Re: Org mode version 9.7-pre (9.7-pre-n/a-g093879

[Ihor Radchenko]

Jason May <jmay@pobox.com> writes:

> This request was prompted by an issue encounted in org-journal, and it
> probably exists in org-roam and other similar packages.
>
> Ignoring blank lines sounds like a reasonable approach.

It is reasonable, but I am not convinced that it is important enough to
make changes to Org mode syntax.

Allowing blank lines may help with certain types of accidental edits - a
small fraction of possible accidental edits. The benefit is very small.
Too small, IMHO.

> For more significant syntax violations such as your example, perhaps
> org-entry-get and other functions should raise errors instead of
> silently returning nil?

That would require org-entry-get to try searching things that /look
like/ malformed property drawer. This will be (1) slower; (2) defeat the
purpose of changes introduced in Org 8.3
https://orgmode.org/worg/org-release-notes.html#orgaf78411

I am not in favor of such change.

> I'm going to investigate how it might be possible to initiate an org-
> lint if an exception situation was to arise in org-journal.

Org syntax is not restrictive. We deliberately allow people to write
arbitrary text that do not follow strict rules and Org still recognizes
such text as generic text with no special meaning. So, Org mode syntax
has no notion of exceptions.

There are of course common mistakes when writing Org markup. That's why
we have org-lint. However, org-lint is always suggestive - it is an
equivalent of compiler warnings.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
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/yantar92>