I'm not sure. Obviously, we'll see how it works out in practice, but research has shown that even "basic" structured text languages are hard for end-users and consumers to grasp. To most people, the flexibility in text is its lack of structure, which allow people to be creative and express themselves.
org-mode doesn't enforce any structure beyond some basic syntactic elements to mark free-flowing text as items (bullet points), and while it comes with a stock set of keywords (TODO, DONE), these aren't hardcoded at all and most complex org-mode flows add their own keywords or things like that. The actual words, and the order of them, doesn't matter. So I feel that a structured text-based approach would simply fail because it doesn't allow for such flexibility. New research is always welcome, and if you manage to get random end-users to fluently understand your language system through concentrated user testing, I'll gladly welcome it. On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 11:02 AM, אנטולי קרסנר <tomback...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > > I'm an individual not working on any Gnome module. I'll try not to get > into much detail (likely to fail on this one), but here's the idea I > have: > > After reading about existing GTD software tools I made the following > conclusions: > > * There are GUI tools > * There are plain-text solutions > * There are pen-and-paper solutions > * There are text-based applications > > GUI tools have lots of features and visual widgets, but they somehow > fail to satisfy most people. At the same time, plain text seems to > become more and more popular. After reading I made these conclusions: > > * Each person has her own way of thinking, her own way of how the brain > works. Therefore, each person should have a personally tailored solution > > * GUI tools, and GTD tools in general, tend to make the false assumption > of "everyone is like me" and "one size fits all", which is why most > tools fail to become widely popular. > > * Emacs Org-Mode is quite successful as a GTD tool, thanks to its > flexibility and extensibility, but lacks an intuitive interface, which > limits its adoption despite the success of Org-Mode > > * A next-generation tool should have the extensibility of a plain-text > system, and the convenience, ease-of-use and efficiency of a visual tool > > > > Therefore, I decided to create a language for definition of properties > and classes, intended for be used for describing tasks, timelines, > projects, etc. This language is easy enough for non-programmers to use, > and yet is expressive enough for practical use. It borrows concepts from > RDF, OWL and scripting languages. > > On top of this language there will be a set of text-based tools allowing > easy manipulation of the text. It means users can edit the files in > plain text, but also have convenient tools and utilities for easier > processing and visualization, similar to Org-Mode. > > On top of that there may be task/project-related definitions, a > specialized text editor and/or Gedit plugins, and a flexible GUI app > which replaces the "one for all" concept with a "personally tailored to > a user's mental model" concept, which seems to work very successfully > with plain text and Emacs Org-Mode. > > > Existing free software I found: > > - Gedit (Gnome's plain text editor, extensible with plugins) > - Emacs Org-Mode > > That's all. All other tools, including all GTD and To-do apps for > Gnome/GNU, are either scripts intended for power users, or have a > limited scope which is not flexible enough to customize. > > > An existing GUI app for GTD called Getting Things Gnome (GTG) has great > potential, but I'd like to back it up using a flexible text-based > approach which is then used to describe semantic entities and attach > them to program objects. This would supply both the flexibility of text, > the convenience of GUI and automatic translation to RDF, which means > instant Semantic Desktop integration (using Tracker and Zeitgeist). > > > *** The Question *** > > My question is, what do you think? Does this idea sound useful? To me > personally, it seems to fill the gap between plain text (which has no > visualization and productivity utilities) and convenient GUI (which > current is mostly not flexible enough). > > NOTE: Non-free software already exists, which uses plain text as a > backend, such as Taskpaper: > http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper > > > regards, > Anatoly > > _______________________________________________ > desktop-devel-list mailing list > desktop-devel-list@gnome.org > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list > -- Jasper
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