Re: Bug: org-element does not recognize table.el tables [9.4 (release_9.4-53-g23f941 @ /home/nick/elisp/org-mode/lisp/)]

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi Nick,
>
> Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Consider an Org mode file with a table.el table (which I made by
>> first constructing an Org mode table and then usind `C-c ~' to
>> convert it):
>
> Would it be so bad if org-mode decides to stop supporting table.el tables? 
>
> I don't see the benefit of supporting both Org tables and tables.el tables,
> and it calls for confusion.
>
> What do you and everyone else think?

I don't use table.el tables. The only reason I submitted the bug
report was because I was trying to investigate this Emacs SE question:

   https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/62335/org-mode-export-table-to-latex-with-word-wrap

In the process, I discovered that the LaTeX file was broken and traced
it back to org-element. Note that the manual says:

"Org mode recognizes such tables and exports them properly."

See

   (info "(org) Cooperation") 

So there are three roads ahead as I see it:

- Fix the bug in org-element and make sure that table.el tables are
  exported properly.

- Do not fix the bug. Instead, tear out table.el support from Org mode
  code and fix the manual to say so.

- Do not fix the bug (and do nothing else).

I presume the third choice is distasteful to everybody, but that's
going to be the default choice unless somebody volunteers to do either
of the other two.

Either of the first two choices requires work. From my POV, it does
not matter which of the two is done: if somebody volunteers to do
either, I am not going to object (and I suspect, almost nobody else
will either: if the second course is chosen, there may be some table.el
users who would object to losing it, but if so, they should volunteer
to fix the bug).

My 0.02 kopek.

-- 
Nick

"There are only two hard problems in computer science: cache
invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors." -Martin Fowler