As a vim user, I am not an expert on org-mode. But on the zettlekasten forums, I read an interesting criticism even of Emacs org-mode as forcing a sort of lock-in
"[Apps like Roam and Notion] force you into a single-app interface with your data. Interestingly, even though it's a plain-text format, org-mode sort of fails here as well because Emacs is the only way to access most of the functionality of an org-formatted file."
Hey, filestash looks amazing. I mean, the org mode client alone looks better than most of the other versions I have tried. Admittedly I don't use Emacs. I have just been looking around for a client for orgzly so I can use it on desktop.
There is also Emacs via Termux on Android (it's really not so bad if you enable modifier keys, like volume up for Meta, volume down for Control). This, in addition to Syncthing to sync files across devices, makes for a nice Org workflow.
Do they support org-babel? Agenda? Org-roam or org-rifle?
Org-mode is not just a markup-language. The actual value comes from all the tools and business-logic working ontop of the markup. And replicating this quite hard in the short time org-modes fame has spreaded yet.
I mean, they have a point. I've adopted Emacs mainly because of org-mode, and things you can achieve with org-mode and Emacs are incredible.
That said, it's just plaintext in regular files on your disk. It can be as complex as you wish. If you use a reasonable subset of org-mode, you can parse it (there are lots of libraries in different programming languages), and then implement any tools you wish :) Not familiar with vim plugins for org-mode specifically, but I've heard Atom support is okay?
As an example: on Android I'm using orgzly [0] to work with my org-mode files. It shares absolutely no code with Emacs, yet it supports 90% of what I need from org-mode.
Does their point have any substance? As other people have mentioned downthread, org files are plain text and the functionality of org mode does not rely on information stored in any other database.
Looking at the comment that raises the objection [0], they advocate for using plain text files and they use a directory of markdown files. If that is the desire, they can use a directory of org files (plaintext like markdown, just different syntax for / italics / and =verbatim= and such.
Hopefully they're not using any external program to search through those markdown and org files though, else they get forced into an interface to interact with their files.
One of org-mode's advantages is a broad export support, into everything from even-more-simplified plain text to rich HTML, to everything supported by pandoc.
Yep, in that sense it's really not fair at all to compare it against traditional services that lock you in like Evernote/Notion/Roam.
I guess I can sympathise in the sense that I really wish org-mode was more widespread outside of Emacs. It feels like a real barrier for adoption (if you're trying to get into semantic org-mode features, not just merely using it for syntax). But I don't see what we can do about it for now.
I think rather than trying to get org mode outside of emacs, you want to change the mechanics of entering emacs. In my head this looks like a subset of emacs (in the same way you can imagine notepad a subset of word, or contenteditable a subset of codemirror). If there were an emacs-lite application that just surfaced simple org mode functionality and bindings like moving the cursor or paging removed behind a settings wall, I think adoption of emacs would rise due to the lower barrier of entry.
But I think there is something there. I use org-mode, but even though it is "just" text files, there is no specification to implement against, all the cool stuff Emacs can do with org-mode files.
Plaintext has no worth by itself. The pwoer comes from what you use the plaintext for. Org-mode has many tools and functionality build around that plaintext which must be replicated outside of emacs when you wanna move away.
I mean ok, sure, if all you do is maintaining a plaintext-file with a specific syntax and doing everyting else in your head, then the plaintext is good enough, but then you don't need org-mode at all. Then you would be back at the papertrail.
A good portion of org-mode's benefits come from the way it is integrated into various Emacs features, up to and including the fact that Emacs is completely reprogrammable. You can certainly replicate some aspects of that outside Emacs (and obviously people have done so), but in order to fully replicate that elsewhere, you'd more or less need to reimplement Emacs, or something on a similar scale.
I think you also have the problem that Emacs' org-mode is effectively the de facto standard with no formal spec, and so every other implementation implements its own preferred subset of that "standard" based on what the author(s) found important.
(Edit: I could be wrong about more recent non-emacs org-mode implementations. I haven't done a thorough survey recently.)
Every solution is a lock-in. The only way to be free is to do not note anything at all. But then you are locked into the liberty of nothingness.
Note-managment on surface is simple, but in the long run in becomes quite complex. At the end it's not all about data, but also how you access them, how the system handles them for you, how you get them presented, etc. There is low-level stuff like syntax of markup languages, and also high level stuff like tooling for displaying and automation of your data. Languages like org-mode or markdown have quite the high level of syntax, with simple things like text-formating, more advances stuff like tables, links, internal links, and high end stuff like codeblocks, metadata-handling.
And then you have tools like org-agenda or org-babel who work on those features (not sure if markdown has those too), and you build your workflows and life around using those tools, and at some point you are so tangled into an complex environment, that any fundamental change would cripple your abilities you have build over years significantly. And then you are locked-in, even if your data are free and open.
At the end, your set of tools, the workflows you have build with them, the experience you have aquired for specific domains and the habits you developed over the years are your cage that prevent you from moving on to different systems.
Org-mode has many such features, tools and habits you imprison you. There is org-agenda, org-babel, internal links, headline-tags, todo-tags(?), but also the outline itself. Those are the usual popular tools and features, and they are not much used in other systems, and hard to convert when you aim to move out.
I used to be a Org-mode evil user and still have my ~/.deft accessible as a VimWiki directory. They are all just plain text and accessible from vim or emacs or any other plain text editor so I do not see any lock in.
While VimWiki is great with backlinks and would have better adoption with a rename to the current hotness: VimRoam or VimWhateverSaasNotetaker, linking is trumped by Ripgrep/Fzf/Ag/Ack functionality.
I'm using Roam for now with the assumption that a json dump would be straightforwardly convertible to a filesystem of .md or .org files. These services usually have full-text search as well (Roam does).
True, to use the full functionality of org-mode, you do need Emacs. As long as one uses a note-taking system that uses plain text, they are good. Saying that, org-mode has a specific syntax that all org files adhere to, so that you can re-format the files to any other format whenever you want (or use the in-built export options in Emacs/Org-mode to convert to Markdown/PDF/etc).
>> Emacs is the only way to access most of the functionality of an org-formatted file
> is wrong.
Depends on how you define "most of the functionality".
Org-mode is not just the syntax of org-files alone. It's mostly the tools generating and using the content from org-files.
This is, in fact, the approach the poster I link advocates for. So I am most interested in note-taking apps where you can swap the editing UX seamlessly, and not be locked into a particularly non-portable format.
'"So the question is: How important has it become for anyone to really have plain text file system based zettels? Has it ever been a real limitation to store zettels in a richer format in a more proprietary store like Evernote?"
My answers would be "very important" and a resounding "yes". The value of simply formatted plain-text is not in future-proofing data — pretty much any program can export my data in some reasonable format these days. The real benefit is that, because there is no difference between the internal and external representation of plain-text data, I am free to use whatever program is most suitable for my needs at the moment. I add new zettels to my zettelkasten mostly through The Archive, but I also have my zettelkasten added as a folder in FS Notes (where I keep my short-lived project-specific notes as well as my non-zettel reference notes) and in iA Writer (where I do my long-form composing). If I'm putting a table into a file, I'll open it up in Vim and use table mode. Sometimes I'll take live notes in org-mode, and I'll want to look something up so I'll pull up my archive in deft. Tweaks to the ZK can be done directly in any of these programs with no context switching. I find it immensely valuable to have my archive available directly in these programs. And no waiting for app authors to pretty please implement some feature.
I've found tremendous benefit from just deciding to use a directory of markdown files so I can stop wasting energy finding the "perfect" solution. For my usage, the union of functionality of the gaggle of apps that operate on a folder of markdown files is more than enough.'
"[Apps like Roam and Notion] force you into a single-app interface with your data. Interestingly, even though it's a plain-text format, org-mode sort of fails here as well because Emacs is the only way to access most of the functionality of an org-formatted file."
-galen in https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/404/moving-on
Could someone more familiar with org-mode comment on this?