Re: Allowing loose ordering in Org files

[Matt Lundin <mdl@imapmail.org>]

John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:

> There is another vector to consider, and a far more nebulous one: How does it
> impact Org's "luft"? That is, the feeling of ease and comfort Org conveys in
> its use.

FWIW, I personally have found org both faster and much more reliable
thanks to Nicolas' heroic work to tighten up org syntax. Org files open
faster, the agenda parses faster, the exporter is orders of magnitude
more consistent, org babel blocks behave as expected, etc. And the user
interaction has far fewer glitches than I experienced before the change.
For instance, for years, org mode functions on my machine often inserted
property drawers inside of property drawers or inserted multiple
property drawers in a single entry. In my experience, the changes to the
parser have made all this much more robust and predictable.

So for me, the increasing robustness of org mode makes it feel easier,
more pleasant to use.

> There are many highly functional alternatives to Org that I've tried
> and rejected because they lack the easy grace of Org. That grace is
> why I've been able to stick with it after almost 9,000 handled tasks.
> Any perception of "inertia" in a tasking system causes me to
> psychologically avoid it, even if I have no rational basis for that
> aversion.
>
> I sincerely hope that those with high technical motives will keep in mind the
> usability of Org beyond purely technical considerations. It should say
> something that a long-time user is unhappy with the way Org "feels" in 8.3.

I'm not sure "purely technical" is fair characterization of the reasons
for the syntax changes. As I understand it, the chief reason that org
syntax needed a cleanup is because of the massive amount of
functionality that org mode acquired over the years. Ensuring all this
worked smoothly and robustly for users required a more regular,
predictable syntax. So user experience was key to the changes as well.

Best,
Matt