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# Org-roam: Presentation, Demonstration, and What's on the Horizon
Leo Vivier
-[[!template id=vid src="https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--16-org-roam-presentation-demonstration-and-whats-on-the-horizon--leo-vivier.webm"]]
+[[!template id=vid src="https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--16-org-roam-presentation-demonstration-and-whats-on-the-horizon--leo-vivier.webm" subtitles="/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--16-org-roam-presentation-demonstration-and-whats-on-the-horizon--leo-vivier.vtt"]]
[Download .webm video, 720p, 263MB](https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--16-org-roam-presentation-demonstration-and-whats-on-the-horizon--leo-vivier.webm)
+[View transcript](#transcript)
Org-roam is a Roam replica built on top of the all-powerful Org-mode.
@@ -96,3 +97,304 @@ has some notes about exporting from Org Roam to regular Org
<https://karl-voit.at/2020/07/22/org-super-links/>.
- "The point is to make consistency of your notes."
- YouTube channel: <https://www.youtube.com/user/Zaeph>.
+
+
+<!-- transcript: 2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--16-org-roam-presentation-demonstration-and-whats-on-the-horizon--leo-vivier.vtt -->
+
+<a name="transcript"></a>
+# Transcript
+
+Leo Vivier: I'm hoping to keep this talk in 15 minutes. I'll take five
+minutes of questions at the end. So, hello again! I suppose you're
+starting to get pretty familiar with me and my start(?) right now.
+We're getting into the nitty gritty. We started today, I told you
+about how I'd ventured from being a user to being a maintainer, and
+right now I'm going to get the chance to actually tell you more about
+the project that I'm maintaining, which is called org-roam. So even if
+I... It would have had a better impact if I didn't scroll the page,
+but you know, sadly, I'm out of tea, it's getting late in Europe and
+I'm starting to get tired.
+
+What I'm gonna do during this talk is just to do, really, a survey for
+people who do not know what org-roam is about. Some of you might have,
+whilst browsing Reddit, found a topic about org-roam and thought to
+yourself, "Oh, that looks interesting, but you know, I have my own
+workflow and I kinda don't need to change anything about it. I'm
+completely fine using my very very large file. Or I'm completely fine
+having my database of notes which I've been accruing for 10, 20, 30
+years or so." What I want to do during this talk is both to present to
+you what org-roam is about, if you are in this group of people who do
+not know what org-roam is about but would like to know more, but also
+for people who have close to no experience with Emacs and Org Mode and
+who have just found their way. They wanted to find the system to write
+their notes, basically, and they discovered this little tool which is
+called org-roam, and they'd like to know more about this.
+
+I've got 13 minutes to convince you to use org-roam. If we go in a
+very broad strokes, what is org-roam? org-roam is a way for you to
+manage backlinks inside Org Mode. The keyword in what I've just said
+is links. Now there is a principle behind org-roam which is called the
+Zettelkasten method, which you can see written right there. It's a
+German word which means a slip box. If you remember in old libraries,
+you had--actually, I believe if I scroll, I should have an example of
+this. Yes. So this is a slip box. Basically, in all libraries, you
+used to have all the references to the books that the library used to
+have inside those boxes. They're called slip boxes because you can
+insert stuff into the boxes and you can remove stuff out of the boxes.
+Now if I try to summarize as simply as I may what the Zettelkasten
+method is about, it's about having a way to work with your notes which
+considers elements of knowledge as atoms, as something that is
+individual, like a single file. You consider that in order to build
+knowledge, you have to combine atoms together, so that when you have
+one atom, another atom, if you link them together, you have a complex
+thought or a complex molecule. Don't quote me on the chemistry, by the
+way. I shall remind you I'm an English major I have no idea what I'm
+talking about.
+
+How does it work as far as a note-taking system is concerned? To do
+so, I'm just going to switch really quickly to my Emacs, if I may. So
+I'm just going to screenshare onto my Emacs. Just give me a second to
+get the windows all right. Okay, it's loading up. Oh no, I think
+Firefox has crashed again. Okay, so you're gonna have to give me a
+second. I need to figure this out. Okay. So everything is frozen right
+now. Just to tell you, so you're gonna have to deal with my lovely
+voice. Amin, can you confirm that if I switch to a new (tty?), you can
+still hear me? So can you still hear me now? Okay. So I'm gonna have
+probably to kill firefox and log in again. I'm sorry. It's gonna cost
+us two minutes, but I'm gonna try to be as fast as I can. Okay (Amin:
+Okay. No problem, thanks. All right. I guess no event is a good one
+without one or two technical difficulties. I guess this is our share
+of technical difficulties this year. No problem.) Leo: All right.
+Guess who's back? It's not Britney. It's just me, sadly, so you're
+gonna have to make do with me. (Amin: Welcome back.) Leo: Well, thank
+you. I'm just gonna turn back on the camera, if I may. All righty. I'm
+going to make myself a presenter. I'm going to share my screen with
+you. So, if my calculations are correct, you should be able to see my
+monitor right now. (Amin: Yep, but not your webcam feed.) Not my
+webcam feed. Okay. So I'm going to stop it. Sorry for the little
+delay, folks. You know, it's... The show must go on. Can you see it
+now? (Amin: Not yet.) Leo: Still not? Damn it. Can I stop it? Okay, so
+I'm gonna... (Amin: yeah, maybe try like sharing a webcam first.) Leo:
+All right, I'm back now. So I'm going to share my webcam first. (Amin:
+Okay.) Leo: All righty. So can you confirm whenever you've got my
+webcam working? (Amin: Let's see. I don't see it yet, unfortunately.)
+Leo: Is it loading up? (Amin: yeah, it's coming up. Yep, I can see
+it.) Leo: Awesome. All right. Okay, we're back on track. I've got
+still eight minutes left to do, so I might have to have a couple of
+minutes to my talk, if you don't mind and shave off some questions.
+(Amin: Okay, do you want to share your screen?) Leo: Okay, yeah, I'm
+on my way to. All right. So please forget whatever, whichever
+technical difficulties we might have had for the last three, four
+minutes, but we're back on track now.
+
+So org-roam: what is it and how does it work? I was telling you all
+about atoms and I was telling you about links, but how does it work
+concretely? Right now what you're seeing on your screens is a slip
+box, which is what we... the fancy word that we use to designate your
+folder where all your notes are going to be living. So you have here
+(and I hope you can see my cursor; yes you can)... So we have a file
+which is called index.org and the good thing is, as you might have
+garnered by the fact that it finishes by .org is that it is just an
+Org Mode file. I can create a heading. I can create another heading.
+everything works as you would expect it to. It is completely... It's
+just an Org Mode file at the end of the day. Now, what can we do with
+this? I've told you about links. You do know that Org Mode has links.
+What we're going to do is that we're going to create a new file. We're
+going to go back to our directory. What I'm going to do is that we
+have a special command... Actually, let me just show you my command.
+It might help you a little bit see what I'm doing. Wait, which is the
+buffer... Uh... log mode? Yes. exlog. So now on the right side of the
+monitor, you'll be able to see the command that I'm using. If you
+don't mind, in order to have as much realistic as possible, I'm going
+to make it a little bit shorter. Smaller, I should say. Is it not too
+small? Yeah, I believe it's good.
+
+So what I'm going to do is I'm going to run a command in org-roam
+which allows me to create a new note. I'm going to use my keybinding,
+which is not this one, definitely, and I'm going to create a new file
+which is, in a great tradition of examples in programming, I'm going
+to call "foo." Right. So at the bottom--in the bottom buffer, I
+should say, you are seeing the file "foo," which is, as you can see
+here, a capture buffer just like you would have in Org Mode. Now what
+I'm going to do is that I'm going to validate this file and now you
+see that we are in the file "foo." The good thing is that I can start
+writing without having to worry about anything else. I was going to
+say that I'm showing off about my typing skills, but I did make
+mistakes, so well, nobody's perfect, right? So now we do have this
+"foo" file. We're going to go back to the index. Let's go back to the directory.
+We're going to refresh the file. As you can see, we have a file which
+is called "foo," and we have the index. So now what I'm going to do is
+that I'm going to insert a link to this file. So we're going to run
+another org-roam command which you can see here, org-roam-insert, and
+I'm going to insert a link to the file "foo." As you can see, it has
+now appeared. Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to save the file,
+and now I'm going to show you the little thing I told you about--
+backlinks--before. I'm afraid I'm going to have to hide the commands
+for now, but don't worry they'll be back. I'm going to show you the
+side buffer. It is the buffer that you see on the right side of your
+screen. Right now, it's telling you that index does not have any
+backlinks, which is normal. But if we follow the link "foo," now you
+see something different on the right side. As you can see on the left
+side, we're back inside the file "foo," but on the right side, we have
+something showing up: one backlink in the file "index." And under the
+heading, you have the file-- sorry, the link "foo." You can just open
+the link, and you will be brought exactly where it is. So that was one
+thing.
+
+Now just to make sure that you've understood properly, I'm going to go
+back to the index. I'm going to create a second file. Now I'm going to
+use a command that is slightly different. Let me just show you the
+commands on the right. I'm going to run the command org-roam-insert
+and I'm going to enter a file which is called "bar." Again, at the
+bottom, you can see that I have a new file "bar." I'm going to
+validate this file. I'm going to save index.org. Now, if we go in bar,
+and if I show you the links on the side, you can see that exactly the
+same, we have a link. Now just to make the pictures complete, inside
+the file "bar," I'm going to insert a link to "foo." I'm going to
+save. I'm going to go to the file "foo." Now on the right side, you
+can see that we have two backlinks. Now you're gonna tell me, yeah,
+thank you, Leo, but what's the point? Well the thing is it might
+sound... it might seem very simple, what I've just shown you, but
+programmatically, it's a little hard to do. We have to look into your
+files to make sure that every time you link your file somewhere else,
+we need to track everything down.
+
+Now as simple as org-roam might be looking to you, thee thing is what
+we try to do with org-roam is to make sure that your collection of
+notes remains consistent whatever we do. An example, for instance,
+right now I've told you about a file named "foo" and the file named
+"bar." Let's say that for whatever reason, you decide to rename your
+file "foo" to something very original. Let's just say "bar." So we
+actually have a way in Emacs--in org-roam, I should say--when you
+modify the title at the top of the file... So we get "foo..." I've
+modified it with "baz." You can see at the bottom that right now we
+haven't saved and we are still in the file "foo.org." I'm going to
+save. Now what you see is a new name for the file. But you may ask,
+"Wait a second, in the other file, we had a link to this file. Does it
+mean that it's broken? Does it mean that we cannot access the file
+anymore?" But when we go there, beginning to go in the index, so
+obviously the actual description of the link hasn't been updated, but
+if I show you what goes on under the hood by showing you what is
+fontified, what is behind the content of the link... Actually, it
+didn't work! that's why you never present live, folks, because
+otherwise you're just going to show problems with the software and
+that's not good. Something must have gone on, obviously. But generally
+speaking, the file should have been updated. Damn. I'm showing you
+bugging my software. That's not very professional, now is it?
+Basically, to come back to the main idea, what we try to do with
+org-roam is to make sure that everything remains consistent. We really
+much love the system of organization that is behind the Zettelkasten
+method.
+
+Now I was going, at this point of the presentation, basically, I
+wanted to go back to Firefox and show you more stuff, but it's likely
+that it's going to crash again. I'm not going to tempt the devil. I'm
+just going to continue talking to you like that. So the Zettelkasten
+method is a very organic way to write notes. If you think... I believe
+as Org Mode users, we share quite a lot of features. I'm out of time.
+I'm just going to take one more minute to answer this question that
+I'm asking myself anyway. But if you're anything like me, you've been
+through many iterations of your workflow inside Org Mode. Do I keep
+all my professional stuff under one heading, or do I create a separate
+file for this? You know, those types of questions on which you could
+ponder for many, many hours at night, generally when you have a tight
+deadline to be following. But what I've discovered by using org-roam
+for taking notes about my academic projects or by taking notes on
+anything worth writing about is that not having to worry about the
+structure of you files, just having to worry about atoms and links, it
+does wonders for the way you think about problems. It does wonders
+about your creativity. And it does wonders about your ability to take
+your thoughts, put them on a paper, and generally, during this process
+you realize, "Oh, maybe I do not know this concept as well as I
+should." But I've never had a system which brought me as much
+serendipity as this system. And for those who don't know, serendipity
+the ability to come up with novel ideas on the spot, contextually. So
+this was just a little primer on what org-roam and the Zettelkasten is
+about.
+
+In about 20 minutes, I'll be giving you a talk about the technical
+aspects of org-roam, which I'm certain some of you will be very
+interested in. Otherwise, I do have a YouTube channel where I try to
+record videos where I explain to you what org-roam is about, what the
+method is about. I'll just finish on this. I'm two minutes extra time,
+sorry. We do know that a lot of people are interested into org-roam. I
+mentioned at the very beginning of the presentation that a lot of
+people discovered Emacs and org-roam and Org Mode even through
+org-roam. We feel that we have a duty to introduce those people, this
+new pool of people, most of whom are academic,s into the world of
+Emacs and into the world of free software. Right now the thing is
+we're not doing a particularly good job at writing manuals. I'm just
+going to try to stop sharing my screen, because I'm nearly to the end,
+and just try sharing my Firefox windows if it allows me. No, it
+doesn't allow me, which is very good. That's why I won't have to to
+screw things up. We know that our manual is not fully up to date, but
+believe me, one of the key focus right now is making sure that within
+two to three months, we have a good tutorial for people to join, and
+we have good videos for people to get introduced to the topics we're
+covering. And that's me done. So, thank you so much for listening and
+now I'll be taking some questions. (Amin: Thank you very much, Leo.
+Cheers! We have, I think, about two minutes four questions, I see a
+lot of them on the pad. Would you take them?) Leo: Sure. So... Yep I'm
+scrolling, I'm scrolling... Getting Things Done, that's Aldric. Still
+scrolling. Okay. org-roam. Oh, wow. Okay. So we do have quite a lot of
+questions. Please excuse me if I'm answering your questions really
+fast, but I just want to make sure that I cover as much ground as
+possible.
+
+"What is the functionality of org-roam-unlinked-references?"
+So basically when you have a file that is not linked anywhere, this
+function allows you to see... Let's say we have a file "Emacs" and
+we've talked about "Emacs" in another note, but we haven't created a
+link. What this command do is that it looks into your folder for every
+mention of "Emacs" that is not linked to the note "Emacs," and it
+prints all the results in the buffer so that you know, "okay, I've
+talked about Emacs here, but I didn't create a link. Do I want to
+create a link?" That's it.
+
+"Is it possible to use the backlinks features in regular Org buffers?"
+Right now, no. It is not possible. We are having a very controlled
+environment which is... I told you about this slip box folder before.
+This is where we keep all the notes. The reason why we do this will be
+more evident when I go through the technical presentation, but it's
+because of optimization. I'll get back to you on that afterwards.
+
+"Do you make org-roam database accessible across computers?" No, I do
+not, because I'm only using my laptop, but plenty of people have had a
+lot of success doing so either by sharing the files via syncthing or
+by any other method. We have a section in a manual specifying how to
+do this. "How do you discover tags' links to add to your new org-roam
+note?" There is something that I didn't tell you about which is called
+org-roam server, which is a magnificent way to access visually the
+notes that you have in your in your system. You'll have to go to the
+orgroam.com website. Please go on our Github page. We show everything.
+I hope what I've told you has excited you, so please go. Maybe one
+more question, two more questions, just to make sure?
+
+"Is it possible to seamlessly link to other notes with syntax instead
+of a keybinding?" Yes, we are working on this. This is a huge project
+that we're doing with org-roam which is called link-ux. We're trying
+to do something which is very close to Roam Research, which is the
+software we're using for inspiration for org-roam. Yes, there are
+going to be ways to do this in the future. I'm going to give you a
+window of maybe three to four months. One last question. Uh, good on
+you, thank you, well, thank you for this.
+
+"Is there an easy way to export several selected nodes to, say, a
+LaTeX file?" LaTeX. Yes. I mean, it's Org Mode. At the very core, it
+is Org Mode, so you know you don't... If you want to export to a LaTeX
+file, you can... you just use the ox-latex library, which you can
+access by pressing C-c C-e for export.
+
+All right. Is it... I believe I'm... It's all the time I had. Amin,
+can you confirm this? Okay. So if you have more questions, don't
+worry, I'll be in chat. I'll be answering them. I'm also on on all the
+platforms we advertise on org-roam. If you want to reach me, I'm
+really easy to reach. Our Github page is always open. So thank you all
+for all your questions and all your energy about org-roam. It is very
+exciting for me to see all this. but right now, I'll be handing off
+the microphone, I should say, to Noorah, who is going to talk to you
+about the academic way to use org-roam. I'll be back afterwards with
+the technical talk. Thank you. (Amin: Thank you very much, Leo) Leo:
+See you later, guys.
+
+<!-- /transcript -->