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

[Tim Cross]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>   > One key reason I worry about going down that road is that I suspect it
>   > would complicate org's syntax. Two key benefits of org mode is that the
>   > basic syntax is simple and it maps reasonably consistently acorss
>   > different output formats. However, this flexibility does come at a cost.
>   > To provide consistency across export formats, the basic formatting
>   > 'concepts' need to be somewhat 'generalised', which means at times you
>   > will loose some of the more advanced or sophisticated formatting power
>   > of some export back-ends. 
>
> I suspect we are slightly miscommunicating, because Texinfo already
> generates several different formats of output, and each markup construct
> is carefully defined about how it should appear in each output format.
>
> So I'm sure it is possible to define additional markup constucts and
> make each one do, in each output format, what Texinfo would (or does)
> do with it.
>
> The only hard part is finding syntax for them.
>

Perhaps, though I tend to feel you may have misconceptions regarding the
purpose of org and its main design goals. 

The org mode syntax, especially the syntax for markup (markdown), is
very small and concise. This is one of its big strengths. It is also one
of the main reasons various markdown dialects have become so popular and
why we have so many different markdown dialects - people don't want a
rich syntax supporting numerous different sematic elements. They just
want a very few. In fact, despite the strong arguments in favour of
semantic markup, people tend to prefer typographical markup - italics,
bold, underline, etc and they want a markup where they don't have to
constantly wonder if they have selected the correct semantic tag for a
certain bit of text. They want something which is easy to write in,
which does not require referring to a manual to lookup different
semantic tags and something which is easier than HTML, LaTeX, TexInfo,
odt, xml, etc.

I also think the statement "The only hard part is finding syntax for
them." is a huge understatement. There are already a couple of requested
syntax changes for markup which IMO have far greater merit than
supporting more texinfo sematnic markup, which have not been implemented
primarily due to the difficulty of ding so in a consistent manner which
will not also break the large amount of existing org data out there. 

You mentioned in another thread that one of the big issues with texinfo
was that maintenance of the tex part, used primarily for the printed
representation, was difficult to maintain these days (assuming lack of
people with expertise in tex). I just wanted to point out that much of
the output formatting org supports is also achieved via tex and latex.
Chances are that if we extended org syntax to support the broader set of
texinfo markup, we would also inherit those same issues. At the very
least, we would not be escaping from tex simply because we moved to org
mode. 

Where I think there is a misunderstanding of org is with the emphasis
which appears to be occurring on the markup and formatting aspects of
org. Org's ability to support a small markdown dialect and generate
output in various formats is not org's main emphasis. Org's primary role
is not that of being a documentation authoring tool. Org is about a lot
more, it is about information gathering and management, task and time
management, information capture, 'executable' notes and literate
programming and lab books with convenient outline editing support. As
the name suggests, it is about helping to organise your life. It isn't
about writing documentation. The fact it can support multiple output
formats and produce reasonable looking documents is certainly part of
it, but in some ways, that was the low hanging fruit which was
relatively easy to achieve once all the other parts were in place.

If a replacement for texinfo is required, then lets take the lessons we
have learned from texinfo, latex/tex, xml, html, markdown and org and
implement something appropriate. This might seem like too much of a
task, but that is probably what people said when Carsten started
developing org mode.

There are many ways org mode can be improved. Current work to clarify
and refine the syntax, provide a solid and efficient parser, improved
font-locking and formatting and more consistent and rich API for both
extensions and new export backends are far more critical than adding
additional markup/markdown syntax to enable org mode to replace texinfo.
IMO such changes are not only misguided, they have the real potential to
adversely impact org by making things more complicated and harder to
maintain, destroying the advantage of a very small and easy to use
markup and moving the focus towards becoming an authoring tool rather
than a personal data organisation aid.