Hyperbole, My Dear Watson

Charlie Holland (he/him/his) - https://chiply.dev, https://github.com/chiply, https://reddit.com/u/misterchiply, mister.chiply@gmail.com

The following image shows where the talk is in the schedule for Sat 2026-12-12. Solid lines show talks with Q&A via BigBlueButton. Dashed lines show talks with Q&A via IRC or Etherpad.

Format: 20-min talk ; Q&A: BigBlueButton conference room https://media.emacsconf.org/2026/current/bbb-hyperbole.html
Etherpad: https://pad.emacsconf.org/2026-hyperbole
Discuss on IRC: #emacsconf
Status: Waiting for video from speaker

Description

In the talk, I want to build the same set of notes twice, once in plain Org and once in Org + GNU Hyperbole, and this talk will demonstrate the utility of adding Hyperbole to the typical org workflow. The subject matter (the thing I'm taking notes on in the demo) is the Sherlock Holmes canon, which I selected deliberately as it contains sixty public-domain stories, on Project Gutenberg as plain text. This avoids copyright issues and also allows users to follow along with a note taking workflow on a complex resource for free.

The thesis is that Org simply 'reads' text, while Hyperbole's added value is that it 'recognizes' text. In Org, a link is markup you have to explicitly type into a document, whereas in Hyperbole it is a pattern already in the text you read or type, and becomes live in any buffer (org, markdown, eww, epud, etc…).

My contrived note taking on the Sherlock canon will make the benefits of Hyperbole clear.

• In my notes, concepts and character names will be noted as CamelCase

WikiWords. Once created, these will show up highlighted in any EPUB file, EWW page, etc….

• HyWiki links these for free in my personal notes, but in Doyle's text

they are not written in CamelCase, so a simple alias extension to Hyperbole's HyWiki makes it as so that "Sherlock Holmes" will show up as a match for the "SherlockHolmes" WikiWord in any buffer, which will serve as an extensibility demo that resolves a common pain point with HyWiki.

• Other elements of the canon are WikiWords already in-place. Sherlockians

have cited the stories by four-letter code since 1947, so I will define a button with defil that makes every "(SCAN)", for a example, a live citation.

• The Gutenberg text must stay untouched, so annotations I create will live

in an explicit-button file beside it.

• Holmes's docketed index of "men and things" will be an additional demo

for HyRolo.

Act I shows four frictions with Org alone, and Act II removes them one Hyperbole mechanism at a time. I close with what Org does better, which alternatives to Hyperbole address each friction (org-roam, org-remark, denote, org-transclusion), and why Hyperbole's uniform mechanism over all text in every buffer is still a differentiator. The idea is that I'm promoting Org plus Hyperbole, not Org versus Hyperbole.

About the speaker:

Charlie Holland writes about Emacs and knowledge management at chiply.dev, where this talk caps a four-part series on GNU Hyperbole. Charlie builds the same notes on the Sherlock Holmes canon twice, in Org and then in Org plus Hyperbole, to show the value that a mature hypertext system can bring to your note taking workflow.

Questions or comments? Please e-mail mister.chiply@gmail.com