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

[Ihor Radchenko]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> They are in the Texinfo manual.  Look at node "Indicating", which is
> section 7.1 in the version I have in Info.

Thanks!

>   > 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.

As I stated in another message, we may not need to define additional
markup constructs. texinfo-specific markup appears to be a little bit
too specific for general-purpose formatting aimed by Org. Instead of
modifying Org syntax (and forcing all third-party packages adapt), we
can leverage the fact that parts of Org syntax are programmable in
Elisp.

Org provides links as a flexible markup element - its export to
different formats can be arbitrarily customized (via function).
See A.3 Adding Hyperlink Types of Org manual.

For paragraph-level constructs, there is
org-export-filter-parse-tree-functions and external
https://github.com/alhassy/org-special-block-extras
We may implement something more reminiscent to link customization in
future. org-export-filter-parse-tree-functions is a bit too generic (one
function for everything).

In summary, Org does not really need to change syntax in order to
support full texinfo markup. AFAIU, the missing parts are
some of the texinfo-specific markup elements, abbreviations, and
generating index. They all can be implemented as new libraries.
Abbreviations and index are WIP at
https://github.com/tecosaur/org-glossary
The texinfo-specific markup can be another (optionally loaded) Org
library.

>   > As pointed out elswhere in this thread, org could support missing
>   > texinfo syntax using texinfo specific blocks. However, that isn't a
>   > great experience from an authoring perspective. It is fine if you only
>   > need to do it occasionally, but if you have to constantly add such
>   > blocks in order to get really well formatted texinfo output,
>
> This is rather vague.  Why do you thik this would be difficult to use
> Can we find a solution to make it easy to use?

This was a reference to Org export blocks:

#+begin_export latex
This text will only appear when exported to \LaTeX, not to any other format.
#+end_export

They may be not great experience what one needs to do something like

#+begin_export texinfo
@var{test} will only appear in .texi output.
#+end_export

#+begin_export latex
\emph{test} will only appear in .tex output.
#+end_export

many times in the same .org document.

However, we have special blocks for this purpose. They are extendable,
as I descibed above. Though some improvements in Org core might be
needed if we have to use this extensibility more frequently.

Best,
Ihor