Org-Mode: Emacs' Swiss Army Knife

This code does not work with the actual master branch of the git repository. The last commit I have tested with is deef19a7864b99ec2520ef1cdacaef21ce3809cc. I'll check the diffs and why it is broken.

I am doing experiments on the usage of org-babel for research work. The idea is to follow the paradigm of literate programming and use an org-mode file for the documentation and programming. An application for this approach could be the usage of reproducible research done with R.¹

Therefore I use several parts of org-babel:

1. I use the source code blocks to do the computation, analysis and producing of graphics.
2. I use the publishing capabilities of org-mode for producing a HTML file which show the analysis in more detail.
3. I use the tangle part of org-mode to produce the resulting LaTeX documens like a working paper (or report) and slides for a presentation.

In doing this I was wondering whether it is possible to tangle an org-mode file out of org-mode:

#+begin_src org :tangle foo.org
  ,#+TITLE: Org-Mode document
  
  ,* My first heading
  ,* My second heading
  ,** TODO Part to be done
  ,** DONE Part already done 

In a first step this did not work because org-mode is not a out-of-the box language of org-babel. After consulting the mailing list Eric Schulte came up with a short and well working solution:

;;;; tangle org-mode source code blocks
;;;;
;;;; Code by Eric Schulte <schulte.eric@gmail.com>
;;;; via gmane.emacs.orgmode
;;;; Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.orgmode
;;;; Subject: Re: Re: [org-babel] How to tangle "org-mode" files?
;;;; Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:52:21 -0600
;;;; Message-ID: <87ljca6zbu.fsf@gmail.com>
;;;;

(add-to-list 'org-babel-tangle-langs '("org" "org" nil t))
(org-babel-add-interpreter "org")

(defun org-babel-expand-body:org (body params &optional processed-params)
  (with-temp-buffer
    (insert body)
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (while (re-search-forward "^," nil t)
      (replace-match ""))
    (buffer-string)))

This only works in those versions that have the "expand-body" facility for the org-babel languages. I am not sure when this came into the distributed tar ball because I normally use the development version via the git repository.

From John Wiegley's mailing list post (March 18, 2010), same text can be found at Worg.

I have the following snippet in my .emacs file, which I find very useful. Basically what it does is that if I don't touch my Emacs for 5 minutes, it displays the current agenda. This keeps my tasks "always in mind" whenever I come back to Emacs after doing something else, whereas before I had a tendency to forget that it was there.

John Wiegley: Displaying your Org agenda after idle time

(defun jump-to-org-agenda ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((buf (get-buffer "*Org Agenda*"))
        wind)
    (if buf
        (if (setq wind (get-buffer-window buf))
            (select-window wind)
          (if (called-interactively-p)
              (progn
                (select-window (display-buffer buf t t))
                (org-fit-window-to-buffer)
                ;; (org-agenda-redo)
                )
            (with-selected-window (display-buffer buf)
              (org-fit-window-to-buffer)
              ;; (org-agenda-redo)
              )))
      (call-interactively 'org-agenda-list)))
  ;;(let ((buf (get-buffer "*Calendar*")))
  ;;  (unless (get-buffer-window buf)
  ;;    (org-agenda-goto-calendar)))
  )

(run-with-idle-timer 300 t 'jump-to-org-agenda)

This code does not work with the actual master branch of the git repository. The last commit I have tested with is deef19a7864b99ec2520ef1cdacaef21ce3809cc. I'll check the diffs and why it is broken.

David Maus wrote an interesting tool to produce an atom feed for an org-mode file. I use this for my blog's atom feed.

The idea is to produce the sitemap by Org-mode and then read it into another org file which has the right options and style sheet links:

Here is my org-publish-project-alist:

(setq org-publish-project-alist
      ;; .... 
      '("dbrunner-org"
        :base-directory dbrunner-base-dir
        :base-extension "org"
        :publishing-directory my-pub-dir
        :recursive t
        :publishing-function 'org-publish-org-to-html 
        :headline-levels 4  ;; just default
        :auto-preamble t
        :auto-index t
        :index-filename "sitemap0.org"
        :exclude "sitemap0.org"
        :index-title "Übersicht"
        :index-style 'tree)
      ;; .... 
      )

As you noted I use the file sitemap0.org as the output for the automatic index generation. In the publishing process the sitemap is written to sitemap0.org and consists for example of the following content:

#+TITLE: Übersicht

  + Arbeit
  + Daniels Weblog
  + Über mich...
  + Dossiers
  + I would call it English
  + Forschung
  + Freizeit
  + Heimseite von Daniel Brunner
  + it
    + Computer 
    + Org-Mode: Emacs' Swiss Army Knife
  + Kontakt/Impressum
  + Huch, diese Seite gibt es nicht (mehr)
  + Übersicht
  + Themen, die mich beschäftigen 

As you can see: Without links to the style sheet or including of any other option files. But this file is not transfered to the publication directory because I have put it in the :exclude section. Instead I use a seperate file sitemap.org which has the following content:

 #+TITLE: Übersicht
 #+SETUPFILE: ../templates/level-0.org
 #+INCLUDE: ../templates/level-0.org
 #+INCLUDE: sitemap0.org

In the publishing process this file will include the sitemap0.org content and present with the right style sheet, inclusion of other option files etc.

I wanted to have a navigation bar at the top of each page. For this purpose I created a file templates/level-0.org:

 #+BEGIN_HTML
 <div class="menu">
  { <a href="index.html">Home</a> | 
    <a href="cv.html">&Uuml;ber mich</a> |
    <a href="blog.html">Blog</a> | 
    <a href="forschung.html">Forschung</a> |
    <a href="themen.html">Themen</a> |
    <a href="dossiers.html">Texte/Dossiers</a> |
    <a href="sitemap.html">Index</a> |
    <a href="kontakt.html">Kontakt/Impressum</a> 
  }
 </div>
 #+END_HTML

And then each file at the top level (level-0) (for example org/cv.org) starts with

 #+TITLE: Über mich...
 # ... other options ... 
 #+SETUPFILE: ../templates/level-0.org
 #+INCLUDE: ../templates/level-0.org

Now every file includes the level-0.org file and produces a div section with the navigation bar. If you are going to use more than one level (like this web site) you should as mentioned in the tutorial different files for the levels. I made a templates/level-1-themen.org file which adds another submenu container to the navigation bar:

 #+BEGIN_HTML
 <div class="menu">
  { <a href="index.html">Home</a> | 
    <a href="cv.html">&Uuml;ber mich</a> |
    <a href="blog.html">Blog</a> | 
    <a href="forschung.html">Forschung</a> |
    <a href="themen.html">Themen</a> |
    <a href="dossiers.html">Texte/Dossiers</a> |
    <a href="sitemap.html">Index</a> |
    <a href="kontakt.html">Kontakt/Impressum</a> 
  }
 </div>
 <div class="submenu">
  { <a href="../arbeit.html">Arbeit</a> | 
    <a href="index.html">Computer</a> |
    <a href="../freizeit.html">Freizeit</a> 
  }
 </div>
 #+END_HTML