From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Christian Moe <mail@christianmoe.com>
Subject: Re: how to change the headline starter *
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 11:59:19 +0200
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To: Aankhen <aankhen@gmail.com>
Cc: Philipp Haselwarter <philipp.haselwarter@gmx.de>, Org mailing list <emacs-orgmode@gnu.org>, Pieter Praet <pieter@praet.org>

On 7/17/11 10:08 AM, Aankhen wrote (in response to Pieter Prat):
>> What the OP is suggesting effectively nullifies the separation between
>> >  model and view in that it would allow changing Org-mode's outlining
>> >  markup at its very core, potentially leading to a wildgrowth of "custom"
>> >  markup formats which could hardly be called "plain text" anymore, not to
>> >  mention the avalanche of PEBCAK-related bug reports it may unleash.
> I’m very confused.  Couldn’t the compatibility and standardization
> problems be avoided entirely by indicating the character at the top of
> the file if it differs from the norm?
>
> And why would, say, changing the headline starter from ‘*’ to ‘+’ make
> it any less of a plain text format?  Or, for that matter, changing it
> to ‘→’?  These are all valid UTF-8 characters that any Unicode-aware
> application is expected to understand and deal with.
>

Fwiw, I disagree: I think this is to confuse syntax with view.

Model = entry with heading
Syntax = *
View = * (colorized)

Compare HTML:

Model = heading, 1st level
Syntax = <h1>...</h1>
View = larger font-size, bold

With CSS, HTML allows you to make headings look like anything you 
want. (Yes, they could even begin with a star!) But noone would 
request the right to write them (h1)...(/h1) or \h1{...} instead, just 
because they don't like the way angle brackets look. Yet that's the 
kind of change that has been discussed in this thread.

In Org-mode, I assume the view could be changed with overlays, at a 
cost in efficiency. If that were implemented, Harven could type stars, 
but see bullets. He should still type stars because they're part of 
the syntax, not of the view.

There is /some/ support for prettifying headlines already: 
[[info:org#Clean view]]

Me, I'm fine with the status quo: This is /not/ a feature request.

Yours,
Christian