Top all-time · #954
Karl Voit
Personal blog · karl-voit.at · on HN as KarlVoitprogrammingproductivitywriting
Karl Voit writes public voit, a personal blog at karl-voit.at about programming, productivity and writing. Since 2014, 72 different Hacker News readers have linked it 110 times, most often “Org-Mode Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text (2018)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- Org-Mode Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text (2018)9 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2019-04-10
- How to Use Tags7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-01-29
- Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums (2020)7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-10-29
- You Can't Control Your Data in the Cloud6 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2022-06-05
- Orgdown – Using orgmode markup outside Emacs6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2021-11-28
- Managing Digital Files (e.g., Photographs) in Files and Folders3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-11-08
- Organize Your Life with Org-Mode3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-10-24
- Org-Mode Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-09-23
- /2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-01-29
- ChatGPT Considered Harmful: Our Whole Society Is in Danger2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-01-16
What Hacker News says?
Related post by Karl Voit, explaining part of the problem: https://karl-voit.at/2020/01/13/thunderbird-notmuch/
Comment linking /2020/01/13/thunderbird-notmuch/
on “Thunderbird 102”Submitted Org-Mode Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text as a story · 556 points
HN discussionPlain text adoption often implies markdown for a richer experience, but we also have the wonderful https://orgmode.org markup. There is no shortage of markdown-based tools on all platforms. Our org markup options, on the other hand, are very few outside of Emacs. Org markup itself is super versatile and can power lots of use-cases. I built two org-powered apps for iOS myself: https://plainorg.com https://flathabits.…
Comment linking /2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only
on “Write plain text files”Submitted Org-Mode Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text (2018) as a story · 518 points
HN discussionDr. Karl Voit did his dissertation designing a tag-based file system. I don't know what the status is today, but the dissertation itself may be a decent place to start your search. https://karl-voit.at/tagstore/en/papers.shtml
Comment linking /tagstore/en/papers.shtml
on “I am endlessly fascinated with content tagging systems”Submitted Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums (2020) as a story · 220 points
HN discussionI used something similar based on https://karl-voit.at/folder-hierarchy/ which I found helpful.
Comment linking /folder-hierarchy/
on “Johnny.Decimal – A system to organise your life”Submitted Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums as a story · 179 points
HN discussionObviously I'm biased since I built BrainTool because of my emacs/org use, but I also use markdowns and maintain the braintool.org blog on github in their markdown. I don't find it more readable. Maybe it's a familiarity thing, anything specific you dislike? Anyway here's the definitive argument for org as markup of choice: https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/ It would for sure be nice to have a de…
Comment linking /2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/
on “Show HN: A plain-text file format for todos and check lists”Submitted The Emacs Lock-In Effect or the Emacs Sunk Cost Fallacy as a story · 175 points
HN discussionIt's not proprietary, it's still just plain text, and can be edited with anything. Emacs adds a lot of nice features on top of it to manipulate that text, but it's still just text. See http://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/ .
Comment linking /2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/
on “Ask HN: Favorite note-taking software?”Submitted Org Mode Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text (2017) as a story · 113 points
HN discussionimmediately thought of Karl Voit as well. https://karl-voit.at/managing-digital-photographs/ and his talk at the Grazer Linuxtage 2018.
Comment linking /managing-digital-photographs/
on “Designing better file organization around tags, not hierarchies (2017)”Submitted Orgdown – Using orgmode markup outside Emacs as a story · 23 points
HN discussionFrom the article: > ### Hard and soft links as non-solutions > Soft links have a nearly opposite set of problems as hard links – soft links can span different file systems, but they generally don’t track the target files getting moved or renamed (except that Windows provides such a system service, but may not be reliable); while hard links are all indistinguishable, some application software behaves differently on s…
Comment linking /2018/08/25/links/
on “Designing better file organization around tags, not hierarchies (2017)”Submitted Orgdown – The Interesting Feedback Phase So Far as a story · 17 points
HN discussionI'm not the person you asked, but I do the same using Emacs' org-mode[0], but there are many tools around such as the Leo Editor[1], or really, any editor with a decent markup language support will do. I store all my org files in git repositories and sync them across devices, allowing me to work on multiple devices and worry less about losing a particular device. [0] https://karl-voit.at/orgmode/ [1] https://leoedit…
Comment linking /orgmode/
on “Working asynchronously”Submitted You Can't Control Your Data in the Cloud as a story · 11 points
HN discussionI use Org-mode w/ GNU Emacs for all of my blogging(shameless plug: amitav.net). I like Org-mode because it's easy enough to write, looks nice enough, can be exported in quite a few formats, and the code block handling is chef's kiss . It supports quite a few languages and has a feature I've seen in no other editor before, where you can chain together code from different code blocks, and evaluate it, inside of the do…
Comment linking /tags/lazyblorg/
on “Markdown is holding you back”Submitted I'm Leaving Reddit for Good and This Is Why as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSemi-ignorant :) I knew of org-mode as emacs only, but the grandparent post mentioned mobile & browser snippets. Just found two apps which edit & sync org-mode files, and templates for bookmarks. Android app uses ssh, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.matburt.mo... iOS app uses dropbox, https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mobileorg/id634225528?mt=8 Blog post on replacing other svcs/apps with org-mode, ht…
Comment linking /2014/08/10/bookmarks-with-orgmode/
on “Designing a Personal Knowledgebase”Submitted How to Use Tags as a story · 6 points
HN discussionWell I think the first is kind of what orgdown is trying to do. https://karl-voit.at/2021/11/27/orgdown/ As for the second doesn't guile have a feature complete elisp implementation?
Comment linking /2021/11/27/orgdown/
on “Organice: An implementation of Org mode without the dependency of Emacs”Submitted Young Users No Longer Know How to File and Navigate as a story · 5 points
HN discussionKarl Voit does it a lot more justice than I would https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only Also there's a super comprehensive guide if you want to go all in on Emacs side of things. It's written in org itself http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.org and exported to html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html .
Comment linking /2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only
on “Plaintext Productivity”Submitted Logseq from an Org-Mode Point of View as a story · 4 points
HN discussionPlain text can be super versatile (task-tracking and note-taking are great examples), but equally important are the guarantees that your content is truly yours (no lock-in). With all these plain text posts surfacing regularly, I'd love for the lesser-known org markup ( https://orgmode.org ) to gain more adoption. It's a real power-house. Its Emacs origin may put some off, but it's plain text, so your content can be…
Comment linking /2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only
on “Plaintext Productivity”Submitted Good Bye NixOS, Hello Debian (Again) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWell, I feel my whole post is my "why org-mode" swan song :D If I had to pick just one reason: Org-mode's much more regular --- and singular, unlike the many flavours of markdown --- syntax appeals to my sensibilities more. I linked to a post, which I agree with: https://karl-voit.at/2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/
Comment linking /2017/09/23/orgmode-as-markup-only/
on “Why and How I use “Org Mode” for my writing and more (2022)”Submitted Markdown Is a Disaster: Why and What to Do Instead as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
