Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:

> Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> Meanwhile, Emacs development continues and new features/capabilities
>>> continue to be added. In particular, a new feature is added which is
>>> extremely powerful and would be a huge benefit for Emacs org-mode users.
>>> However, there is a problem. In order to take advantage of this new
>>> feature, significant changes are required for the specification. This
>>> will result in implementations requiring considerable work in order to
>>> update them to the new specification.
>>
>> I disagree. We already need to care about back-compatibility of Org
>> syntax (think of org documents written years ago). Major changes to
>> syntax are very unlikely even without considering third-party software.
>> And, by the way, remember the existing "third party" Elisp packages
>> (think of Org roam, for example). We do not want to break them.
>>
>
> Backwards compatibility is important and changes should never be done
> lightly. However, that doesn't mean they don't occur (we have already
> had breaking changes, so old org files are likely to have issues
> already). Backwards compatibility can also become a burden and

I already spent several hours fixing old presentations, because of org
format changes, so I want to put in a strong vote for backwards
compatibility.

If you have 1400 slides of lectures, all carefully laid out to convey
information as best as possible, and you realize a few days before the
lecture when you want to update them that the layout is broken, because
of some minor change in interpretation of empty headlines in org-beamer
export so you have to go over each slide individually to make sure that
nothing is cut off and no layout is broken — and check the compile to
latex many times until the layout is working again — that is a huge
cost.

Best wishes,
Arne
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