Re: [O] Capitalisation and good taste ?

[Bernt Hansen]

address@hidden (François Pinard) writes:

> 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. :-)

Hi François,

A long time ago all capitals was the only way these keywords were
supported.  Since then they have become case insensitive and I use all
lowercase for most of my keywords now (#+begin_src:, #+begin_example:
etc)

With fontification these stand out enough now and the capitalization can
be removed.  I still tend to use allcaps at the top of the file for
things like #+FILETAGS:, #+TITLE:, #+OPTIONS, etc but the blocks
embedded in my text are all lowercase now.

I wouldn't spend too much time agonizing over the 'right' way - do what
works for you :)

HTH,
Bernt