I use org-use-speed-commands all the time when navigating and performing actions on org headlines, but I think I have found a friction point, something that just feels a little off.

When the point is on * and then you press the key t, it calls org-todo via org-self-insert-command. Fast, but the feel is off, the point stays on the stars, so I have to move right before I can type the headline.

Select a region in a folded Org buffer, press M-w, and you get more than you bargained for: the kill ring receives the hidden text as well. Folding is only a display trick - the text is still in the buffer, and kill-ring-save dutifully copies every character between the region boundaries, ellipsis and all. Paste that into an email or a chat and the hidden notes come along for the ride.

The fix, in my config, is a prefix argument: C-u M-w copies only the visible text of the region, leaving everything folded or hidden behind. Plain M-w is unchanged.

Here is just a quick one, I was working with an org-mode table for tracking work weeks and needed to auto-populate a Date column where each row increments by exactly one week. The table structure looked like this:

Navigating through lengthy org files can sometimes feel cumbersome. To address this I have tweaked org-goto to be a little more usable through the minibuffer completion system to jump to any org heading. I have been aware of the org-goto command for a while now, which technically, allows for the efficient navigation through an org file. Every now and then I give it a go, but it just feels clunky and some of the keybindings don't quite feel intuitively Emacs for some reason. Now my org files are getting more elaborate, I would like a better way to navigate and especially through the hierarchy of headings. What about org-imenu-depth I hear you say! Well as far as I can tell, this allows stepping through to a defined subheading level but while going through multiple menu/hierarchical selection steps. For efficiency, I would like a way to flatten the subheadings for a one-shot completion selection method. This is where org-goto can actually be adapted to satisfy this need, and I think leverages the org refile menu system.

As someone who enjoys using Emacs for almost everything, I recently began exploring an alternative Emacs-native method for publishing static websites. Currently, I use [ox-hugo](https://github.com/kaushalmodi/ox-hugo) to build a static site from a single Org file, and it works beautifully for exporting content to Hugo-compatible Markdown. However, I wanted to create a backup web generation system entirely within Emacs that doesn't rely on external tools like Hugo and might fit into my overarching Emacs Enhancements project concept. My Emacs Enhancements project focuses on replacing significant external packages that I commonly use with a collection of simple Elisp functions and built-in functionality. This approach is ideal for situations where I run Emacs on an air-gapped system or even on Windows, where I have found package management to be somewhat unreliable. You can check out my progress on [GitHub](https://github.com/captainflasmr/Emacs-enhanced).

This post is more of a note to myself, something I can store in my single emacs blog org file, so if I forget again, I can quickly search. I keep forgetting the keybinding to shrink and expand an org table. I often define tables to have a narrower width than content using the <num> concept in the top line of the table, but when I want to expand, I just can't remember the keybinding. A search in *help* for org-table-shrink and org-table-expand reveals nothing!

In this post, I'll walk you through how I use an Org Babel block to generate a dynamic Org table based on Org headings. This approach is handy for anyone who wishes to programmatically extract information from an Org file (such as TODO states, tags, and content) and automatically format it as a neatly structured Org table. You can then export this table to various formats — like HTML, Markdown, or LaTeX — with built-in Org mode support.

A crucial aspect of maintaining organized and up-to-date notes is the use of Org Capture templates. I have currently always hard-coded/set the current year in my org capture templates for use when exporting/constructing my web pages and as a tag for some filtering / web index generation. Of course the main disadvantage of this is that I have to remember to update the year each year, of which I often fail miserably. ☹️

I am of course using org mode for organizing my tasks, notes and other paraphernalia.

More improvements to my weight loss table, this time I have added the following:

I'm currently in the process of learning how to create graphical plots from org tables using gnuplot. I've noticed that it's generally more straightforward to extract x-axis data from an org table column with incrementing numbers, as opposed to relying on gnuplot to potentially sort out data from an existing column (which may not be plot-friendly)

Now I have a weight loss org table defined and therefore an easy way to track the total amount of weight loss each week I had an idea for an improvement with some form of a satisfying graphical representation.

For a while now I have been using org tables to represent and calculate pieces of data, obviating the need to open up a normal spreadsheet.

I have decided to switch my linux file manager from Dolphin to Thunar and this means transferring the context sensitive menus I have set up through KDE Plasma to using Thunar's custom actions.

Well as always a little more time with emacs a little feedback and then finding more about org I have now figured out (I think) how I can better sort tags in an org file. In my previous post:

I use a package called org-rainbow-tags which adds random colours to org tags to provide a consistent colour between identical tags. This helps to identify common tags throughout the file but has the side effect of emphasising the lack of my coherent tag ordering.

I have just started the process of reducing the number of org files I maintain for my web site. I now have a greater understanding of how Hugo handles these files and I think can both simplify and make them more flexible.

This post isn't strictly about what can be achieved within the emacs ecosystem but what can be achieved outside it while still binding to the workflow principles of org mode.

Steps to locally download emacs packages for offline installation.