From: "Nicholas Savage" <nick@nicksavage.ca>
To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Re Org 9.4 is out. Can you help? // breaking apart Org Mode
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2020 09:00:39 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <ed251152-da62-4ef7-83a9-d1424a56b37e@www.fastmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m2imcfmk2n.fsf@bydasein.com>
Hi there,
I'm new to the development scene (contributed my first patch to Emacs last week or so) and a new developer in general who has been looking to get involved. I saw Bastien's post on Hacker News yesterday and thought that if Org Mode is looking for contributors it would be a good place for me, since I use Org Mode frequently. I have a rudimentary understanding of elisp, but I'm looking to improve by actually contributing.
I'm just wondering about some of these ideas, mostly from an administrative point of view. I think they're fantastic ideas, such as moving code from Org Mode back up to Outline mode. I'm just looking to wrap my head around how this is supposed to work (I already understand submitting patches and can read the READMEs, so don't worry about that).
If I am looking to do that though, would I be submitting a patch both to Emacs and one to Org Mode? At what point are Org Mode commits merged into Emacs? I guess my concern is that these changes could be breaking for users of Org Mode if they're not also using the most recent master of Emacs as well.
Nick
On Tue, Sep 15, 2020, at 06:05, William Rankin via General discussions about Org-mode. wrote:
> Hello,
>
> At the request of Bastien I'm sending on these ideas regarding the
> future of Org Mode development. I'm also copying emacs-devel since they
> might be interested too.
>
> Org Mode and Emacs would benefit greatly from the codebase being broken
> apart, not unlike how an antitrust suit breaks apart a big company for
> the good of society!
>
> It is my view that many parts of Org code could be implemented as minor
> modes or independent libraries. This would encourage cleaner, more
> modular and more easy to understand code. It would provide an
> exponential benefit for other elisp programs. And by splitting up the
> codebase you allow contributors more a sense of ownership and emotional
> investment in the things to which they provide their time/effort.
>
> A few suggestions...
>
> * outline
>
> Org Mode builds on top of outline, but those improvements are isolated
> to Org, e.g. Org has wonderful outline cycling, but if someone wants
> outline cycling in another major mode they need to implement this again
> (likely just duplicating Org's existing code). Ideally all of this could
> be ported back to outline itself. This would slim down the Org codebase
> while benefiting all other outline-based major modes.
>
> * orgtbl-mode
>
> This is a good attempt at implementing some of Org's functionality as a
> minor mode. Ideally orgtbl could be ported back to table and enough
> flexibility added to make it compatible with Markdown Mode tables
> (currently implemented with its own table stuff).
>
> * source blocks
>
> Org's source block functionality could be spun off into its own library.
> In theory it could work just like outline (where a major mode defines
> its own heading regexp). A major mode would define its own source block
> delimiter regexpes.
>
> Ideally any major mode writing for a plain text markup format would
> just:
> (require 'source-blocks)
> then have all the same functionality of Org source blocks. Any
> improvements would then benefit everyone.
>
> * org-toggle-time-stamp-overlays / org-toggle-link-display
>
> This functionality, although small within Org, could be very nice as
> their own minor modes. Displaying dates/times with custom format is easy
> enough... URLs a bit harder.
>
> I went so far as to try this with varying degrees of success:
> https://github.com/rnkn/prettify-date-time-mode
> https://github.com/rnkn/prettify-url-mode
>
> * org-link
>
> I see a lot of interest for that Zettelkasten method, with many
> different implementations. What's stopping Org's cross-linking being
> implemented as its own global minor mode, independent of .org files?
>
> * electric-pair-mode
>
> Org currently uses org-emphasize for its emphasis pairs, but could it
> just use electric-pair-mode? Would this prompt some improvements to
> electric-pair-mode? This would benefit everyone.
>
>
> I don't mean to suggest that the above ideas are things I'm particularly
> hanging out for, I'm just trying to sketch an ideas of beneficial ways
> Org could be broken apart.
>
> Finally, I'm pretty sure breaking apart Org will mean it will be much
> easier to maintain -- it will be far easier to find one or two people
> passionate about maintaining perhaps a source-blocks library than the
> entirety of Org. If Org's development takes this more modular direction,
> where libraries are designed to work independently of the rest of the
> code, then it won't need an elite few people who understand the whole
> codebase.
>
> I hope some of these ideas were either valuable or provide valuable
> discussion.
>
> --
> William Rankin
> https://bydasein.com
>
> ~ The single best thing you can do for the world is to delete your
> social media accounts.
>
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-09-15 13:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-09-15 10:05 Re Org 9.4 is out. Can you help? // breaking apart Org Mode William Rankin via General discussions about Org-mode.
2020-09-15 13:00 ` Nicholas Savage [this message]
2020-09-15 13:49 ` Russell Adams
2020-09-23 8:28 ` Bastien
2020-09-23 14:44 ` Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide
2020-09-23 8:25 ` Bastien
2020-09-23 8:21 ` Bastien
2020-09-23 13:03 ` arthur miller
2020-09-23 13:27 ` Ihor Radchenko
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: https://www.orgmode.org/
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=ed251152-da62-4ef7-83a9-d1424a56b37e@www.fastmail.com \
--to=nick@nicksavage.ca \
--cc=emacs-orgmode@gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).