Re: [babel] Future of Org-babel?

[Xiao-Yong Jin <xj2106@columbia.edu>]

On Wed, 5 May 2010 17:35:18 -0500, Nathan Neff wrote:

> Guys,
> Is there a project/TODO/Wish list for Org-babel?

> I'd like to give a presentation on Org-babel at the Strange Loop
> conference in St. Louis
> in October.

> http://strangeloop2010.com/

> The Strange Loop conference attracted a lot of very smart people that
> I think would
> be interested in contributing to Org-babel, particularly because it's
> a young project.

> There's plenty more languages that Org-babel could support, so that's
> one area that
> I could mention needs help.

> But, I'd like to point out some of the advanced/aim-for-the-sky ideas
> that you guys have
> for Org-babel -- that would really spark some interest in the crowd.

> What would you say are the most aggressive / cool features that you're
> considering for Org-babel?

I am thinking of something similar to the 'notebook'
interface in Mathematica.  We can present data, code and
analysis results in a consistent and structured way, thanks
to org-mode.  And in addition, we can use all kinds of
different languages that org-babel supports, automatically
generates tables and graphs on the fly as we execute
different code blocks.  This requires a clean and easy way
to propagating information through different languages in
org-babel.  In this sense, org-babel can be an advanced
interface of comint-mode, or even replace it.  Imagine
running several different inferior interpreters, like shell,
python, haskell, gnuplot, (i)maxima, octave and etc, but
variables can be shared between these processes, and all the
code and extra texts are stored in one org-mode file, which
is also the only file you have to work on.

This is my dream about org-babel.  Hope it comes true,
someday.

> Thanks,
> --Nate

Thanks,
Xiao-Yong

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