Re: Is it possible to keep /all/ the heading properties in one place?

[Oleh Krehel <oleh@oremacs.com>]

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

> Some users complained, and told me that "Org is not a programming
> language". Fair enough. Org has, indeed, to strike a balance between
> structure, required for efficiency and maintainability, and sloppiness,
> needed when you want to quickly jot down notes in a document, or simply
> let your ideas flow as you type, without hindrance.

Simply the headline structure is enough for all of this. The rest, like
properties, tags and logging can be made more rigorous.  For instance,
the current tags implementation implies the illusion that they can be
manipulated by hand. However, in practice it's frustrating to align
them.

>> Suggestion, and I've said it before, Org needs a standard simple inline
>> kbd markup. Just like Markdown's <kbd></kbd> and Texinfo's @kbd{}.
>> Since Org is tied into Emacs having an easy (and unambiguous) way to
>> denote keyboard shortcuts would be very convenient.
>
> This is export back-end specific. Org has no use for a "kbd" markup.

I really disagree here. The very first thing I did used Org for was
jotting down the Emacs key bindings that I wanted to remember.  Not
being able to distinguish the key bindings from symbols removes from the
markup's expressiveness.

For example, some people write like this:

    ~M-x forward-char~ or ~C-f~

while I write like this:

    ~M-x~ =forward-char= or ~C-f~

As long as only I read my own documents, my notation isn't a
problem. But if I share it with someone else, they will have to get used
to my non-standard notation.


>> Adding that would also progress the direction of having Org be the
>> language for Emacs manuals. Right now, Org's own manual is in Texinfo,
>> which is a shame since no one likes Texinfo and few people understand
>> enough of it to get by.

> Org can export to Texinfo. It can be helpful for those not understanding
> well enough the latter.

Org can export to Texinfo. But not well enough to be able to write Org
manual in Org.

That was my point. To be able to write a manual as rich as any existing
one, with only Org's built-in markup, i.e. without a tonne of export
specific #+TEXINFO or #+HTML includes.

I made some progress towards this goal with some custom code for
ivy.org -> ivy.html + ivy.texi export:
https://github.com/abo-abo/swiper/blob/master/doc/ivy-ox.el.

I made use of my own kbd markup that I wrote once in Org, but exported
the same both to Texinfo and HTML (see e.g. http://oremacs.com/swiper/#key-bindings).

regards,
Oleh