Finding Emacs - Mobileorg

 v 0.4

Oct 2011

But wait, there's more!

Orgmode has the ability to be read and manipulated on iphone / ipad / android through mobileorg.  Now to be strictly correct, there is a separate website for dealing with the android platform, however you get the idea.

There are several ways to synchronise between devices, but the method I use is through Dropbox.  Works great.

NOW ... if you use Emacs/Orgmode on Windows, you NEED to know this if you are going to use Mobileorg.  It is essential you download and install in your path the md5sum utility.  The webpage is here, and if you are uncertain which file to download, download the setup file.  The reason is that this file includes BOTH the executables AND the required dll files.  Don't forget to modify the PATH variable so that the system can find the md5sum executable.

And since there's nothing I can add that isn't a duplicate of the Mobileorg site ......



more later .......

Update 31 Dec 2010

With regard to the MD5sum program.  Rather than go through the complexity of the instructions above, download and install Cygwin, putting the cygwin\bin directory in your path.  Using the md5sum from cygwin allows you to simplify the PATH, since there are numberous cygwin binaries (w3m, gpg, gnutls etc)  that are useful for Emacs.

Additionally, the setup given in the Mobileorg page is as clear as mud.  I searched around a bit trying to remember how I set mine up and:

You can play around with the "setup" menu selection under Mobileorg in the Emacs menus, or .. use this example for additions to your init.el  .. obviously you need to modify to suit yourself:


;; Mobileorg
;; Set to the location of your Org files on your local system
(setq org-directory "~/org")
;; Set to the name of the file where new notes will be stored
(setq org-mobile-inbox-for-pull "~/org/newnotes.org")
;; Set to /MobileOrg.
(setq org-mobile-directory "~/Dropbox/MobileOrg")


(setq org-mobile-files (quote ("~/org/A380Notes.org")))



if you want all your org files to be pushed then:


(setq org-mobile-files (quote ("~/org")))


Then to manipulate in Emacs:
M-x org-mobile-push
and
M-x org-mobile-pull


I'm sure there are errors above - will work on it and refine the above later - I know how frustrating it can be trying to find these things out and thought I'd post what I have at the moment.

Update 9 Oct 2011

I spent the afternoon reviewing my MobileOrg setup on a Windows 7 machine. 

To use Emacs / Mobileorg on a Windows machine, you really do need some Unix tools.  Either use Cygwin, or install the GnuWin32 tools from Sourceforge.  (I won't supply the links - google will provide).  You will need "coreutils" (and the "make" utility if you are going to compile any lisp files).  Make sure the GnuWin32 "bin" directory is in your path. (coreutils contains the "md5sum" utility).

Whilst the instructions on the MobileOrg website are correct, I found there were a few "gotchas" that need explaining. 

• Dropbox has changed its location on a Windows Machine.  It is now just "Dropbox" rather than "My Dropbox".  Took me a while to work out why things were not working when Mobileorg on Emacs said they were.
• The filename for collecting notes from the mobile device can be anything you like.
• The "index.org" file format is described correctly, however be particularly careful of the syntax for the link. ... " [[file:first.org][An Org file I like]] " .. as opposed to the http format.

I tried using "Box.net" as a WEBDAV connection, however the link format they use is incompatible with Mobileorg.

The only other thing I can think of  to note is that the file for notes from the mobile device will probably get confused if you have multiple devices collecting notes, such as an ipad AND an iphone.


Later......