Re: [O] Broken org-mode "Column width and alignment" in latest version

[Ruy Exel]

Dear Kaushal,

It took me a while to digest everything in your message, but I have
finally managed to do my home-work and everything is now working
perfectly!  Thanks very much!

Yours,
Ruy

On Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 6:53 PM, Kaushal Modi <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 1:11 PM Ruy Exel <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Kaushal,
>>
>> The real treat is to read your nice message and to be a member of such a
>> fantastic group of people!
>>
>> Following your advice to stick to a stable release I searched for info on
>> how to install it and I found instructions in
>> http://orgmode.org/org.html#Installation telling me to run "M-x
>> package-install RET org RET" from within emacs.  I did it and it all looked
>> like everything was running smoothly untill I was issued the messages:
>>
>> WARNING: No org-loaddefs.el file could be found from where org.el is
>> loaded.  You need to run "make" or "make autoloads" from Org lisp directory
>
>
> Did you add Org Elpa to package archives as described here:
> http://orgmode.org/elpa.html ?
>
>> I am used to this since I first tried the cloned git version, but I
>> noticed that there is no Makefile in the directory containing the newly
>> dowloaded files (~/.emacs.d/elpa/org-20171113/), so I got stuck.
>
>
> I haven't installed Org from within Emacs for quite some time now as I build
> it using make from its git clone. Also I haven't seen the warning that you
> see. Hopefully someone else can comment on that part.
>
> I noticed though that the Org version you quoted:
> ~/.emacs.d/elpa/org-20171113/ is a bit old (not too old, but not the latest
> served on Elpa either). If you add the Org Elpa to package-archive as I
> suggested above, and install using the M-x package-list-packages interface,
> the archives will first get auto-refreshed, and then you can be rest assured
> that the installed packages are the latest versions.
>
>>
>> I noticed that in the above installation instructions it is mentioned
>> that:
>>
>> Important: you need to do this in a session where no .org file has been
>> visited, i.e., where no Org built-in function have been loaded. Otherwise
>> autoload Org functions will mess up the installation.
>>
>> so I repeated the process right after starting emacs with the
>> --no-init-files option, then I added the line "(package-initialize)" to my
>> initialization file but it still does not work,
>
>
> What doesn't work? You shouldn't need to do --no-init-files. Simply make
> sure that your config is not doing (require 'org) directly or indirectly
> somewhere and you are not opening an Org file at emacs startup. That's all.
>
>>
>> namely the old org-mode is loaded upon starting emacs.
>
>
> How are you telling that? If you do M-: (featurep 'org) and it returns nil,
> it means that org is not yet loaded.
>
>>
>>   It is curious that I now have two org-mode entries in the top Emacs-Info
>> node, one for the old version (7.9.3f) and another one for the new one
>> (9.1.2 (release_9.1.2-37-g3f8d67)).
>
>
> That's a different thing, has to do with the Info-directory-list variable,
> and is fine. You can have paths to Info manuals from multiple Org versions
> added to that var, and so you will see multiple Org manuals. I personally
> don't like that and so I surgically remove[1] all the Org versions that I am
> not using in the current emacs session from load-path and
> Info-directory-list.
>
>> Could I have premanently messed up my emacs installation by not following
>> the above Important advice?
>
>
> Not trying to sound philosophical, but nothing is permanent. All the package
> installations happen in the elpa dir.. so to start the Org installation from
> scratch, you can rm -rf all the org installations from the elpa/ dir and
> restart emacs following that "Important" instruction and retry installing
> Org.
>
> [1]: https://scripter.co/building-org-development-version/
> --
>
> Kaushal Modi