Org mode syntax example

This is an Org mode document.

Org mode is a easy-to-write plain text formatting syntax for authoring LaTeX documents, creating Web pages and much more!

Basics

Biggest heading

New chapter.

Bigger heading

New section.

Big heading

New sub-section.

Text breaks

A single newline has no effect. This line is part of the same paragraph.

But an empty line

demarcates paragraphs.

By entering two consecutive backslashes, you can force to break lines
without starting a new paragraph.

For an horizontal line, insert at least 5 dashes: this is some text above an horizontal rule

and some text below it.

Numbered headings

You can create numbered headings up to a certain level by setting an option:

#+OPTIONS: H:4

Text width

#

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked.

Lists

Org markup allows you to create bulleted or numbered lists. It allows any combination of the two list types.

Unordered lists

Itemized lists are marked with bullets. They are convenient to:

organize data, and
make the document
- prettier, and
- easier to read.

Create them with a minus or a plus sign.

Ordered lists

Enumerated lists are marked with numbers or letters:

First element
1. First sub-item
2. Last sub-item
Second element

You can have ordered lists with jumping numbers:

First
Second
Jump to 5th

Definition lists

Definition list: List containing definitions.
Term to define: Explication of the term.

Checkboxes

[ ] First item not checked
[-] Second item half done
- [ ] Another first
- [ ] Another second
[X] Third item checked

Miscellaneous effects

Include Org files

You can include another Org file and skip its title by using the :lines argument to #+INCLUDE:

#+INCLUDE: chapter1.org :lines "2-"

Inline HTML

You can include raw HTML in your Org documents and it will get kept as HTML when it’s exported. XXX

Text can be preformatted (in a fixed-width font).

It is especially useful for more advanced stuff like images or tables where you need more control of the HTML options than Org mode actually gives you.

Similarly, you can incorporate JS or do anything else you can do in a Web page (such as importing a CSS file).

You can create named classes (to get style control from your CSS) with:

#+begin_info
*Info example* \\
Did you know...
#+end_info

You can also add interactive elements to the HTML such as interactive R plots.

Finally, you can include an HTML file verbatim (during export) with:

#+INCLUDE: file.html html

Don’t edit the exported HTML file!

Inline LaTeX

You can also use raw LaTeX. XXX

Text can be preformatted (in a fixed-width font).

Centered text

This text is centered!

Code blocks

Line numbers

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.

(defun org-xor (a b)
  "Exclusive or."

If you use a +n switch, the numbering from the previous numbered snippet will be continued in the current one:

(if a (not b) b))

In literal examples, Org will interpret strings like (ref:name) as labels, and use them as targets for special hyperlinks like [[(name)]] (i.e., the reference 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.

You can also add a -r switch which removes the labels from the source code. With the -n switch, links to these references will be labeled by the line numbers from the code listing, otherwise links will use the labels with no parentheses. Here is an example:

(save-excursion                  ; (ref:sc)
  (goto-char (point-min)))       ; (ref:jump)

In line (sc), we remember the current position. Line (jump) jumps to point-min.

Output

The output from the execution of programs, scripts or commands can be inserted in the document itself, allowing you to work in the reproducible research mindset.

Text

A one-liner result:

date +"%Y-%m-%d"

2014-03-15

#

Graphics

Data to be charted:

Month	Degrees
1	3.8
2	4.1
3	6.3
4	9.0
5	11.9
6	15.1
7	17.1
8	17.4
9	15.7
10	11.8
11	7.7
12	4.8

Code:

plot(data, type="b", bty="l", col=c("#ABD249"), las=1, lwd=4)
grid(nx=NULL, ny=NULL, col=c("#E8E8E8"), lwd=1)
legend("bottom", legend=c("Degrees"), col=c("#ABD249"), pch=c(19))

The resulting chart:

R code block

library(ggplot2)
summary(cars)

Plot:

library(ggplot2)
qplot(speed, dist, data = cars) + geom_smooth()

Inline code

You can also evaluate code inline as follows: 1 + 1 is src_R{1 + 1}.

Notes at the footer

It is possible to define named footnotes[fn:myfootnote], or ones with automatic anchors[fn:2].

Formatting text

Text effects

Emphasize (italics), strongly (bold), and /very strongly/ (bold italics).

Markup elements could be nested: this is italic text which contains _underlined text_ within it, whereas this is normal underlined text.

Markup can span across multiple lines, by default no more than 2:

*This is not bold*

Other elements to use sparingly are:

monospaced typewriter font for inline code
monospaced typewriter font for verbatim text
~~deleted~~ text (vs. inserted text)
text with^superscript (for example: m/s^{2} gives m/s²)
text with_subscript (for example: H_{2}O gives H₂O)

Quotations

Use the quote block to typeset quoted text.

Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

The practitioner of literate programming can be regarded as an essayist, whose main concern is with exposition and excellence of style. Such an author, with thesaurus in hand, chooses the names of variables carefully and explains what each variable means. He or she strives for a program that is comprehensible because its concepts have been introduced in an order that is best for human understanding, using a mixture of formal and informal methods that reinforce each other.

— Donald Knuth

A short one:

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler – Albert Einstein

In a verse environment, there is an implicit line break at the end of each line, and indentation and vertical space are preserved:

Typically used for quoting passages of an email message:

Spaces

Using non-breaking spaces.

Insert the Unicode character 00A0 to add a non-breaking space. FIXME Or add/use an Org entity?

Mathematical formulae

You can embed LaTeX math formatting in Org mode files using the following syntax:

For inline math expressions, use $...$: $x^2$ or $1 < 2$.
It’s not advised to use the constructs $...$ (both for Org and MathJax).
Centered display equation (the Euler theorem):
\[ ∫_0^∞ e^{-x^2} dx = {{\sqrt{π}} \over {2}} \]

The use of \[...\] is for mathematical expressions which you want to make stand out, on their own lines.

LaTeX allows to inline such \[...\] constructs (quadratic formula): \[ \frac{-b ± \sqrt{b^2 - 4 a c}}{2a} \]

Double dollar signs (~$$~) should not be used.
The sinus theorem can then be written as the equation:
\begin{equation} \label{eqn:sinalpha} \frac{sin\alpha}{a}=\frac{sin\beta}{b} \end{equation}
See Equation the-first,
\begin{equation} n_i+1 = \frac{n_i (d-i) (e-1)}{(i+1)} \end{equation}

Only captioned equations are numbered
Other alternative: use \begin{equation*} or \begin{displaymath} (= the verbose form of the \[...\] construct). M-q does not fill those.

Differently from $…$ and $…$, an equation environment produces a numbered equation to which you can add a label and reference the equation by (label) name in other parts of the text. This is not possibly with unnumbered math environments ($$, …).

Special characters

Some of the widely used special characters (converted from text characters to their typographically correct entitites):

Accents

À Á

Punctuation

Dash: – —

Marks: ¡ ¿

Quotations: « »

Miscellaneous: ¶ ª

Commercial symbols

Property marks: © ®

Currency: ¢ € ¥ £

Greek characters

The Greek letters α, β, and γ are used to denote angles.

Math characters

Science: ± ÷

Arrows: → → ← ↔ ⇒ ⇐ ⇔

Function names: arccos cos

Signs and symbols: • *

Misc

Suits: ♣ ♠

Comments

It’s possible to add comments in the document.

Tables

You can create tables with an optional header row (by using an horizontal line of dashes to separate it from the rest of the table).

Header 1	Header 2	Header 3
Top left	Top middle
		Right
Bottom left	Bottom middle

Columns are automatically aligned:

Number-rich columns to the right, and
String-rich columns to the left.

If you want to override the automatic alignment, use <r>, <c> or <l>.

<r>	<c>	<l>
1	2	3
right	center	left
xxxxxxxxxxxx	xxxxxxxxxxxx	xxxxxxxxxxxx

Placement:

a	b
1	2

XXX Different from the following:

a	b
1	2

Align tables on the page

Here is a table on the left side:

a	b	c
1	2	3
4	5	6

The noindent just gets rid of the indentation of the first line of a paragraph which in this case is the table. The hfill adds infinite stretch after the table, so it pushes the table to the left.

Here is a centered table:

a	b	c
1	2	3
4	5	6

And here’s a table on the right side:

a	b	c
1	2	3
4	5	6

Here the hfill adds infinite stretch before the table, so it pushes the table to the right.

Images, video and audio

Images

You can insert image files of different formats to a page:

	HTML	PDF
gif	yes
jpeg	yes
png	yes
bmp	(depends on browser support)

In-line picture:

Direct link to just the Unicorn picture file.

XXX Available HTML image tags include:

align
border
bordercolor
hspace
vspace
width
height
title
alt

Place images side by side: XXX

Video

Videos can’t be added directly but you can add an image with a link to the video like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOUTUBE_VIDEO_ID_HERE

Sounds

Special text boxes

Simple box (“inline task”): XXX

#

Example

You can have example blocks.

Find entries with an exact phrase – To do this, put the phrase in quotes:

"hd ready"

You can create several other boxes (info, tip, note or warning) which all have a different default image.

Info

An info box is displayed as follows:

Tip

A tip box is displayed as follows:

Note

A note box is displayed as follows:

Warning

A warning box is displayed as follows:

Links

Anchors

Links generally point to an headline.

They can also point to a link anchor <<name-of-anchor-here>> in the current document or in another document.

Hyperlinks

This document is available in plain text, HTML and PDF.

The links are delimited by [square brackets].

Internal links

See:

chapter Links
section Anchors
target in the document

External links

See the Org mode Web site.

Mailto link

Org miscellaneous

Dates

Timestamps: [2014-01-16 Thu] and <2014-01-16 Thu>.

[#A] Buy GTD book

State “TODO” -> “DONE” [2014-01-16 Thu 09:52]

By default, DONE actions will be collapsed.

Note that I should probably implement that default behavior only for ARCHIVE‘d items.

[#A] Read GTD book

By default, all (active) entries will be expanded at page load, so that their contents is visible.

That can be changed by adding such a line (into your Org document):

#+HTML_HEAD: <script> var HS_STARTUP_FOLDED = true; </script>

[#B] Apply GTD methodoloy

This section will be collapsed when loading the page because the entry has the value hsCollapsed for the property :HTML_CONTAINER_CLASS:.

Powerful, no?

Some note

You can add tags to any entry, and hightlight all entries having some specific tag by clicking on the buttons made accessible to you in the “Dashboard”.

Weekly review

Now, you can even make your weekly review in the HTML export… Press the r key to start entering the “review mode” where all but one active entry are collapsed, so that you can really focus on one item at a time!

Org macros

{{{color(blue, This text is colored in blue.)}}}

{{{color(red, This other text is in red.)}}}

Find more macros on GitHub.

BigBlow addons

The string fixme (in upper case) gets replaced by a “Fix Me!” image:

FIXME Delete this…

Footnotes

[fn:myfootnote] Extensively used in large documents.

[fn:2] Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

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