Re: Org mode and Emacs

[Payas Relekar]

Hi Bastien,

Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:

> Here is the email I sent when I accepted to switch to using .org as
> the native format for Org documentation:
>
> https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/87371gfas7.fsf@bzg.fr/
>
> As you can read, I wanted to make the switch as an experiment to see
> if we were really solving a problem here.
>
> I believe we didn't get more contributions to the manual by switching
> to .org, so I'd be in favor of switching back to using .texi as the
> native format for Org's documentation.  (Not for 9.6, obviously, more
> probably for 10.0 -- I'll discuss this with other Org maintainers.)

>From your mail, below were the motivators for change:

- Let's stabilize editing standards around the org.org file.

- Let's test org capabilities against a giant .org file.

- Let's make `C-x 4 a' do something useful in an .org section.

- Let's write more non-emacs parsers and exporters.

- Let's see if we have more contributions to the manual and if
  we really solved a problem here.

While you're best to judge the number of contributions, #1 and #2, or
the dogfooding opportunities provided by the switch are immense.

One doesn't occasionally run into org documents the size of org.org. It
has already resulted in gc enhancements as it was slowing down Emacs
build and was optimized. I'll say that alone is a benefit worth keeping.

There is also more progress being made on non-emacs parsers[0][1], and
perhaps we can reach out if they find org.org useful. Generally
speaking, these projects are even smaller (number of contributors-wise)
than org-mode, but a shared burden is always nicer.

[0]: https://github.com/nvim-orgmode/orgmode
[1]: https://github.com/200ok-ch/org-parser/blob/master/resources/org.ebnf

> The other topics in this thread (make Org's Texinfo exporter provide
> good .texi manuals, make Org more modular, etc.) are interesting, but
> they are really separate questions IMHO.

Thanks,
Payas
--