Re: [org-babel] Does org-babel needs some simplification?

[Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com>]

Hi,

many thanks for the nice thoughts and posts.
To sum up, I think it might not be easy to remove parts of org-babel
since it is difficult to determine and a highly personal decision to
define what is important and what is unimportant.

Nevertheless Carten and Eric pointed out that the overhelming feature
set of org-babel, the fact that you could achive the same thing in
different ways and the missing of a "org-babel for dummies" might be a
problem for new org-babel users as well as for infrequent users.

Recently org-mode got his "org-mode for dummies" short manual. I guess
in the case of org-babel it might make more sense to create rather
typical examples for particular languages. This manuals could consist of
a typical example and of a template for this example which makes it easy
for beginners to fill in there own code and text.

Since Eric and the other org-babel and org-mode contributors are already
fully occupied with keeping org-babel and org-mode running, I would
suggest to collect a group of org-babel manual supporters. If possible
for each supported language one. This group could write up standard
situations for the particular language and maintain those manuscripts
whenever org-babel introduces some changes. In fact this group could
also serve as a kind of beta-testers for org-babel by trying on request
from e.g., Eric to compile there examples with the new org-babel
versions. I know there are some standard tests but I guess the do not go
that fare.

I guess, the manual maintainers do NOT have to be experts in both
org-mode resp. org-babel nore they have to be experts in the supported
language. Its more about the kind of standard stuff and maybe, to
complex stuff even scare people. More things like "How to create a
measurement protocol with org-babel and python", How to evaluate and
report data analysis with org-babel and R", etc.

To make it more easy for both the readers and the maintainers a kind of
template for such manuals might be helpful. This would help to find the
same information at the same locations and make a comparison e.g.
between the use of R and python possible.

I'am not an expert for both org-* and python and I'm often very limited
in time. However, I would try to maintain a "python and org-babel" manual.

If there are more people who are interested to act as a kind of manual
maintainers I would like to discuss with you how a template might look like.

Best regards

Torsten



On 06/29/2010 12:51 PM, Torsten Wagner wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> as a (quite, but happy) org-bable user of the first hour I followed up
> the development process actively.
> Nevertheless, some weeks or months pass where I had no need for
> org-babel (yes, really strange I know).
> 
> Whenever I come back to org-babel, it takes me a huge amount of time to
> find myself back again in the syntax. Often I spend a day or two heavily
> reading the website and manual again to figure out how to make it working.
> 
> There are so many options. tangle files, results, scripting mode,
> sessions, noweb, lot, etc.
> 
> Just yesterday, I fighted again to make a simple python script running
> as desired to generate an automatic report. I did this dozen of times
> and even by using some old report as template I still struggle with it.
> Comparing old reports I noticed that I did it in many different ways.
> Tangeling all snipplets, using noweb syntax, with and without session
> support, etc.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I really love org-babel and I think it is really
> great. I just wonder wether it has become too complex and too difficult
> to use to attract most of the org-mode people. Esp. considering people
> who use it not on a regular basis.
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Torsten