I find these org mode re-creations in other editors neat but the problem always seems to fall to the fact that other editors can't properly support org-indent-mode as they lack support for virtual text or because of other problems.

In org with org-indent-mode mode the following text:

  * Foo
  ** Bar
  baz

Is rendered as:

  * Foo
    * Bar
      baz

This visual indentation and separation is, at least to me, an important feature which helps when reading.

It is basically a must-have for any org-mode re-implementation (I'm not just making up obstacles here, I daily-drive neovim and like the idea behind the org-mode plugin for neovim but I've tried it multiple times and it just doesn't work for me).

There are also probably many other shortcomings too.

Without the agenda, without tables, without time tracking, without executable code blocks, and without exporting, this is missing the point of org mode.

Have a look at orgExtended for Sublime Text for a more fully featured reimplementation of org mode.

I recently started using this, but I have to say it is of limited utility without folding. I nearly always end up opening up .org files in emacs instead just so I can collapse sections and concentrate on the stuff I care about at the time.

Seems abandoned and incomplete? Or what am I missing?

Related:

Org-Mode for Visual Studio Code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16198369 - Jan 2018 (124 comments)

This honestly looks pretty interesting, and reminded me of Obsidian more than anything; I wonder what the level of effort would be on inter-compatibility between this and obsidian projects ( obsidian has a nice mobile app, which would be useful for bridging the gap back to vscode on a full machine )

I feel like it would have been nicer to have a perfect match with orgmode syntax (e.g. they use square brackets instead of chevrons for time stamps). It would make migration easier... Really impressive project nonetheless!

VS Code is an acceptable emacs

Can someone explain to me what org mode is? Is it simply a markdown editor?

How does this compare to something like Dendron?

This is a welcome extension of course which I'm sure will improve further but I've really been spoilt by the "live preview" editing mode for markdown available in various tools like Slack, Obsidian etc.

The gifs in the README are a great idea. Makes the instructions very digestible.

Gonna be fun to see how they implement it :)

Not until it gets something akin to helm/ivy/consult.

I like emacs and have been using it for like 8 years, and doom makes my additional configuration small and manageable, but I’d switch to vscode in a heartbeat if it was possible to replicate basic features of an extended emacs. I just want a good editor at the end of the day.

* wgrep is hugely useful.

* Fuzzy searching with orderless is unmatched in any other editor. Being able to resume is hugely useful. Being able to plop the results into a saved buffer is hugely useful.

* magit is the only way to do complicated rebases.

I really want to move on but until vscode fixes their search, I’m stuck. I can live without a good git interface, I can’t live without navigating projects in a grep-oriented way.

Vim doesn’t have this either, by the way.

  * works decently well on Windows

The most annoying thing to me about VS Code is it cannot be extended in a way that doesn't require developing a plugin. In short there is no ~/.vscode.ts. Instead you have to create a plugin to add custom commands.

I say this a a former emacs user now using VS Code.

You sure? I don't think VS Code is open-source (happy to be proven wrong) and that's an important part of Emacs.

Arguably not without a Lisp-based implementation and extension language.

That said, as a multi-decade Emacs (and Lisp) user, I do like VS Code and its JavaScript/TypeScript basis.

On the surface that appears to make no sense at all. Do you mind being a little more descriptive?

Org mode started as an Emacs only thing. Over time it has evolved into a much more capable thing than markdown format. One can do almost anything in the org mode format: literate programming with code blocks which can be executed (org babel), plain text spreadsheets, scheduling and summarizing scheduled events in an agenda view, time tracking, thesis writing (it has the necessary syntax for element one needs when writing a thesis, unlike normal markdown), inter-document linking, and probably many other things.

Some time ago people started slowly bringing things to VS Code. Org mode syntax has also been separated out as "orgdown". Now finally other editors are catching up to what has been possible in Emacs for a long time using org mode. They still got a long way to go, because integration of org mode things in Emacs is very far ahead, but at least work is being done.

Kinda difficult to explain as I dropped emacs due to issues with it on Windows despite enjoying org-mode.

The key thing is, org-mode treats data/text as a tree graph programmatically, you move through headings, and properties can be attached to those.

So a property for a deadline time can be added, and parsed, so you can get a list of todos/schedule showing the headline, and being able to jump to it.

Your api access targets these "nodes", so you are adding under "journal" rather than line 674 when using the template feature to quickly add entries.

emacs has ridiculous levels of customisation that let this data structure do basically what you want or need with some scripting.

It is an extension of Emacs outline mode. Outliners are hierarchical text formats. Org added many useful things to outline mode: keywords, tags, timestamps, footnotes, links, tables...

What makes Org unique is the presence of interpreters, including user-defined ones, that take Org files as input and do things on them.

A famous interpreter is org-agenda which harvests TODO keywords, timestamp deadlines, etc. from different Org files to generate a weekly agenda. Another one is Babel which runs embedded code in Org files, i.e. a literate programming system.

To sum up, Org is a plain text format analogous to Markdown, but with many more features and also interpreters that define certain operations on them.

It's markdown with Excel's ease of creating buttons (in org-mode's case ascii buttons) to execute arbitrary callbacks, e.g., cross referencing, summarizing, sorting, etc.

It primarily appeals to weekly status jockeys (project managers) whose rudimentary programming skills are just good enough to hack some emacs lisp. As someone who doesn't mind grepping an omnibus "notes.txt" file and thinks "literate programming" is a waste of time, I've never found a use for org-mode.

Org-mode is to Markdown what JavaScript is to HTML

Explaining org-mode at this point is almost akin to explaining emacs itself.

What is Emacs? Is it a text editor, for editing config files?

Is it an IDE for development? An email reader?

Org-Mode is a mode for Emacs that provides structure to documents in such a way that it allows documents to be used for many things- authorship (web sites, books, etc.) but its primary use for most of us who is it is to integrate into our todo management systems- allowing us to manage our tasks in a way that's integrated into our work. It provides flexible, queryable and programmable todo lists, document generation, literate programming, spreadsheets, living documents that can execute code, time tracking, and more.

It can also integrate with other tools, like org-roam, to provide backlinks and other features, or work with tools like mu4e to integrate email and todo lists in both directions.

In other words, it's a system for working with data/life.

Short version: an text file based note taker, an outline editor, a calendar and an operating system disguised as a text editor came together to make an incredibly handy personal information manager. The file format looks like markdown, but is not markdown (and existed before markdown).

My one-sentence take on it is: A personal Atlassian Confluence that doesn't suck.

There's more to it than that, but I think that that's the killer use case that gets most people hooked on it in the first place.