Andros Fenollosa <[email protected]> writes:

> Sorry, I was waiting for a response from the community. My mistake.

Well. There was no response, so adding more elaboration could encourage
that response. But nope. Still nobody is bothered enough to reply.
I will mark this as explicit request for comments.

> The official Org Syntax specification (orgmode.org/worg/org-syntax.html) 
> defines headlines with a clear structure: STARS KEYWORD PRIORITY COMMENT 
> TITLE TAGS. The definition of STARS is unambiguous:
>
>>> A string consisting of one or more asterisks... suffixed by a space 
> character. The number of asterisks is used to define the level of the 
> heading. Space character after asterisks is mandatory.
>
> Furthermore, TITLE is marked as (optional) in the same specification. 
> This implies that a headline without a title should be syntactically 
> valid, but the current implementation forces you to write * (with an 
> invisible space at the end) to achieve this.

Correct.

> My change is surgical; it corrects the regex. Furthermore, it doesn't 
> eliminate the current functionality but rather opens up the possibility 
> of empty titles. It doesn't break compatibility.

It eliminates the possibility to have
***
without triggering a new heading.
Not a big deal, but potentially breaking for existing documents that
happen to rely on current syntax.
I used "***" (triple) intentionally, because it looks like separator
used in some books.

> At Org Social we are working on including an artificial space in the 
> titles, making it more complex to maintain due to user configurations 
> that have hooks to clean up spaces at the end of lines.

Applying such hooks in Org and even Markdown is a mistake.
In Markdown, double space, at the end of line is hard line break (akin
\\ in Org).

Similar in yaml.
So, I do not really see this as an argument to change Org syntax.

> Therefore, I kindly request that my proposed change be included.

I generally agree that not requiring trailing space would be cleaner,
but, unless there is broader interest, I am not going to risk breaking
existing Org files.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode maintainer,
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>

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