[emacs-wiki-discuss] Re: Before I start on the learning curve, is planner mode for me?

[Paul Lussier]

( Sorry for a response to such an old posts.  I'm a little behind the
time on this list :)

Jim Ottaway <address@hidden> writes:

>>>>>> Geraldine  <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> The thing is, you see, I am new to emacs, I am a windows user, and
>> I've only done the tiniest bit of what you might call scripting. My
>> learning curve will be enormous.
>
> I don't think the learning curve from 'knowing nothing' to 'knowing
> enough to find Emacs useful' will be as steep as you might think.

First, Welcome to the wonderful world of emacs.  Prepare for a
lifetime of addiction :)

As Jim said, the learning curve for Emacs just to get to the point
where it's "useful" isn't that bad.  Becoming a master Emacs hacker,
that takes a few more weeks :)

As a point of reference, my journey with Emacs began in 1994.  Someone
told me I'd do better with emacs than with vi.  I fired up emacs,
typed in C-h t and began the tutorial.  I spent about 45 minutes doing
this, got bored, moved on, and never looked at the tutorial again.
For the next 10 years or so I used Emacs as nothing more than a basic
text editor.  My .emacs file was composed of snippets begged,
borrowed, or stolen from others.  I had no idea what they did or meant
other than they tweaked some knob or tuned something just enough to
make my life a little easier.  I learned a few things along the way,
but was mostly ignorant of how to do things in emacs other than
editing text.

One day, about 2 years ago now (Holy Cow!  Sacha, has it been *that*
long? :) I stumbled upon this thing called emacs-wiki and
planner-mode.  I fired off an e-mail to the maintainer asking a couple
of questions.  Someone named Sacha answered back and had such
enthusiasm for my e-mail and my questions that i immediately joined
the list and started playing with planner and emacs-wiki.

My life now revolves around planner and emacs.  A few of the things I
do with emacs now, that used to be scattered around in several
different locations are:

 - e-mail
 - daily planning (I never actually did this before :)
 - Time tracking (I never actually did this before either!)
 - Documentation (used to be either text docs in various places, or html
                  now it's muse docs in one place)

 - Finances      (used to use GnuCash, now I use ledger, which has an emacs
                  mode)
 - Web browsing  (occasional use for stuff which is mostly text)
 - URL bookmarking (johnsu01 wrote a great emacs interface to del.icio.us)
                   (unfortunately, it seems to hate me, and has been broken
                    (only for me!) for far too long :(
 - IRC           (yes, I chat on IRC in emacs!)
 - database access (emacs has a great interface to postgres and MySql, etc.)
 - shell command line
 - calendar/appointments
 - address book
 - misc. notes

And the amazing thing is, all of these activities are either already
an integral part of planner, or can easily be linked to from my
planner pages!

So, to answer your questions, "yes, you can do all that with emacs!" :)

> Emacs is so large, that one "picks things up as one goes along" forever!

And once you start picking things up, you rapidly become addicted to
it :) I work with a bunch of MIT grads at a small start-up in
Cambridge, MA.  Someone here, whom I consider way smarter than I am,
recently commented on "how he know a lot about emacs, and there's
nothing he can't do with it!"  Ironically, all the stuff this person
was talking about, I *just* learned within the past 2 years and all as
a result of starting to use planner :)

>> And will planner mode allow me to:
>> associate todo's with "projects", ala GTD, with links in both directions
>> give contexts, tags or labels to the todo's and/or the projects
>> date the todo's as necessary

I recently saw a great response to someone asking for a "wishlist" of
things to be added to planner:

  "This is Emacs.  There's no wish.  Only how."

Yes, you can do that with emacs :)

So, don't be afraid of the water, we've all learned to swim, some
faster, some slower than others.  Some of us use water wings, others
do the backstroke.  Figure out what your style is, ask for help, and
we'll help you get settled :)

-- 

Seeya,
Paul