Ken Mankoff <mank...@gmail.com> writes:
On 2020-11-03 at 00:24 -08, David Rogers
<davidandrewrog...@gmail.com> wrote...
I disagree (in principle, not just because it would be
difficult) with
the idea of “expanding beyond Emacs”. Org-mode benefits greatly
from
current and future Emacs development, and asking to standardize
“just
the parts that are not Emacs” would cause Org-mode to lose that
huge
advantage. Org-mode relies heavily on the editor it’s built on,
and if
it ceased to rely on Emacs, it would be forced to rely on
“nothing at
all” instead. Not only that, but for Org-mode users being able
to
count on all of Emacs is a big part of why it works. This means
separating Org-mode from Emacs is a “lose-lose” idea.
It seems like you have never used Orgzly or read on Org file on
GitHub. Those are not ideas, but are actual current real-world
win-win implementations of parts of Org outside of Emacs.
More of these would be better.
Everyone on this thread who says you can't separate Org from
Emacs is correct that it is unreasonable to expect a 100 %
bit-compatible and keystroke-compatible experience outside of
Emacs. I don't think that level of re-implementation was what
the OP was suggesting.
Again: GitHub. Orgzly. The conversation should move from "it
can't be done" or "it isn't helpful" (why so much negativity on
this thread?) to
+ What parts can be standardized and re-implemented outside of
Emacs.
+ How do we define graceful failure for the other parts.
+ How do we support 3rd-party implementation in a way that
benefits all of us.
I have used most of what you’re describing. None of what you’re
describing does what the OP was discussing, namely to create a
clean separation between Emacs and Org-mode in the interest of
enabling what might be termed “the full complete official
Org-mode” on non-Emacs editors. Orgzly is a very nice
implementation of a partial viewer and partial editor for a
certain subset of .org files, but it doesn’t aim to be an Emacs
replacement or an authoritative standard. More and better partial
viewers/partial editors, knowing that “the Org-mode standard”
equals “precisely how Emacs Org-mode works at the time the
question is asked”, is a great idea IMO.
Cleaning up a separation between Org-mode and Emacs would
necessarily mean Org-mode would lose the ability to take advantage
of future Emacs development - a de facto permanent feature-freeze.
One of the main advantages of Org-mode is its extensibility, and
leaving that extensibility behind would suddenly remove one of the
major actual reasons that it’s attractive (i.e. “Org-mode can’t do
that yet? Give me half an hour and maybe it will”). Enabling “the
full complete official Org-mode” to run anywhere, would have the
eventual effect of it running nowhere, because no one actually
needs or wants the “It’s Just Markdown On Steroids” list of how to
properly arrange asterisks and pound-signs that would be the
result.
As far as I’m aware, people are currently free to develop
applications that use their personal interpretation of the .org
format, and they should do so. The only thing standardization
would accomplish would be to halt development of the real thing,
or at least impede it.
(That’s unless the standardization includes so much detail, and
the bar is set so high, that the standard becomes impractical to
try to meet anyway.)
--
David Rogers