Re: Thoughts on the standardization of Org

[Greg Minshall <minshall@umich.edu>]

Eric,

i was thinking of replying to your earlier post on the power of emacs.
now i guess i'll ask my question or make my vague point or whatever.

i wonder if it's possible (ignoring the possible utiltiy) to divide org
mode into two (maybe three?) things.

first is "org mode as a document structuring [hierarchy, tables, lists]
and markup [links, ??? -- maybe it's all part of "document structure"]
technique.

(versus, possible "third": agenda, task manager. [that i'm not all that
familiar with.])

versus org mode as a computing environment (== "org mode as life", which
is to a large extent true for me, as well).

the border between these divisions is, of necessity (i suspect) fairly
fluid.

but, i wonder if one could draw a useful boundary at "babel execute".
i.e., on one side, one is definitely in "computing environment".

(and, in my notes on your earlier e-mail: "what about calc, used in
table formulae?".  which you also mention.)

i'm neutral on the issue of standardization (though i agree with Daniele
Nicolodi that standardization might not bring what everyone wants).  i
will note that for many years the C language was not a formal
"standard", but people figured out how to write "portable" code that
worked with the major compilers and runtime environments.  (it's nicer
today that, e.g., C is an international standard, but that wasn't the
first step towards "interoperability".)

my bias is i'd love to see "everybody" able to export *and* tangle an
org document, possibly within a limited subset, such as those that don't
require babel-execute for that purpose.

cheers, Greg