- [18 January 2022] Package name change from Org-marginalia to Org-remark. See detail on data conversion. In most cases, no action is required for you.
Org-remark lets you highlight and annotate text files, websites, EPUB books and Info documentation with using Org mode.
A user manual is available online or Emacs in-system as an Info node `(org-remark)’: (C-h i and find the Org-remark node).
For installation and minimum configuration, refer to Installation below or the user manual: online or Info node `(org-remark) Installation’
Getting Started in the user manual will get you started in 5 minutes: online or or Info node `(org-remark) Getting Started’.
For customization, refer to the customization group `org-remark’ or user manual: online or Info node `(org-remark) Customizing’. A separate online article has been written to guide you on how to customize an icon (also part of the user manual. Evaluate (info “(or-gremark) How to Set Org-remark to Use SVG Icons”).
An introductory video (8 minutes) and V1.1.0 release introduction (12 minutes) are available on YouTube.
- Highlight and annotate any text file. The highlights and notes are kept in an Org file as the plain text database. This lets you easily manage your marginal notes and use the built-in Org facilities on them – e.g. create a sparse tree based on the category of the notes
- Create your your own highlighter pens with different colors, type (e.g. underline, squiggle, etc. optionally with Org’s category for search and filter on your highlights and notes)
- Have the same highlighting and annotating functionality for
- Websites when you use EWW to browse them
- EPUB books with nov.el
- Info documentation
Figure 1. Left: Org-mode with text enlarged; Right: marginal notes with an inline image. Introductory video (8 minutes) and V1.1.0 release introduction (12 minutes) are available on YouTube
Figure 2. Mouse context menu with built-in context-menu-mode available with Emacs version 28 onward
Figure 3. EPUB book (“Prince” by Niccolò Machiavelli via https://www.gutenberg.org/) with icon indicating there are annotations to the highlight: new features with v1.2.0 (2023-08-20). Left: marginal notes file with annotations; Right: an EPUB book file with a highlight and simple ASCII icon.
This package is available on:
- GNU-ELPA (releases only; equivalent to MELPA-Stable)
- GNU-devel ELPA (unreleased main branch; equivalent to MELPA)
GNU ELPA should be already set up in your Emacs by default. If you wish to add GNU-devel ELPA, simply add its URL to package-archives like this:
(add-to-list 'package-archives
'("gnu-devel" . "https://elpa.gnu.org/devel/") :append)After installation, we suggest you put the setup below in your configuration.
(org-remark-global-tracking-mode +1)
;; Optional if you would like to highlight websites via eww-mode
(with-eval-after-load 'eww
(org-remark-eww-mode +1))
;; Optional if you would like to highlight EPUB books via nov.el
(with-eval-after-load 'nov
(org-remark-nov-mode +1))
;; Optional if you would like to highlight Info documentation via Info-mode
(with-eval-after-load 'info
(org-remark-info-mode +1))Unless you explicitly load org during Emacs initialization, I suggest to defer loading org-remark (thus there is no (require 'org-remark) in the example above). This is because it will also pull in org, which can slow down initialization. You can control the timing of loading org-remark by autoloading some commands in a similar way with the example keybindings below.
Below are example keybindings you might like to consider:
;; Key-bind `org-remark-mark' to global-map so that you can call it
;; globally before the library is loaded.
(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c n m") #'org-remark-mark)
;; The rest of keybidings are done only on loading `org-remark'
(with-eval-after-load 'org-remark
(define-key org-remark-mode-map (kbd "C-c n o") #'org-remark-open)
(define-key org-remark-mode-map (kbd "C-c n ]") #'org-remark-view-next)
(define-key org-remark-mode-map (kbd "C-c n [") #'org-remark-view-prev)
(define-key org-remark-mode-map (kbd "C-c n r") #'org-remark-remove)
(define-key org-remark-mode-map (kbd "C-c n d") #'org-remark-delete))Alternatively, you can use use-package to set up Org-remark. The example provided below should be equivalent to the setup described above.
(use-package org-remark
:bind (;; :bind keyword also implicitly defers org-remark itself.
;; Keybindings before :map is set for global-map.
("C-c n m" . org-remark-mark)
("C-c n l" . org-remark-mark-line)
:map org-remark-mode-map
("C-c n o" . org-remark-open)
("C-c n ]" . org-remark-view-next)
("C-c n [" . org-remark-view-prev)
("C-c n r" . org-remark-remove)
("C-c n d" . org-remark-delete))
;; Alternative way to enable `org-remark-global-tracking-mode' in
;; `after-init-hook'.
;; :hook (after-init . org-remark-global-tracking-mode)
:init
;; It is recommended that `org-remark-global-tracking-mode' be
;; enabled when Emacs initializes. Alternatively, you can put it to
;; `after-init-hook' as in the comment above
(org-remark-global-tracking-mode +1)
:config
(use-package org-remark-info :after info :config (org-remark-info-mode +1))
(use-package org-remark-eww :after eww :config (org-remark-eww-mode +1))
(use-package org-remark-nov :after nov :config (org-remark-nov-mode +1)))Create issues, discussion, and/or pull requests in the GitHub repository. All welcome.
Org-remark is available on GNU ELPA and thus copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). This means that anyone who is making a substantive code contribution will need to “assign the copyright for your contributions to the FSF so that they can be included in GNU Emacs” (Org Mode website).
Thank you.
New features
- EPUB books (nov.el) support would not have been possible without collaboration with @sati-bodhi
echo-textupdate from the marginal notes to the source buffer by marty hiatt (@mooseyboots)- Support for websites with
eww-modeby Vedang Manerikar (@vedang)
Bug fixes
@alan-w-255, Nan Jun Jie (@nanjj), @sgati-bodhi
Documentation (including README, NEWS, CHANGELOG)
@randomwangran, marty hiatt (@mooseyboots), @jsntn
Thank-you to all the comments, issues, and questions on GitHub!
This work is licensed under a GPLv3 license. For a full copy of the license, refer to LICENSE.