Re: Convert README.org to plain text README while installing package

[Ihor Radchenko]

Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:
>
>> * Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> [2022-06-06 15:57]:
>>> Org files *are* plain text. This is one of (perhaps the biggest) selling
>>> points for org mode.
>>
>> We may call it "plain text" and problem is not that we can open Org
>> files with any editor as plain text, but in formatting. People format
>> Org files in such ways that they are not readable, they may not make
>> spacing where it would be otherwise required, in other words, plain
>> text files do not look nearly as readable as for example RFC text,
>> like this one: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1.txt
>
> Please give me an example of org mode 'not make space where it would be
> otherwise required'. Can you provide a single example of org mode
> syntax which is not readable in any text editor. There are quite a few
> projects on Github/Gitlab which have readme.org files - can you point to
> one which cannot be read with a plain text editor? 

I'd say that Jean made a fair point.
In Org, authors may not care as much about, for example, indentation.
Especially when the org files are written with org-indent-mode turned
on.

If you look at https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1.txt, the paragraphs a
nicely indented and can be distinguished from the headers. The top-level
headers are numbered and can be easily distinguished from the
lower-level headers. The paragraph text is also filled appropriately,
unlike some Org documents written with truncate-lines set to nil.

So, without Emacs, Org files (some of them!) may be harder to read
compared to properly formatted ASCII.

I am not 100% sure if we need to do anything about this observation.
One practical conclusion that can be made is that we might incorporate
filling, numbering, and indentation into ox-org.el.

Best,
Ihor