Re: [O] (no subject)

[Suvayu Ali]

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 08, 2013 at 10:19:56PM +0100, Nicolas Goaziou wrote:
> address@hidden (T.F. Torrey) writes:
> >
> > Org, on the other hand, seems to be moving away from that in many ways.
> > Headlines must start with stars because I might someday post something
> > on the web and it wouldn't work for someone else?  Other tools might not
> > recognize my file correctly?  A developer of some other tool might
> > someday have a problem?  These are not good reasons for limiting what I
> > can do with my own Org files.

[...]

> My point of view is the following: Org (as a format) definition
> shouldn't depend on Emacs. It should be totally parseable by any
> language (which is not the case actually, since syntax relies on
> variables defined in Emacs). IOW, we should work to make it a real
> plain-text markup format.

This discussion comes up again and again over the years.  Every time the
conclusion has been, there are many who want to use other characters
instead of a star but the rational is always cosmetic.  And in the end
people end up agreeing it is not worth the pain.

To give you an example of breakage, after long whining github started
supporting org file formatting for READMEs via org-ruby (even source
blocks I think!).  Do you expect we can have similar support if
something as fundamental as the headline is not well defined?  Other
possible breakages could be in org-merge-driver, VimOrganizer, org-sync,
some of the collaborative editing projects that have been spawning, and
the list goes on ...

FWIW, assuming that the rational behind this feature request is
cosmetic, there was a proposal to implement this as overlays.  So the
file still uses *-s but a user can customise how they are displayed.  I
think this addresses almost all requests in this category (majority
being "I want really cool UTF characters instead of boring old
asterisk").  If someone is interested in implementing this, I'm pretty
sure the maintainers would give that a serious consideration for
inclusion.  Changing the file format on the other hand is a no go
amongst many of the users (myself included) and developers alike.

Hope my 2¢ shed some light on the implications of a change like this.

Cheers,

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.