From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Samuel Wales Subject: Comments and control lines (# vs. #+) Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 10:02:58 -0700 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:48224) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SXExm-0001H1-Di for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 23 May 2012 13:03:11 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SXExg-0003Lm-QF for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 23 May 2012 13:03:05 -0400 Received: from mail-qa0-f48.google.com ([209.85.216.48]:55675) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SXExg-0003L2-Jq for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Wed, 23 May 2012 13:03:00 -0400 Received: by qady23 with SMTP id y23so4547005qad.14 for ; Wed, 23 May 2012 10:02:58 -0700 (PDT) List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Nicolas Goaziou Cc: Daniel Schoepe , emacs-orgmode@gnu.org The following, which is general and I wrote a long time ago, might also be relevant to the recent thread on comments breaking lists. === There might be really good reasons for the #+ comment convention in Org, but I am not sure what they are. So please bear with me. This list is not complete or minimal. Please disregard the items you don't like. === Here are some of the reasons I prefer # to #+ as a consistent commenting scheme for Org. 1) #+ is not as standard as # 2) there are tools for commenting and uncommenting regions with #, but not with #+ 3) many users have their own tools that do not understand #+ 4) imported (or pasted) text will often have # commenting and this will need special processing to make it work with Org 5) fill functions and packages often don't understand #+ 6) plain # works in column 0 in Org, leading to user expectation that it will behave consistently in other columns as it does in most other languages that use # 7) parsing commented comments is more complicated and error-prone when both are used 8) internal and external parsers might or might not expect a more standard commenting scheme. 9) indented #+ is not colored as a comment or a control line 10) it is natural to want to do a block comment on a section of a list without breaking list structure. there are built-in tools for this. 11) it is natural to want to do an indented comment on a single list item at the same level of indentation as the bullet 12) there are tools for auto-fill and indentation within comments that take into account # but not #+ 13) some parsers probably expect a single character 14) internal and external parsers might want a special-case-free commenting scheme 15) #+ indicates an Org control line, so using it for comments overloads the syntax Hope it's of some use. Thanks. Samuel -- The Kafka Pandemic: http://thekafkapandemic.blogspot.com