatorg-display-internal-link-with-indirect-buffer: Handling linksorg-disputed-keys: Conflictsorg-done (face): Faces for TODO keywordsorg-drawers: In-buffer settingsorg-drawers: Drawersorg-effort-property: Effort estimatesorg-empty-line-terminates-plain-lists: Plain listsorg-enable-table-editor: Built-in table editororg-enforce-todo-dependencies: TODO dependenciesorg-execute-file-search-functions: Custom searchesorg-export-ascii-links-to-notes: ASCII exportorg-export-author-info: Publishing optionsorg-export-creator-info: Publishing optionsorg-export-default-language: Publishing optionsorg-export-default-language: Export optionsorg-export-docbook-default-image-attributes: Images in DocBook exportorg-export-docbook-doctype: Special charactersorg-export-docbook-inline-image-extensions: Images in DocBook exportorg-export-docbook-xsl-fo-proc-command: DocBook export commandsorg-export-docbook-xslt-proc-command: DocBook export commandsorg-export-exclude-tags: Publishing optionsorg-export-exclude-tags: Selective exportorg-export-headline-levels: Publishing optionsorg-export-highlight-first-table-line: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-auto-postamble: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-auto-preamble: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-expand: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-extension: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-extra: CSS supportorg-export-html-inline-images: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-inline-images: Images in HTML exportorg-export-html-link-home: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-link-org-files-as-html: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-link-up: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-postamble: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-preamble: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-style: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-style: CSS supportorg-export-html-style-default: CSS supportorg-export-html-style-extra: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-style-include-default: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-style-include-default: CSS supportorg-export-html-table-tag: Publishing optionsorg-export-html-table-tag: Tables in HTML exportorg-export-html-tag-class-prefix: CSS supportorg-export-html-todo-kwd-class-prefix: CSS supportorg-export-html-use-infojs: Javascript supportorg-export-html-with-timestamp: Publishing optionsorg-export-latex-classes: Sectioning structureorg-export-latex-default-class: Sectioning structureorg-export-latex-inline-image-extensions: Images in LaTeX exportorg-export-preserve-breaks: Publishing optionsorg-export-publishing-directory: Publishing optionsorg-export-run-in-background: The export dispatcherorg-export-section-number-format: Publishing optionsorg-export-select-tags: Publishing optionsorg-export-select-tags: Selective exportorg-export-skip-text-before-1st-heading: Publishing optionsorg-export-skip-text-before-1st-heading: Initial textorg-export-with-archived-trees: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-archived-trees: ARCHIVE tagorg-export-with-drawers: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-emphasize: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-fixed-width: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-footnotes: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-LaTeX-fragments: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-priority: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-section-numbers: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-special-strings: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-sub-superscripts: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-tables: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-tags: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-TeX-macros: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-timestamps: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-toc: Publishing optionsorg-export-with-toc: Table of contentsorg-export-with-todo-keywords: Publishing optionsorg-fast-tag-selection-include-todo: Fast access to TODO statesorg-fast-tag-selection-single-key: Setting tagsorg-file-apps: Attachmentsorg-file-apps: Handling linksorg-footnote-auto-label: In-buffer settingsorg-footnote-auto-label: Footnotesorg-footnote-define-inline: In-buffer settingsorg-footnote-define-inline: Footnotesorg-footnote-section: Footnotesorg-format-latex-header: LaTeX fragmentsorg-format-latex-options: LaTeX fragmentsorg-from-is-user-regexp: Remember templatesorg-global-properties: Effort estimatesorg-global-properties: Property syntaxorg-goto-auto-isearch: Motionorg-goto-interface: Motionorg-headline-levels: Headings and sectionsorg-hide (face): Clean vieworg-hide-block-startup: Blocksorg-hide-leading-stars: Clean vieworg-hide-leading-stars: In-buffer settingsorg-highest-priority: In-buffer settingsorg-highest-priority: Prioritiesorg-html-entities: Special charactersorg-html-entities: TeX macros and LaTeX fragmentsorg-icalendar-categories: iCalendar exportorg-icalendar-include-body: iCalendar exportorg-icalendar-include-todo: iCalendar exportorg-icalendar-store-UID: iCalendar exportorg-icalendar-use-deadline: iCalendar exportorg-icalendar-use-scheduled: iCalendar exportorg-imenu-depth: Cooperationorg-infojs-options: Javascript supportorg-insert-mode-line-in-empty-file: Activationorg-irc-link-to-logs: Handling linksorg-keep-stored-link-after-insertion: Handling linksorg-latex-low-levels: LaTeX/PDF export commandsorg-link-abbrev-alist: In-buffer settingsorg-link-abbrev-alist: Link abbreviationsorg-link-to-org-use-id: Handling linksorg-log-done: In-buffer settingsorg-log-done: Agenda commandsorg-log-done: Tracking TODO state changesorg-log-into-drawer: Agenda commandsorg-log-into-drawer: Tracking TODO state changesorg-log-note-clock-out: In-buffer settingsorg-log-note-clock-out: Clocking work timeorg-log-repeat: In-buffer settingsorg-log-repeat: Repeated tasksorg-log-states-order-reversed: Tracking TODO state changesorg-lowest-priority: In-buffer settingsorg-lowest-priority: Prioritiesorg-M-RET-may-split-line: Plain listsorg-M-RET-may-split-line: Structure editingorg-odd-levels-only: Special agenda viewsorg-odd-levels-only: Clean vieworg-odd-levels-only: In-buffer settingsorg-odd-levels-only: Matching tags and propertiesorg-outline-path-complete-in-steps: Refiling notesorg-overriding-columns-format: Agenda column vieworg-popup-calendar-for-date-prompt: The date/time promptorg-priority-start-cycle-with-default: Prioritiesorg-publish-project-alist: Publishing optionsorg-publish-project-alist: Project alistorg-publish-use-timestamps-flag: Triggering publicationorg-put-time-stamp-overlays: In-buffer settingsorg-read-date-display-live: The date/time promptorg-read-date-prefer-future: The date/time promptorg-refile-allow-creating-parent-nodes: Refiling notesorg-refile-targets: Refiling notesorg-refile-use-outline-path: Refiling notesorg-remember-clock-out-on-exit: Storing notesorg-remember-default-headline: Remember templatesorg-remember-store-without-prompt: Storing notesorg-remove-highlights-with-change: Clocking work timeorg-remove-highlights-with-change: Sparse treesorg-replace-disputed-keys: Conflictsorg-reverse-note-order: Refiling notesorg-reverse-note-order: Storing notesorg-show-entry-below: Sparse treesorg-show-following-heading: Sparse treesorg-show-hierarchy-above: Sparse treesorg-show-siblings: Sparse treesorg-sort-agenda-noeffort-is-high: Agenda commandsorg-sparse-tree-open-archived-trees: ARCHIVE tagorg-special-ctrl-a/e: Headlinesorg-startup-align-all-tables: In-buffer settingsorg-startup-align-all-tables: Column width and alignmentorg-startup-folded: In-buffer settingsorg-startup-folded: Visibility cyclingorg-store-link-functions: Adding hyperlink typesorg-stuck-projects: Stuck projectsorg-support-shift-select: Conflictsorg-support-shift-select: Plain listsorg-table-auto-blank-field: Built-in table editororg-table-copy-increment: Built-in table editororg-table-export-default-format: Built-in table editororg-table-formula: In-buffer settingsorg-table-formula-constants: Cooperationorg-table-formula-constants: In-buffer settingsorg-table-formula-constants: Referencesorg-table-use-standard-references: Editing and debugging formulasorg-tag-alist: In-buffer settingsorg-tag-alist: Setting tagsorg-tag-faces: Tagsorg-tag-persistent-alist: Setting tagsorg-tags-column: Setting tagsorg-tags-exclude-from-inheritance: Tag inheritanceorg-tags-match-list-sublevels: Matching tags and propertiesorg-tags-match-list-sublevels: Property searchesorg-tags-match-list-sublevels: Tag searchesorg-tags-match-list-sublevels: Tag inheritanceorg-time-stamp-custom-formats: Custom time formatorg-time-stamp-overlay-formats: In-buffer settingsorg-time-stamp-rounding-minutes: Creating timestampsorg-todo (face): Faces for TODO keywordsorg-todo-keyword-faces: Faces for TODO keywordsorg-todo-keywords: In-buffer settingsorg-todo-keywords: Global TODO listorg-todo-keywords: TODO extensionsorg-todo-keywords: TODO basicsorg-todo-state-tags-triggers: TODO basicsorg-track-ordered-property-with-tag: Checkboxesorg-track-ordered-property-with-tag: TODO dependenciesorg-treat-insert-todo-heading-as-state-change: Structure editingorg-treat-S-cursor-todo-selection-as-state-change: TODO basicsorg-use-property-inheritance: Using the property APIorg-use-property-inheritance: iCalendar exportorg-use-property-inheritance: Property inheritanceorg-use-tag-inheritance: Tag inheritanceorg-yank-adjusted-subtrees: Structure editingorg-yank-folded-subtrees: Structure editingparse-time-months: The date/time promptparse-time-weekdays: The date/time promptps-landscape-mode: Exporting Agenda Viewsps-number-of-columns: Exporting Agenda Viewsuser-full-name: Publishing optionsuser-full-name: Export optionsuser-mail-address: Publishing optionsuser-mail-address: Export options[1] See
the variable org-special-ctrl-a/e to configure special behavior
of C-a and C-e in headlines.
[2] see, however,
the option org-cycle-emulate-tab.
[3] see the
option org-cycle-global-at-bob.
[4] The indirect buffer (see the Emacs manual for more information about indirect buffers) will contain the entire buffer, but will be narrowed to the current tree. Editing the indirect buffer will also change the original buffer, but without affecting visibility in that buffer.
[5] If you do not want the line to be split,
customize the variable org-M-RET-may-split-line.
[6] For backward compatibility, the following also works: If there are several such lines in a file, each specifies the archive location for the text below it. The first such line also applies to any text before its definition. However, using this method is strongly deprecated as it is incompatible with the outline structure of the document. The correct method for setting multiple archive locations in a buffer is using properties.
[7] See also the
variables org-show-hierarchy-above, org-show-following-heading,
org-show-siblings, and org-show-entry-below for detailed
control on how much context is shown around each match.
[8] This depends on the option
org-remove-highlights-with-change
[9] This does not work under XEmacs, because XEmacs uses selective display for outlining, not text properties.
[10] When using ‘*’ as a bullet, lines must be indented or they will be seen as top-level headlines. Also, when you are hiding leading stars to get a clean outline view, plain list items starting with a star are visually indistinguishable from true headlines. In short: even though ‘*’ is supported, it may be better to not use it for plain list items.
[11] Org only changes the filling settings for Emacs. For
XEmacs, you should use Kyle E. Jones' filladapt.el. To turn this on,
put into .emacs: (require 'filladapt)
[12] If you do not want the line to be split, customize the variable
org-M-RET-may-split-line.
[13] You can define drawers on a per-file basis
with a line like #+DRAWERS: HIDDEN PROPERTIES STATE
[14] The corresponding in-buffer
setting is: #+STARTUP: fninline or #+STARTUP: nofninline
[15] This feature does not work on XEmacs.
[16] Note that only hlines are counted that separate table lines. If the table starts with a hline above the header, it does not count.
[17] constants.el can
supply the values of constants in two different unit systems, SI
and cgs. Which one is used depends on the value of the variable
constants-unit-system. You can use the #+STARTUP options
constSI and constcgs to set this value for the current
buffer.
[18] Note that text before the first headline is usually not exported, so the first such target should be after the first headline, or in the line directly before the first headline.
[19] To insert a link targeting a headline, in-buffer completion can be used. Just type a star followed by a few optional letters into the buffer and press M-<TAB>. All headlines in the current buffer will be offered as completions. See Handling links, for more commands creating links.
[20] Note that you don't have to use this command to insert a link. Links in Org are plain text, and you can type or paste them straight into the buffer. By using this command, the links are automatically enclosed in double brackets, and you will be asked for the optional descriptive text.
[21] After insertion of a stored link, the link will be
removed from the list of stored links. To keep it in the list later use, use
a triple C-u prefix argument to C-c C-l, or configure the option
org-keep-stored-link-after-insertion.
[22] This works by
calling a special function org-PREFIX-complete-link.
[23] See the
variable org-display-internal-link-with-indirect-buffer
[24] For backward compatibility, line numbers can also follow a single colon.
[25] Of course, you can make a document that contains only long lists of TODO items, but this is not required.
[26] Changing this variable only becomes effective after restarting Org mode in a buffer.
[27] This is also true for the t command in the timeline and agenda buffers.
[28] Check also the variable
org-fast-tag-selection-include-todo, it allows you to change the TODO
state through the tags interface (see Setting tags), in case you like to
mingle the two concepts. Note that this means you need to come up with
unique keys across both sets of keywords.
[29] Org mode parses these lines only when Org mode is activated after visiting a file. C-c C-c with the cursor in a line starting with ‘#+’ is simply restarting Org mode for the current buffer.
[30] The corresponding
in-buffer setting is: #+STARTUP: logdone
[31] The
corresponding in-buffer setting is: #+STARTUP: lognotedone
[32] See the variable
org-log-states-order-reversed
[33] It is possible that Org mode will record two timestamps
when you are using both org-log-done and state change logging.
However, it will never prompt for two notes—if you have configured
both, the state change recording note will take precedence and cancel
the ‘Closing Note’.
[34] See also the option
org-priority-start-cycle-with-default.
[35] To keep subtasks out of the
global TODO list, see the org-agenda-todo-list-sublevels.
[36] Set the variable
org-recursive-checkbox-statistics if you want such cookes to represent
the all checkboxes below the cookie, not just the direct children.
[37] This is only true if the search does not involve more complex tests including properties (see Property searches).
[38] Keys will automatically be assigned to tags which have no configured keys.
[39] Please note that the COLUMNS definition must be on a single line—it is wrapped here only because of formatting constraints.
[40] Contributed packages are not part of Emacs, but are distributed with the main distribution of Org (visit http://orgmode.org).
[41] This is the standard ISO date/time format. To use an alternative format, see Custom time format.
[42] See the variable
org-read-date-prefer-future.
[43] If
you don't need/want the calendar, configure the variable
org-popup-calendar-for-date-prompt.
[44] If you find this distracting, turn the display of with
org-read-date-display-live.
[45] It will still
be listed on that date after it has been marked DONE. If you don't like
this, set the variable org-agenda-skip-scheduled-if-done.
[46] You can change this using the option
org-log-repeat, or the #+STARTUP options logrepeat,
lognoterepeat, and nologrepeat. With lognoterepeat, you
will also be prompted for a note.
[47] as recorded by the LAST_REPEAT property
[48] See also the variable
org-clock-modeline-total.
[49] The corresponding in-buffer setting is:
#+STARTUP: lognoteclock-out
[50] Note that all parameters must be specified in a single line—the line is broken here only to fit it into the manual.
[51] You may change the property being
used with the variable org-effort-property.
[52] Please note the pitfalls of summing hierarchical data in a flat list (see Agenda column view).
[53] Please select your own key, C-c r is only a suggestion.
[54] If you define your own link types (see Adding hyperlink types), any property you store with
org-store-link-props can be accessed in remember templates in a
similar way.
[55] This will always be the other, not the user. See the variable org-from-is-user-regexp.
[56] To avoid this query, configure the variable
org-remember-clock-out-on-exit.
[57] Configure the
variable org-remember-store-without-prompt to make this behavior
the default.
[58] If you move entries or Org files from one
directory to another, you may want to configure org-attach-directory
to contain an absolute path.
[59] If the value of that variable is not a list, but a single file name, then the list of agenda files will be maintained in that external file.
[60] When using the dispatcher, pressing
< before selecting a command will actually limit the command to
the current file, and ignore org-agenda-files until the next
dispatcher command.
[61] For backward compatibility, you can also press 1 to restrict to the current buffer.
[62] For backward compatibility, you can also press 0 to restrict to the current region/subtree.
[63] For backward compatibility, the universal prefix C-u causes all TODO entries to be listed before the agenda. This feature is deprecated, use the dedicated TODO list, or a block agenda instead (see Block agenda).
[64] See Tag searches.
[65] For backward compatibility, the following also works: If there are several such lines in a file, each specifies the category for the text below it. The first category also applies to any text before the first CATEGORY line. However, using this method is strongly deprecated as it is incompatible with the outline structure of the document. The correct method for setting multiple categories in a buffer is using a property.
[66] Custom commands can preset a filter by
binding the variable org-agenda-filter-preset as an option. This
filter will then be applied to the view and presist as a basic filter through
refreshes and more secondary filtering.
[67] You can provide a description for a prefix key by inserting a cons cell with the prefix and the description.
[68] You need to install Hrvoje Niksic's htmlize.el.
[69] To create PDF output, the ghostscript ps2pdf utility must be installed on the system. Selecting a PDF file with also create the postscript file.
[70] If you want to store standard views like the weekly agenda or the global TODO list as well, you need to define custom commands for them in order to be able to specify file names.
[71] Quoting depends on the system you use, please check the FAQ for examples.
[72] LaTeX is a macro system based on Donald E. Knuth's TeX system. Many of the features described here as “LaTeX” are really from TeX, but for simplicity I am blurring this distinction.
[73] Yes, there is MathML, but that is not yet fully supported by many browsers, and there is no decent converter for turning LaTeX or ASCII representations of formulas into MathML. So for the time being, converting formulas into images seems the way to go.
[74] The LaTeX export will not use images for displaying LaTeX fragments but include these fragments directly into the LaTeX code.
[75] Org mode has a method to test if the cursor is
inside such a fragment, see the documentation of the function
org-inside-LaTeX-fragment-p.
[76] Currently this works only for the HTML backend, and requires the htmlize.el package version 1.34 or later.
[77] If you want to explain the use of such labels
themelves in org-mode example code, you can use the -k switch to make
sure they are not touched.
[78] Upon exit, lines starting with ‘*’ or ‘#’ will get a comma prepended, to keep them from being interpreted by Org as outline nodes or special comments. These commas will be striped for editing with C-c ', and also for export.
[79] You may select a different-mode with the
variable org-edit-fixed-width-region-mode.
[80] If you want to configure many options this way, you can use several OPTIONS lines.
[81] To make this behavior the default, customize
the variable org-export-run-in-background.
[82] This requires
transient-mark-mode be turned on.
[83] To select the current subtree, use C-c @.
[84] This requires
transient-mark-mode be turned on.
[85] To select the current subtree, use C-c @.
[86] But see the variable
org-export-html-inline-images.
[87] If the classes on TODO
keywords and tags lead to conflicts, use the variables
org-export-html-todo-kwd-class-prefix and
org-export-html-tag-class-prefix to make them unique.
[88] This style is defined in the constant
org-export-html-style-default, which you should not modify. To turn
inclusion of these defaults off, customize
org-export-html-style-include-default
[89] This
requires transient-mark-mode be turned on.
[90] To select the current subtree, use C-c @.
[91] This requires
transient-mark-mode to be turned on
[92] To select the current subtree, use C-c @.
[93] See the variables
org-icalendar-use-deadline and org-icalendar-use-scheduled.
[94] To add inherited tags or the TODO state,
configure the variable org-icalendar-categories.
[95] The LOCATION
property can be inherited from higher in the hierarchy if you configure
org-use-property-inheritance accordingly.
[96] file-source.org and file-source.org.html if source and publishing directories are equal.
[97] See also the
variable org-adapt-indentation.
[98] When you need to specify a level for a property search or refile targets, ‘LEVEL=2’ will correspond to 3 stars, etc.
[99] By
default this works only for LaTeX, HTML, and Texinfo. Configure the
variable orgtbl-radio-tables to install templates for other
modes.
[100] If
the ‘#+TBLFM’ line contains an odd number of dollar characters,
this may cause problems with font-lock in LaTeX mode. As shown in the
example you can fix this by adding an extra line inside the
comment environment that is used to balance the dollar
expressions. If you are using AUCTeX with the font-latex library, a
much better solution is to add the comment environment to the
variable LaTeX-verbatim-environments.
[101] The HTML translator uses the same code that produces tables during HTML export.
[102] You
need to load the org-export-latex.el package to use radio lists
since the relevant code is there for now.
[103] Note that, when using org-odd-levels-only, a
level number corresponds to order in the hierarchy, not to the number of
stars.