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

[Tim Cross]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

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> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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>
> If we are going to redesign Org mode syntax,
> can we please add room for extensibility
> so that an extension of Org mode syntax
> could have all the features of Texinfo?
>
> If the new syntax can express all the distinctions that Texinfo
> can already express, that would make it possible to switch to it
> for our documentation sources.
>
> This needs to include conversion into some variant of TeX syntax so
> that we can generate high-quality printed manuals through TeX.


Nobody has said that org mode syntax was getting redesigned. What I said
was that we were working to clarify the existing syntax and remove
ambiguities and provide a standard parser. 

Making org mode syntax equivalent to texinfo syntax seems like a
mistake to me. The original idea was to have a light weight syntax which
is easyh to learn, not create a clone of texinfo. Besides, I suspect it
would be very difficult to maintain backwards compatibility. 

I"m also not convinced that org mode would be the right solution for
Emacs documentation. That is a completely different conversation and I'm
not convinced that org mode is a better answer wrt documentation than
texinfo. While there are certainly some areas where texinfo is showing
its age, it still works well for providing Emacs documentation within
the editor. There may be some role for org mode to augment what is
provided by tgexinfo, but again, that is a whole different conversation.
Note also that the previous thread was about handling of existing org
files within Emacs package ecosystem, not about replacing org
documentation with org mode.