On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 4:22 AM, Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> wrote:

One thing to be aware of: there is an ongoing work by Nicolas to write a
parser (see org-element.el in contrib/lisp/ from the git repo).  It is
already quite useful -- and used in the new exporters (e.g. org-e-latex.el)

One nice side-effect of having this parser is that we will be able to
document the syntax of Org files more clearly.  Actually, org-element.el
*is* such a description, but we need to make it widely available as a
documentation page (on Worg).

Bastien,

I've looked at org-element.el and don't really see how it will make writing other Org Mode to HTML converter easier. org-element.el is, well it's elisp. Very elispy. No surprise but I'm not sure that it can easily be converted to another language.

Is Nicolas working from a grammar? I think an Org Mode grammar will make writing parsers much easier. Perhaps I'm just old-school but I think that generating an Org Mode to HTML converter in another language would be dramatically simplified by an Org Mode grammar semantic annotations.

Neil

PS: I've been looking at Org Mode utilities in various languages and none of them seem to handle any sizable portion of Org Mode to HTML conversion. It seems that there is little for us to use as a starting point.