Org-mode, checklists and links

Checklists

Checklists are a fantastic way of structuring your work. They make you break your problem into smaller problems, they keep track of your progress and they let you visualise how much more work you need to do. Checklists are easy to do in Org-mode:

- [ ] Shopping List
  - [ ] Eggs
  - [ ] Milk
  - [ ] Flour
  - [ ] Sugar

There's no special formatting needed. Just type that into an org-mode buffer in Emacs and it'll understand what you mean. To tick a checkbox, just hold Ctrl and press C twice while it's line is highlighted.

- [-] Shopping List
  - [X] Eggs
  - [X] Milk
  - [ ] Flour
  - [ ] Sugar

You can also change how each checkbox tracks the ones inside it. Replace the empty space with a / or % for the following:

- [2/4] Shopping List
  - [X] Eggs
  - [X] Milk
  - [ ] Flour
  - [ ] Sugar

- [50%] Shopping List
  - [X] Eggs
  - [X] Milk
  - [ ] Flour
  - [ ] Sugar

You can also embed clickable links directly into org files:

[[www.google.com]]
[[www.google.com][Google]]

In this case the first example just makes the link clickable, and the second replaces the URL with a convenient title. Links don't have to be Internet-related either:

[[elisp:(switch-to-buffer "*scratch*")][Switch to scratch buffer for quick notes]]

This runs Emacs Lisp code to switch to the scratch buffer, which is a quick note-taking buffer not associated with a file.

In the next article I will introduce tables, and using Org-mode as a basic spreadsheet.