Re: Google Summer of Code -- 3 Org projects for our first participation!

[Bastien <bzg@gnu.org>]

Hi Neil,

Neil Smithline <emacs-orgmode@neilsmithline.com> writes:

> In the end, I think the way that the best way the list could help improve
> Github's support of Org files would be to provide two things:
>
> 1) Come up with a prioritized list of features that would be nice to be
> supported by Github. This may just be the most used features of Org Mode or
> it may be something special to how Org Mode is used in Github. I'm not
> sure.

This is a good idea.  We could start a page on Worg for this -- if you
want to edit Worg, please send me your public key in private and I'll
give you access.

When you're done with a preliminary list of yours, perhaps inviting the
github developers could boost both the brainstorming and the development
of org-ruby.

> 2) Have a few people look at the org-ruby gem and then brainstorm about the
> best way to proceed. This would either require people who know Ruby or more
> experienced software engineers. I modified the gem and learned Ruby by
> reading the source for this gem and occasionally looking something up in a
> reference manual. But I'd bet I've been coding longer than list members
> such as Thorsten have been alive.

If there are Ruby hackers around, that might work.

But since org-ruby is widely used by a (big?) company like github,
perhaps this company could lead such effort.

> I really don't know enough about the culture of the Org Mode developers to
> know if this is possible or not. The alternative is that I can just keep
> adding features as I need them and think I can implement them.

That would be nice.

One thing to be aware of: there is an ongoing work by Nicolas to write a
parser (see org-element.el in contrib/lisp/ from the git repo).  It is
already quite useful -- and used in the new exporters (e.g. org-e-latex.el)

One nice side-effect of having this parser is that we will be able to 
document the syntax of Org files more clearly.  Actually, org-element.el
*is* such a description, but we need to make it widely available as a 
documentation page (on Worg).

Thanks,

-- 
 Bastien