Tim Cross writes: > Russell Adams writes: >> That Org can also be used to export to other formats is both a >> blessing and a curse. Org can only do high level constructs in the >> languages it exports to, and really should only be expected to do just >> that. It's a paper thin macro or template over a much more complicated >> document language. … >> The exporting is the difference in expectations. Org's lightweight >> markup is quite simple, and the documents it produces should be as >> well. This is much like the original HTML specification. Look how >> complicated it is to write HTML now with CSS and Javascript emulating >> mundane functions after decades of bolt on "standards". Yes, the language-specific hacks are outside its scope. When I do #+latex: … or @@html:…@@ I am in the export formats. What should not happen is that >>> Please do not make org-mode volatile.¹ >> … >> I think our maintainers have done an excellent job of minimizing the >> impact of any changes. Yes, they have. That’s why I wrote that it is a too rarely highlighted strength, that Emacs is stable. >> However I only export Org to be backwardly compatible with itself, not >> the languages it makes exports to. One of the big strengths of org-mode is in its integrations. When the languages change that it exports to, it cannot do much. But where they don’t, an update of org-mode should not break the export. From the expectations-side, that’s the extended 80/20 rule: 80% of your users only use 20% of the features¹, but they don’t all use the same 20%. So everytime you break something that’s not in the core 20%, you lose some users until only a small core is left that actually did not use anything outside those 20%. ¹: for org-mode it migh rather be 5% :-) > As you point out, the big benefit of org mode is that the files are > plain text. This means you will always be able to 'fix' any issues which > arise from change. It might not be convenient and you may be frustrated > by such change, but you will likely have a much better outcome than you > would with any other document formatting system which is not based on > plain text. Yes — that’s also one of the reasons why I’m using org-mode. It’s awesome integrations and tooling are why I use org-mode instead of markdown or asciidoc or similar. It binds all my work in Emacs together. Best wishes, Arne -- Unpolitisch sein heißt politisch sein, ohne es zu merken. draketo.de