On org-syntax and IANA MIME type registration

[Timothy]

Hi All,

With the recent mention of the text/org mime type, and registering it as an IANA
in-tree MIME type in particular, I’d like to draw attention to this part of
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6838.html#section-3.1>:

> When review is required, a change request may be denied if it renders entities
> that were valid under the previous definition invalid under the new 
> definition.

While the org-syntax document is a work in progress to accurately describe the
current state of affairs, there are currently supported syntactic elements that
I think are broadly seen as “would be nice if we didn’t do that”. For example:
the special switch syntax in babel headers, and support for $-maths.

This does make me wonder if we should actually try to register a slightly
different org-syntax to “what org-mode parses”, without these elements that we
now think we’re better off without, but have org-mode still parse them.

My thinking is we don’t want to lock ourselves into a situation where we would
/like/ to deprecate certain syntax over the long term, but are unable to do so
without diverging from the IANA-registered specification, and can’t register the
change in syntax because of the paragraph I’ve quoted.

All the best,
Timothy

-- 
Timothy (‘tecosaur’/‘TEC’), Org mode contributor.
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/tec>.