Re: Capitalisation and good taste ?

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Bernt Hansen <bernt@norang.ca> wrote:

> pinard@iro.umontreal.ca (François Pinard) writes:
> 
> > I really have mixed feelings about capitalisation of #+WORDS, and wonder
> > if some consensus and good taste has developed over time among Org mode
> > users.  What is the collective wisdom saying as being nicer among:
> >
> > #+LATEX_HEADER:
> > #+Latex_Header:
> > #+LaTeX_HEADER:
> > #+latex_header:
> >
> > etc.
> >
> > I'm just unable to fix myself on any convention, and my own lack of
> > decision irritates me.  I hate changing my mind so often, and my files
> > are already a mess on this particular point.
> >
> > Despite all capitals have the advantage of standing out clearly, I
> > usually don't like any kind of shouting in my files.  If I was writing
> > constants in C code, I would tolerate some exceptions of course, but
> > now, I'm writing documentation.  #+begin_quote and such are just OK in
> > small letters, they really look like shouting otherwise.
> >
> > On the other hand, it seems that #+TITLE, #+AUTHOR and #+EMAIL, and all
> > those things which are high lighted in gray, use capitals only in all
> > examples I've seen so far.  Maybe the pale high lighting is a
> > counter-measure so it gets tolerable.
> >
> > It seems that capitals are also favoured for #+OPTIONS, #+BIND, and many
> > other things (high lighted in red), yet I got the impression that parts
> > of the documentation (which look "newer" or "younger" to me on the
> > average) are getting away from the all capital conventions.  I do not
> > really know.
> >
> > The writing "LaTeX" has the nicety of being the proper way to write
> > LaTeX, which is mandated by Lamport (after TeX has been mandated by
> > Knuth).  And I will not even speak of the revolutionary iTex, because I
> > do not have a bell handy! :-) If any of you are not aware of it, make
> > sure you do not miss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKaI78K_rgA (you
> > then need half an hour of free time to listen to the video).
> >
> > Not helping is that the manual and the Wiki are not using capitalisation
> > consistently between files, and even sometimes in the same area of a
> > same file.  They are not giving me clear advice about what is proper
> > style.
> >
> > Maybe this has already been debated to death?  I do not know for Org
> > mode files, yet I know that style issues are usually flame-prone.  I'm
> > surely not trying to start any kind of war.  Nevertheless, I would like
> > if the manual and the Wiki select and document a preferred convention,
> > and were amended to be very consistent on it.  So, I'll have a clear
> > model to follow. :-)
> 
> Hi François,
> 
> A long time ago all capitals was the only way these keywords were
> supported.  Since then they have become case insensitive and I use all
> lowercase for most of my keywords now (#+begin_src:, #+begin_example:
> etc)
> 
> With fontification these stand out enough now and the capitalization can
> be removed.  I still tend to use allcaps at the top of the file for
> things like #+FILETAGS:, #+TITLE:, #+OPTIONS, etc but the blocks
> embedded in my text are all lowercase now.
> 
> I wouldn't spend too much time agonizing over the 'right' way - do what
> works for you :)
> 

... and check out "easy templates" to get consistent capitalization
*and* speed up your typing:

(info "(org) Easy Templates")

Nick