Collin Funk <[email protected]> writes:

>> I suppose one tricky part is the regexp to cover all formats, I'm not
>> sure '(*|#) Noteworthy ...' work for all?
>
> Actually, I realized now it is a bit more complex than that. Here is a
> sample top level header/title in each language.
>
> Markdown:
>
>     # Header

Which we added recently.

> Org mode:
>
>     * Header

Which was our traditional style, so I guess gnulib already had some
preference for org mode.  It is also consistent with Emacs outline mode.

One issue here is if we should support *.org extension or merely assume
that NEWS without any extension is in orgmode/outline format?  Adding
*.org shouldn't be that hard.

> AsciiDoc:
>
>    = Header

Supporting this shouldn't be too hard.

> reStructuredText:
>
>     ======
>     Header
>     ======
>
> Note that the overlining is optional and the line length must be greater
> than or equal to the heading text.
>
> So, I would ignore reStructuredText until someone actually voices a
> desire to use it. Otherwise it will make searching for headers more
> work.

+1

> I liked the format the few times I have used it, but I am happy enough
> using Emacs 'outline-mode'. So I have no plans to change anything.

Outline mode uses '* ...' for headers, similar to org mode.  I have -*-
outline -*- in most my NEWS files, which I removed when moving to
NEWS.md.  I think I actually prefer orgmode/outline, for similar reason
in the blog I linked to.  My Emacs doesn't have a markdown mode setup
for *.md but opening a *.org file looks nice directly.  Another argument
for orgdown and *.org.

>> Another matter is the preference order if there are multiple files?
>> This will be opinionated but probably mostly irrelevant since few people
>> have multiple files with different content.  *.org, *.md, *.adoc, *.rst,
>> NEWS?
>
> My opinion is we should use whatever one is a regular file, i.e., not a
> symbolic link.
>
> If someone runs into issues because they actually use multiple formats,
> we should try to convince them to clean it up. :)

Right, but should we warn or error when that happens?  That seems a bit
excessive.  If we don't warn/error, there will be some implicit
preference order anyway.  I think we can ignore this though, and suggest
that maintainers should have multiple files NEWS.md NEWS.org NEWS.adoc
etc with different content.

/Simon

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