Re: Org mode and Emacs

[Ihor Radchenko]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> IIRC it's also much slower to create similarly sized .info files from
> Org source than it is with makeinfo

Could you please quantify much slower?
Do you have concrete example of a .org file which can demonstrate the
problem?

Also, I think that I have to clarify about texinfo export from Org.
Org does not currently generate .info files directly. .org file is first
transformed into .texi and then uses makeinfo to translate the generated
.texi into .info.

If there is an interest in Org being used instead of texinfo, it should
be based on the extensibility of Org rather than just making Org
replicate what texinfo does. However, I am not sure if all parties in
this discussion have a clear idea about concrete advantages of Org
compared with texinfo. I am not faimiliar with texinfo. Others may not
be as faimilar with Org.

I believe that if we want to be serious about using Org for
documentation more widely, we should first identify which particular
aspects of Org are beneficial for documentation and which particular
aspects are available in other documentation generators and must be then
provided by Org (if not yet available).

> ... , and it also requires an entire
> manual to be contained in a single file.

This is not true. Org mode supports #+include: directives to incorporate
multiple smaller files into one larger file.

> Texinfo also comes with the added benefit of not requiring Emacs to edit
> or to translate into other formats.

You can edit Org files outside Emacs. Say, in vim.
The point about exporting to other formats is valid.

This last point also raises a question. Can Elisp interpreter and
libraries be factored out of Emacs to create a way to execute Elisp
programs without installing all the interactive parts of Emacs?

Best,
Ihor