Re: Org mode and Emacs

[Ihor Radchenko]

David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com> writes:

>>> Semantic/Bovine ??
>>
>> Org is not context-free.
>
> But could it be moved in that direction? (ie. Organice)

I don't think so. It is motivated by the fundamental Org syntax design,
AFAIU. (mostly by first match wins design). We are not going to change
fundamentals of the Org syntax. It will break backward compatibility.

>> Also, Org maintaners previously rejected the idea of implementing Org
>> parser not in Elisp. Mainly because it would limit the ability to
>> maintain and contribute to Org - one would need to learn another
>> programming language to alter anything in Org syntax.
>
> Hmmm. That would make it difficult to keep the language "parseable" by a
> different parser.  Elisp would not provide the checks for (say) keeping
> the language context-free.

At this point, we are trying to "freeze" Org syntax as much as possible.
So, major changes are not expected. Different parsers should not suffer
from future changes (if they do, we should not make those changes to
start with).

As for keeping checks, we do have a set of parser tests using ERT. So,
major breakage will be prevented. On top of this, we plan to make the
parser tests more friendly to third-party tools:
https://orgmode.org/list/87fsqzi4tw.fsf@localhost

Best,
Ihor