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

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2022 at 12:42 PM
> From: "Richard Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
> To: "Tim Cross" <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> Cc: monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, acm@muc.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Org mode and Emacs (was: Convert README.org to plain text README 
> while installing package)
>
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>
>   > Making org mode syntax equivalent to texinfo syntax seems like a
>   > mistake to me.
>
> If this succeeds, it would be an important advance for the GNU system.
> We would replace Texinfo with a much cleaner system, easier to use and
> more maintainable.  Not solely for Emacs, but for ALL our
> documentation!
>
>                    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.
>
> These are real concerns, but they are not real certainties.  If we look
> for solutions, we may find good ones.
>
> I hope someone will give it a try.

An important aspect moving forward is to permit the use of latex
rather than tex.

> One of Texinfo's crucial features is a wide range of semantic markup
> constructs, each of which can generate different output depending on
> the output format.  For instance, Texinfo has @var, @emph and @dfn,
> all of which generate italics in printed output, but they differ in
> what they generate for other output formats.  There are probably 15
> other such constructs.
>
> These constructs make it possible to carry out our documentation style
> constructs.
>
> Does Org format have the ability to make all these distinctions?
> If not, I suspect that the Org mode documentation isn't following
> all our style conventions for documentation.
>
> There is nothing fundamentally hard about supporting these
> distinctions.  Can someone please examine which ones Org supports and
> which ones not, and propose exensions for the ones not yet supported?
>
> --
> Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>
>