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[O] Capitalisation and good taste ?


From: François Pinard
Subject: [O] Capitalisation and good taste ?
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:19:58 -0500

Hi, Org people.

I really have mixed feelings about capitalisation of #+WORDS, and wonder
if some consensus and good taste has developed over time among Org mode
users.  What is the collective wisdom saying as being nicer among:

#+LATEX_HEADER:
#+Latex_Header:
#+LaTeX_HEADER:
#+latex_header:

etc.

I'm just unable to fix myself on any convention, and my own lack of
decision irritates me.  I hate changing my mind so often, and my files
are already a mess on this particular point.

Despite all capitals have the advantage of standing out clearly, I
usually don't like any kind of shouting in my files.  If I was writing
constants in C code, I would tolerate some exceptions of course, but
now, I'm writing documentation.  #+begin_quote and such are just OK in
small letters, they really look like shouting otherwise.

On the other hand, it seems that #+TITLE, #+AUTHOR and #+EMAIL, and all
those things which are high lighted in gray, use capitals only in all
examples I've seen so far.  Maybe the pale high lighting is a
counter-measure so it gets tolerable.

It seems that capitals are also favoured for #+OPTIONS, #+BIND, and many
other things (high lighted in red), yet I got the impression that parts
of the documentation (which look "newer" or "younger" to me on the
average) are getting away from the all capital conventions.  I do not
really know.

The writing "LaTeX" has the nicety of being the proper way to write
LaTeX, which is mandated by Lamport (after TeX has been mandated by
Knuth).  And I will not even speak of the revolutionary iTex, because I
do not have a bell handy! :-) If any of you are not aware of it, make
sure you do not miss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKaI78K_rgA (you
then need half an hour of free time to listen to the video).

Not helping is that the manual and the Wiki are not using capitalisation
consistently between files, and even sometimes in the same area of a
same file.  They are not giving me clear advice about what is proper
style.

Maybe this has already been debated to death?  I do not know for Org
mode files, yet I know that style issues are usually flame-prone.  I'm
surely not trying to start any kind of war.  Nevertheless, I would like
if the manual and the Wiki select and document a preferred convention,
and were amended to be very consistent on it.  So, I'll have a clear
model to follow. :-)

François





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