From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Thomas S. Dye Subject: Re: emacs & org mode for scholars questions Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 06:48:13 -1000 Message-ID: References: <55dbff57.2491420a.591b6.5304@mx.google.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:51284) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZUHOq-0003Pu-H5 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 25 Aug 2015 12:48:41 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZUHOm-0002og-Al for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 25 Aug 2015 12:48:40 -0400 Received: from gproxy2-pub.mail.unifiedlayer.com ([69.89.18.3]:41053) by eggs.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZUHOm-0002m2-2Z for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 25 Aug 2015 12:48:36 -0400 In-reply-to: <55dbff57.2491420a.591b6.5304@mx.google.com> 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: Erik Hetzner Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org Aloha Erik, Erik Hetzner writes: > Hi all, > > I am going to be giving a talk on how Emacs can help support scholars, > especially those who are using plain text and doing reproducible > research, at “Emacsconf 2015” in San Francisco this Saturday (the > 29th). > > I have done some work on managing references using Emacs & pandoc, but > what I’d like to focus on in this talk is why Emacs is a great tool > for scholarly writers (both scientists and humanists) and what Emacs > developers should be concentrating on to make it an even better tool > for the scholarly community. > > I’m wondering if you any of you might have any suggestions about what > you would like to see Emacs do better to support the scholarly writing > community. If you'll be talking to Emacs developers, then my advice would be to thank them for their good work. The stable platform they've developed supports the most congenial scholarly writing environment I can imagine. >From my point of view, most of the development action that directly affects scholarly writers takes place outside of Emacs proper in the various modes and packages that run on top of it, especially Org mode. The shifting community of volunteers that regularly congregates around Org mode development is open to and interested in the needs of the scholarly writing community. This is one of the lasting legacies established by Org mode's creator, Carsten Dominik, a scholar and writer himself. Early on, he recognized the potential of Babel and the support and guidance he offered Eric Shulte and Dan Davison were integral to the success of that audacious project. When Nicolas Goaziou rebuilt the export framework a few years ago, the last piece of the puzzle was in place. Now, a single plain text computer file on my computer regularly contains reading notes, a laboratory notebook, work schedules, data sets, computer code designed to analyze the data, and one or more scholarly papers ready to be exported to publishers' specs. How incredible is that! >From the end-user's perspective, the Achilles' heel is the staggering complexity right at the surface. Of course, this is part of what makes Emacs a great development platform. But for the scholarly writer the complexity can be daunting, and it is here that I think Emacs development might give more help to mode and package developers. The customization facilities of Emacs are fine if you're willing to spend time trying to grasp the fine-grained structure of the Emacs environment, and want your customization to apply globally, but in my experience this is a consistent source of frustration. When I set a variable I'm reasonably confident that my setting will solve a particular issue I'm having, but I lack the ability to understand what other effects it might have when I'm working later on another task with other issues. Over the years I've come to set most variables locally, either individually and directly or indirectly in batches by executing code I keep in the library of Babel. It would be great to have a customization tool whose effects are buffer local, sensitive to the task at hand, and easily accessed by the user. But, really, I can't imagine doing my scholarly writing outside of Emacs. All the best, Tom -- Thomas S. Dye http://www.tsdye.com