Org-mode is an editing mode in the text editor

Text editor

A text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....

 Emacs

Emacs

Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...

 which supports the editing of plain text

Plain text

In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....

 hierarchical documents. It has specific support for a number of different use cases, such as writing to-do lists, project planning, and writing web pages. For example, to-do items can optionally be given priorities and deadlines, subdivided into sub-to-dos or checklists, and given tags and properties. An agenda for the items to be done this week can then be automatically generated by org-mode.

Most aspects of org-mode's behaviour are customisable, in the standard Emacs ways (that is, either by setting variables directly, or by using the more user-friendly Customize interface).

Since Emacs version 22, org-mode has been part of Emacs - although it is also released separately, and newer versions of org-mode than the ones shipped with Emacs are often available.

Integration

Org-mode can integrate with

• Emacs' BBDB to link to contact details for people
• Web browsers such as Firefox, to link to URLs
• Capture mode to quickly note down ideas, thoughts or links, and then file them away, edit them or categorise them later
• Emacs email and news clients such as Gnus
  Gnus
  Gnus is a message reader running under GNU Emacs and XEmacs. It supports reading and composing both news and e-mail.Gnus blurs the distinction between news and e-mail, treating them both as "articles" that come from different sources. News articles are kept separate by group, and e-mail can be...
  
  , VM and Wanderlust, to link to emails or newsgroup messages
• Mobile phone through MobileOrg for
  • iPhone
    IPhone
    The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
    
    /iPod Touch
    IPod Touch
    The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
    
     http://mobileorg.ncogni.to/ and
  • Android-based devices http://wiki.github.com/matburt/mobileorg-android/
• Various programming languages can be executed inside org documents (org-babel)

It can also be used to edit outlines in non-.org files.

(Some of the integrations above require free third-party org-mode extensions, which are all free software.)

Distributed issue tracking

Org-mode can be used as a distributed issue tracker

Bug tracking system

A bug tracking system is a software application that is designed to help quality assurance and programmers keep track of reported software bugs in their work. It may be regarded as a type of issue tracking system....

, by storing .org files in a distributed revision control

Distributed revision control

A distributed revision control system , distributed version control or decentralized version control keeps track of software revisions and allows many developers to work on a given project without necessarily being connected to a common network.-Distributed vs...

system. Developers of the org-babel extension to org-mode use org-mode in this way to track bugs and feature requests.

External links

• Org-mode website
• List of Org-mode text and video tutorials on the Org-mode wiki, Worg