[emacs-berlin] Pushing org-mode

[Rasmus]

Andreas Röhler <andreas.roehler at easy-emacs.de> writes:

> However, org-mode has some limitations: basic features use hardcoded
> characters, notably the star, (codepoint 42, #o52, #x2a). Other chars
> are employed as formatters. This bites, if the code itself needs this
> chars. The emacs-org mailing list receives respective
> complaints/questions.
>
> Just to give an example:
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2011-02/msg01385.html
> And yes, there is always a way around in Emacs...
>
> The surprising thing here: there is not need to hardcode this. Why not
> use a customizable variable instead?

Because of the Org format¹.  A couple of other projects reads Org files.
Notably org-ruby as employed by e.g. GitLab and maybe some other popular
git hosts.  Some proprietary android program is also using the Org format.
I even wrote preliminary TeXWorks support for the Org format.

In the past Org was more customizable.  E.g. "*·*" read "a fontifier
defaulting to bold".  Now it *is* bold, though you can still hack around
it on a backend basis.

> As already maintaining several large packages, notable python-mode.el,
> https://gitlab.com/groups/python-mode-devs, hesitate to start this at
> my own.
>
> Maybe it fits as a community project?  Should someone want to learn
> coding in Emacs Lisp, this would be an excellent opportunity doing it
> on the job... :)

If the desire it to have it merged upstream I’d encourage discussions on
Org ML.  I don’t want to discourage it, but I think devs prefer a more
strict interpretation of the format rather than flexibility.  Consider the
20 types of Markdown that’s around by now...

Rasmus

Footnotes: 
¹   http://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html

-- 
Human: An animal that complicates things more than strictly necessary