Org

Organize your plain-life in plain-text. The hallmark feature of Emacs, org-mode¹ is the king of markup languages. It has rich feature support for project management, scheduling, development, and writing. It's hard to convey everything within its capabilities.

Setup

Define a custom hook when org-mode¹ is enabled to customize the experience:

Enable org-indent-mode to indent and align text with the parent heading
Enable visual-line-mode to allow text to overflow and wrap to the next visual line
Enable variable-pitch-mode to support multiple font-pitches and monospaced fonts

(defun dotfiles/org-mode-hook ()
  (org-indent-mode)        ;; Indent and align text.
  (visual-line-mode 1)     ;; Allow text to overflow line.
  (variable-pitch-mode 1)) ;; Enable monospaced fonts.

Config

Force straight to ignore the local version of org-mode¹, instead downloading the most recent version available.

(straight-use-package '(org :local-repo nil))

Setup the default babel languages and structure templates, and apply customizations:

Setup org-mode-hook with our custom hook
Setup org-ellipsis to show headlines with hidden contents
Setup org-log-* for event logging
Setup org-src-* for source blocks
Setup org-todo-keyword sequence

(use-package org
  :hook (org-mode . dotfiles/org-mode-hook)
  :custom (org-ellipsis " ▾")
          (org-log-done 'time)
          (org-log-into-drawer t)
          (org-return-follows-link t)
          (org-image-actual-width nil)
          (org-directory dotfiles/home)
          (org-src-fontify-natively t)
          (org-src-tab-acts-natively t)
          (org-src-preserve-indentation t)
          (org-confirm-babel-evaluate nil)
          (org-todo-keywords '((sequence "TODO" "START" "WAIT" "DONE")))
  :config (require 'org-tempo) ;; Required for structure templates.
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("s" . "src"))
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("q" . "quote"))
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("e" . "example"))
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("sh" . "src shell"))
          (add-to-list 'org-structure-template-alist '("el" . "src emacs-lisp"))
          (org-babel-do-load-languages 'org-babel-load-languages '((shell . t)
                                                                   (emacs-lisp . t))))

Pomodoro

Adds support for the Pomodoro workflow in Emacs through the org-pomodoro² package. Some workflows benefit from thje option to work a few minutes of overtime to finish a task before taking a break. With this workflow, a break notification is sent at the end of the pomodoro timer, but the break starts when calling M-x org-pomodoro.

(use-package org-pomodoro
  :after org
  :custom (org-pomodoro-manual-break t)      ;; Enable the 'overtime' workflow.
          (org-pomodoro-keep-killed-time t)) ;; Track abandoned timers.

Flashcards

Create study flashcards using org-drill³, an extension for org-mode. It uses a spaced repititon algorithm to conduct interactive drill sesslions using org-mode buffers as sources of facts to be memorized. Each drill can be restricted to topics in the current buffer, one of several, all agenda files, or a single topic across all buffers.

(use-package org-drill
  :after org)

Headline stars

Make the headline stars a bit more super with org-superstar-mode⁴. Only enable this inside of a window system, as the effect can be distracting on the TTY.

(use-package org-superstar
  :when (window-system)
  :after org
  :hook (org-mode . org-superstar-mode))

Methods

Define some custom methods for use in the rest of the configuration.

Tangle directory

Build all of the org files within a given directory, recursively. This is used in CI.

(defun dotfiles/tangle (dir)
  "Recursively tangle the Org files within a directory."
  (interactive)
  (let ((org-files (directory-files-recursively dir "org")))
    (dolist (f org-files)
      (org-babel-tangle-file f))))

Force symbolic links

Function that takes in a system and configuration file path, checks to see if the system file doesn't exist, or doesn't point to the configuration file, deleting it for the latter, then creating a symbolic link to the configuration file in place.

(defun dotfiles/symlink (src tgt)
  "Forces a symlink from `src' to `tgt'."
  (interactive)
  (let ((sys-file (expand-file-name tgt))
        (dot-file (expand-file-name src)))
    (when (or (not (file-exists-p sys-file))
              (not (equal (file-symlink-p sys-file) dot-file)))
      (delete-file sys-file)
      (make-symbolic-link dot-file sys-file))))

Shortcuts

Place org-mode¹ extension bindings behind SPC o.

Drill with d
- Drill with d
- Resume with r
Pomodoro with p

(dotfiles/leader
  "o" '(:ignore t :which-key "Org")
  "od" '(:ignore t :which-key "Drill")
  "odd" '(org-drill :which-key "Drill")
  "odc" '(org-drill-cram :which-key "Cram")
  "odr" '(org-drill-resume :which-key "Resume")
  "op" '(org-pomodoro :which-key "Pomodoro"))