Org mode and Emacs (was: Convert README.org to plain text README while installing package)

[Stefan Monnier]

Rather than try and figure out who's right or wrong, I hope we can take
advantage of this discussion to get some code out that try to solve
the problem.

AFAICT the problem seen from Emacs, is that Org is large (even for
a basic uses, which occasionally leads to high load times) and that it
doesn't follow all the usual Emacs conventions, such as
overriding/remapping standard key-bindings (the resulting behaviors may
sometimes be similar to the standard one, but even when that's the case
the redefinition can easily bite the user).

The problem seen from Org is that Emacs doesn't use Org enough :-)
[ This paragraph's shorter length probably reflects the fact that I'm
  less familiar with Org than with Emacs.  ]

I think the way forward is to define a "basic org-mode".  This one could
be used at many more places where there's currently an occasional desire
to use Org that's resisted because of the above problems.
Ideally, org-mode would then be defined as an extension of this "basic
org-mode".  Also ideally some of those extensions would be reworked so
they can be used "Emacs-wide" rather than only in Org (obviously, that
can only make sense for some of them).

We could start this "basic org-mode" as a trivial copycat of
`outline-mode` and then start adding Org features to it.  The driving
constraint is to keep it lightweight and rules-abiding enough that there
won't be any resistance to using it, while at the same time making sure
that the features added to it can be removed from the "org-mode
extension", so that org-mode and "basic org-mode" don't diverge.


        Stefan