Project management all in plain text
Org-Mode’s motto is, “Your Life in Plain Text”, and in LXF241 we took a look at how you could use Org-Mode to author and publish a writing project, such as that Linux Format article itself (sort of like getting an OS to finally compile itself?). We also touched on Org-Mode’s ability to manage tasks, i.e. items that are either to-do or done. In this article we’ll look at Org-Mode’s more sophisticated project-management functions.
Org-Mode tasks
Before proceeding, let’s briefly review tasks at a basic level. Org-Mode considers any line starting with one or more asterisks (followed by a single space) to be a *headline*. Headlines, among other things, can be assigned a status and thereby made into a task.
By default, you can rotate a headline through the following three states: blank (no status, it’s just a headline); *TODO* (a task, but not yet completed); and *DONE*. The keybinding Shift-Left and Shift-Right cycle through this order backwards and forwards, respectively; in addition the command *org-todo* will cycle forward only.
For the purpose of this article, when we refer to a “task” it implies that it’s an Org-Mode headline with an assigned status. We’ll also cite the formal Org-Mode commands in the article, but we’ll provide a summary of them with their associated keyboard shortcuts at the end. This alone gives you the ability to assemble functional
