[ANN] outorg.el -- reverse Org-Babel

[Thorsten Jolitz <tjolitz@gmail.com>]

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Hi List, 

I would like to announce 'outorg.el', a kind of "reverse Org-Babel".

Literate Programming is great when writing text with some code. It's not so
great when writing code with some (comment) text, since then the direct
approach is lost and the focus seems to be on the 'wrong side'. 

'outorg' is based on the idea that it would be nice to be able to 

1. structure your source-code files like Org-mode files and use all the
   structure editing and navigation commands available. 
2. have the full power of Org-mode available when writing comment parts
   that are longer than the usual one- or two-liners. 

With 'outorg', you can stay in you favorite language's major-mode while
programming, but with a real Org-mode 'look-and-feel', and rapidly
switch to a temporary buffer in Org-mode for some comment editing.
Exiting the temporary buffer then stores the edited comment text back to
the original source-code buffer (out-commented with the language's
'comment-start' character). 

It's still version 0.9, but it works already quite good with Emacs Lisp
(;; *) and PicoLisp (## *), so I thought I present it to the public.
Feedback and Bug-reports are welcome.


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                    ________________________________

                     OUTORG.EL -- REVERSE ORG-BABEL

                            Thorsten Jolitz
                    ________________________________


                             2013-02-11 Mo


Table of Contents
_________________

Org-style outline navigation and comment editing
.. Copyright
.. Credits
.. Commentary
..... What is 'outorg'?
..... Features
.. Emacs Version
.. Github repo
.. Installation
.. ChangeLog
.. Bugs





Org-style outline navigation and comment editing
================================================

Copyright
~~~~~~~~~

  Copyright (C) 2013 Thorsten Jolitz

  This file is not (yet) part of GNU Emacs

  Author: Thorsten Jolitz (format "tjolitz%sgmail%s" "@" ".com")


Credits
~~~~~~~

  This library is based on, or rather an extension of, Per Abrahamsen's
  'out-xtra.el' ([http://tinyurl.com/aql9p97]), and may replace it many
  cases. Some new ideas were taken from Fabrice Niessen's '.emacs'
  ([http://www.mygooglest.com/fni/dot-emacs.html#sec-2]), and some
  inspiration from Eric Schulte's and Dan Davidson's 'Org-babel'
  ([http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/]).


Commentary
~~~~~~~~~~

What is 'outorg'?
-----------------

  It's a modified extension of 'out-xtra', that is itself an extension
  to Emacs 'outline-minor-mode'. Its first goal is to enable full
  outline-navigation and structure editing in source code buffers that
  are structured by an outline-hierarchy with Org-style headlines like

  ,----
  | ;; * 1st-level Entry
  | ;; ** 2nd-level Entry
  `----

  Its second goal, and new idea, is to take advantage of the fact that
  these kind of headlines look just like out-commented Org-mode
  headlines (e.g. in Emacs Lisp source code buffers). Thus,
  functionality has been added to enable editing of such 'outlined'
  source-code buffers in a temporary Org-mode buffer and insert the
  modified content back into the original source code buffer.

  This is actually the same idea employed in Org-mode (Org-Babel) for
  comfortable editing of source code blocks in Org-mode buffers: a
  temporary buffer is opened and put into the programming language
  major-mode, the source-code block is copied into the temporary buffer,
  edited (using the programming-language major-mode functionality), and
  the modified content saved back to the original Org-mode file. Here,
  the focus is on the text - an Org-mode file can be viewed as text with
  source-code.

  With 'outorg', the focus is on the source code, not on the text. It
  should be used when its about editing (extended) comments in
  source-code files, i.e. when the main editing activity is actually
  programming, with an occasional need to write sections of (comment)
  text. Just like it is very convenient to edit the source code buffers
  in Org-mode with the full editing power of the associated major-mode,
  its quite an advantage to have the full power of Org-mode available
  when writing the comment sections of your source code files.


Features
--------

  This file provides (almost) the same nice extra features for outline
  minor mode like Per Abrahamsen's 'out-xtra':

  - Change default minor mode key prefix to `C-c'.
  - Complete keybindings and menu support.
  - Add command to show top level headers.
  - Add command to hide all other entries than the one containing point.

  `outorg' follows a different idea than `out-xtra': it consists of
  generic functionality that calculates the adequate outline-regexp and
  outline-level for the active major-mode, rather than defining several
  blocks of major-mode specific functionality.

  New features of `outorg' are:

  1. Generic functionality that should work whereever `comment-region'
     and `uncomment-region' work.
  2. Fontification of headlines (copied from Fabrice Niessen's '.emacs')
  3. Toggling between editing in (e.g.) Lisp mode and in Org mode,
     similar to the editing of source-code blocks in Org-mode.

  It is highly recommended to use `outorg' together with `outline-magic'
  for the Org-style `outline-cycle' command.


Emacs Version
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  `outorg.el' works with [GNU Emacs 24.2.1 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu,
  GTK+ Version 3.6.4) of 2013-01-20 on eric]. No attempts of testing
  with older versions or other types of Emacs have be made (yet).


Github repo
~~~~~~~~~~~

  You can clone the repo:

  ,----
  | $ git clone git@github.com:tj64/outorg.git
  `----

  or just download the source from

  [https://github.com/tj64/outorg]


Installation
~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Insert

  ,----
  | (require 'outorg)
  `----

  in your .emacs file to install. If you want a different prefix key,
  insert first

  ,----
  | (defvar outline-minor-mode-prefix "\C-c")
  `----

  or whatever. The prefix can only be changed before outline (minor)
  mode is loaded.


ChangeLog
~~~~~~~~~

         date  author(s)        version 
  --------------------------------------
   2013-02-11  Thorsten Jolitz      0.9 


Bugs
~~~~

  `outorg' is line-based, it only works with 'one-line' comments, i.e.
  with comment-sections like those produced by `comment-region' (a
  command that comments or uncomments each line in the region). Those
  special multi-line comments found in many programming languages are
  not recognized and lead to undefined behaviour.

  And it's still version 0.9 - work in progress.

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-- 
cheers,
Thorsten