That's not entirely true. org-mode is quite flexible and serves as a lot of things, and one of them is in fact as a TODO list [1]. This becomes particularly true when you use the TODO extensions.

I am constantly surprised at the capabilities of org-mode. Some sociologists that I'm aware of actually generate their LaTeX publications through org-mode [2].

[1] http://orgmode.org/manual/TODO-Items.html

[2] http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/workflow-apps.pdf (generated through org-mode, source: https://github.com/kjhealy/workflow-paper)

I should clarify... Yes org-mode has todo features, including calendering, scheduling, etc, but listen some of the talks Carsten Dominik gives where he explains his rational: http://orgmode.org/talks.html It's core is as an flexible note-taking app with all those features as extensions to the core, just like the document links, and timestamp features.

In theory, org todos are born as notes which you later realize are actually todo items. Taken in this light, it makes sense as a text editor extension rather than an app in its own right.

I've just launched it a few times in my emacs days, it seemed pretty powerful as the documentation suggest : http://orgmode.org/guide/index.html . I may be getting something wrong, but it do not look like just "edit todo.txt + cosmetics" to me.

For example, if I understand correctly C-c a a (http://orgmode.org/guide/Weekly_002fdaily-agenda.html#Weekly...) compiles an agenda. I'd rather have a small program to do that and launch vim on each todo like mutt for writing emails than having it bundled in my editor.

Edit If I were using emacs daily, I'd gladly use org-mode :)

Eh? I have been using org-mode for years for calendaring, smart todo-lists and what not -- with all the things like deadlines, schedules, repeated items, tags, priorities etc. etc.

I use org-mode as a Getting Things Done utility + a replacement for Evernote. (Synced up via Dropbox, it works swimmingly well!)