Re: [RFC] Syntax for macros

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

"Sebastien Vauban" <sva-news@mygooglest.com>
writes:

>> There is also backwards compatibility to consider.
>
> How?  You know, when many, many, many keywords or options changed
> between Org 7.9 and Org 8.0, there was nothing to support backward
> compatibility: much too complex, I guess.
>

Yes, indeed: OTOH there was widespread recognition that the ad-hoc
nature of certain things and creeping featuritis in org-mode was causing
problems and there was a consensus (at least on the list) that having
the pain concentrated in one (major) release was the way to go. I think
in general org-mode is better because of the changes, but that does not
mean that there have not been problems, as you no doubt have noticed.

That does not mean that we can push changes that break peoples'
workflows (yes, I know: http://xkcd.com/1172/ ) willy nilly. They either
have to come at major releases with plenty of warning, or they have to
be backwards compatible or there has to be widespread consensus that
that is a desirable course of action - and I'd raise the bar very high
on this last case.

Are you advocating that the macro syntax should be changed without
worrying about backwards compatibility? That might work if almost nobody
uses macros currently[fn:1], but my impression is that they are used fairly
widely.

> Add a variable "org-support-old-macro-syntax" seems overkill to me. But,
> yes, I know, that's something that will have to be clearly mentioned in
> the NEWS as something that did change, and as some consequences.
>

No: I'm saying that if this change is implemented, {{{foo}}} should be
deprecated (probably raising a deprecation warning when encountered) and
that both {{foo}} and {{{foo}}} should work identically, at least until
the next major release (we can debate whether that's 8.3 or 8.4 or
9.0). At that point and forever after, the old syntax starts raising
errors instead of warnings.

Footnotes:

[fn:1] E.g. QUOTE was an example of a change that could go through,
       precisely because nobody was using it. COMMENT could not go
       quietly into oblivion in the same way however: it was used
       widely.

-- 
Nick