Re: Emacs as word processor / Text Properties

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Lennart Borgman writes:

 > The capability to export from .org files to LibreOffice etc is a very
 > good feature.

That's arguable.  It means that you may not be able to roundtrip editing:

 > However the trouble is you can not import LibreOffice (since .org
 > files can't handle all of the structure).

That's T.V.'s point, you see.  Well, actually you have to look at *why*
you can't import it.  So, let's see ....

How often do you actually need the structure that's imposed?  Consider
the HTML email I'm responding to, which is a response to a plain text
email.  In my (ancient broken) MUA, your email completely screws up the
display and confuses the message-mode buffer when I yank it.  Did you
actually use any features that aren't present in plain text to express
your ideas?  No.  But you screwed up my MUA (which is HTML-aware, but
not good enough to handle the crap produced by HTML-oriented MUAs)
anyway, for no good reason.  The same thing will happen to you if you
export a document composed in org-mode to .odt so a person who uses
*Office can edit it.  Every time, regardless of need for features that
org doesn't provide.

*Most of the time* there's no *content* or *expression* in a .doc or
.odt file that org-mode can't handle fine.  But you still can't import
it.  That's just *wrong*.

I will grant Drew's point: I'm sure that the high-end WYSIWYG programs
do keep a good separation between content (including expressive
semantics such as "emphasis") and presentation.  But *Office doesn't,
and won't for a decade, I expect.  And that's our target, not
Framemaker, because the people we need to exchange documents with use
*Office.