Re: Org without Emacs?

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

As org is implemented in elisp, there are only two options for
implementing org outside of emacs

1. Implement a full elisp runtime in the alternative envrionment
2. Re-implement org functionality in a different language and runtime.

I think 1 is extremely unlikely, with the possible exception of things
like https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs, which is a re-implementation of
Emacs.

Alternative 2 is more likely and to some extent has been done with
things like beorg and Visual Source Code, which has an extension with
some (minimal) org support.

The problem with re-implementation is that there is a lot of core
functionality built into emacs which is not found in most other
runtimes. Much of what Org does is really take existing Emacs
functionality and wrap it together in a more convenient and consistent
bundle. In other systems, much of this functionality would need to be
implemented from scratch, which would be a non-trivial task. In
addition, keep pace with org development will be difficult for these
clones. 

I expect we will see some of Org's functionality implemented in other
environments, but are unlikely to see a fully compatible and feature
rich version on any other platform. Most likely, we will see some core
ideas make their way into other environments, but they won't be Org mode
- they will be something different which owes much of the inspiration to
Org mode.

If we are lucky, we may see some new good ideas in these other systems
which could be added to Org itself to make it even greater, otherwise
such ports are unlikely to be of any real interest/use to Emacs Org
users.

Tim

Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com> writes:

> Greetings,
>
> Here is an article that might interest some: https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-mode
>
> I'm not sure if the article is entirely successful. Maybe the tools mentioned in it can do some of the things Org does, but are there any that have full Org functionality? I'm not convinced that Org can be divorced from Emacs. Maybe parts of it can be separated.
>
> Scott Randby


-- 
Tim Cross