Quick Startup in Org-Mode?

Question

There are two ways I start a new org-mode file:

1) I open Emacs and then by Ctr-x Ctr-f I type in the address of the location of where I want my file to be in.

2) I right click the place I want my file to be in and create a new Text Document. I name the document and modify the end by replacing .txt with .org

I find the second way faster but still not as fast as opening Notepad which I do just by typing in Note in the search bar (I am using Windows 10). Is there a way to open a new org-mode file as fast as opening Notepad?

Answer 1

I set my initial *scratch* to be org-mode.

(setq initial-major-mode 'org-mode)

Of course, *scratch* buffers start with that little message. You can remove that with this:

(setq initial-scratch-message "")

But what if you want a new *scratch* buffer?

(defun create-scratch-buffer nil
  "create a scratch buffer"
  (interactive)
  (switch-to-buffer (get-buffer-create "*scratch*"))
  (org-mode))

If you want to change the default mode for all text files to org-mode, you could use the text-mode-hook.

   (add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'org-mode)

It looks like to set a default mode for a file using find-file you'll need to do something a little more involved. If you include org-mode on the find-file-hook, then all buffers are changed. That's not what you want. You want new files without extensions created using C-x C-f to be org-mode. It looks like that requires modifying the find-file-not-found-functions variable. I haven't used that before and my quick attempts aren't producing the desired results. Hopefully that gets you in the right direction!

Answer 2

Lots of useful functions to explore in norang website, I think that's were I found these bh/* set of functions for org-mode.

Add an interactive function that creates a temp org file where you choose:

(defun bh/make-org-scratch ()
  (interactive)
  (find-file "/tmp/publish/scratch.org")
  (gnus-make-directory "/tmp/publish"))

Then add a key binding such as:

(global-set-key (kbd "<f9> o") 'bh/make-org-scratch)

Now with F9 o you start a scratch org file that can be later saved using ctrl - xctrl -w

Answer 3

You may want to profile it M-x profiler-start before opening the new org file and M-x profiler-report after. If you're using anything like org-bullets that requires you to M-x all-the-icons-install-fonts then make sure you have set (setq inhibit-compacting-font-caches t) (see github issue).

For me it looks like the following for CPU samples:

Function                                                  CPU samples    %
- command-execute                                                  70  94%
 - call-interactively                                              70  94%
  - funcall-interactively                                          70  94%
   - counsel-find-file                                             69  93%
    - ivy-read                                                     69  93%
     - ivy-call                                                    63  85%
      - counsel-find-file-action                                   63  85%
       - find-file                                                 63  85%
        - find-file-noselect                                       63  85%
         - find-file-noselect-1                                    63  85%
          - after-find-file                                        62  83%
           - normal-mode                                           62  83%
            - set-auto-mode                                        62  83%
             - set-auto-mode-0                                     62  83%
              - org-mode                                           62  83%
               + org-load-modules-maybe                            62  83%
          + normal-backup-enable-predicate                          1   1%
       read-from-minibuffer                                         5   6%
   + profiler-report                                                1   1%
+ ...                                                               3   4%
+ timer-event-handler                                               1   1%

I'm getting a slight delay when initially loading a org file (even a new one) because it is loading org modules for the first time. Anytime I load an org file after that it's instant. If you run emacs as a daemon, you may consider preloading org-mode so that you don't have to wait on the first opening of a file.