Org without Emacs?

Org without Emacs?

[Scott Randby]

Greetings,

Here is an article that might interest some: https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-mode

I'm not sure if the article is entirely successful. Maybe the tools mentioned in it can do some of the things Org does, but are there any that have full Org functionality? I'm not convinced that Org can be divorced from Emacs. Maybe parts of it can be separated.

Scott Randby

Re: Org without Emacs?

[Neil Jerram]

Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com> writes:

> Greetings,

Hi Scott,

> Here is an article that might interest some: https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-mode
>
> I'm not sure if the article is entirely successful. Maybe the tools mentioned in it can do some of the things Org does, but are there any that have full Org functionality? I'm not convinced that Org can be divorced from Emacs. Maybe parts of it can be separated.
>
> Scott Randby

My only worry would be if any of this support in other tools is cover
for attacking the copyleft and hence unity of how Org works; aimed
ultimately at fragmenting the Org ecosystem.

As long as that is not the case, I'm happy to fully support these
alternative implementations.  (And personally, I'm a heavy Orgzly user.)

Best wishes,
   Neil

Re: Org without Emacs?

[Tim Cross]

As org is implemented in elisp, there are only two options for
implementing org outside of emacs

1. Implement a full elisp runtime in the alternative envrionment
2. Re-implement org functionality in a different language and runtime.

I think 1 is extremely unlikely, with the possible exception of things
like https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs, which is a re-implementation of
Emacs.

Alternative 2 is more likely and to some extent has been done with
things like beorg and Visual Source Code, which has an extension with
some (minimal) org support.

The problem with re-implementation is that there is a lot of core
functionality built into emacs which is not found in most other
runtimes. Much of what Org does is really take existing Emacs
functionality and wrap it together in a more convenient and consistent
bundle. In other systems, much of this functionality would need to be
implemented from scratch, which would be a non-trivial task. In
addition, keep pace with org development will be difficult for these
clones. 

I expect we will see some of Org's functionality implemented in other
environments, but are unlikely to see a fully compatible and feature
rich version on any other platform. Most likely, we will see some core
ideas make their way into other environments, but they won't be Org mode
- they will be something different which owes much of the inspiration to
Org mode.

If we are lucky, we may see some new good ideas in these other systems
which could be added to Org itself to make it even greater, otherwise
such ports are unlikely to be of any real interest/use to Emacs Org
users.

Tim

Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com> writes:

> Greetings,
>
> Here is an article that might interest some: https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-mode
>
> I'm not sure if the article is entirely successful. Maybe the tools mentioned in it can do some of the things Org does, but are there any that have full Org functionality? I'm not convinced that Org can be divorced from Emacs. Maybe parts of it can be separated.
>
> Scott Randby


-- 
Tim Cross

Re: Org without Emacs?

[Scott Randby]

On 1/28/19 9:14 AM, Neil Jerram wrote> My only worry would be if any of this support in other tools is cover
> for attacking the copyleft and hence unity of how Org works; aimed
> ultimately at fragmenting the Org ecosystem.

I like your point!

> As long as that is not the case, I'm happy to fully support these
> alternative implementations.  (And personally, I'm a heavy Orgzly user.)

I was under the mistaken impression that Orgzly was proprietary software. Since it is free software, I'm going to start using it.

Scott

Re: Org without Emacs?

[Scott Randby]

On 1/28/19 4:13 PM, Tim Cross wrote:
> As org is implemented in elisp, there are only two options for
> implementing org outside of emacs
> 
> 1. Implement a full elisp runtime in the alternative envrionment
> 2. Re-implement org functionality in a different language and runtime.
> 
> I think 1 is extremely unlikely, with the possible exception of things
> like https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs, which is a re-implementation of
> Emacs.
> 
> Alternative 2 is more likely and to some extent has been done with
> things like beorg and Visual Source Code, which has an extension with
> some (minimal) org support.

It is great that people want to implement Org functionality into other software, but the issue I have with beorg and Visual Source Code is that neither is free software. In the case of beorg, Org is mentioned repeatedly on its website as an inspiration, but what is the contribution of the beorg developers back to the Org community? The central feature of Org is that it is free software. In my view, non-free products like beorg are fundamentally broken.

> The problem with re-implementation is that there is a lot of core
> functionality built into emacs which is not found in most other
> runtimes. Much of what Org does is really take existing Emacs
> functionality and wrap it together in a more convenient and consistent
> bundle. In other systems, much of this functionality would need to be
> implemented from scratch, which would be a non-trivial task. In
> addition, keep pace with org development will be difficult for these
> clones. 

I agree with this completely. 

> I expect we will see some of Org's functionality implemented in other
> environments, but are unlikely to see a fully compatible and feature
> rich version on any other platform. Most likely, we will see some core
> ideas make their way into other environments, but they won't be Org mode
> - they will be something different which owes much of the inspiration to
> Org mode.
> 
> If we are lucky, we may see some new good ideas in these other systems
> which could be added to Org itself to make it even greater, otherwise
> such ports are unlikely to be of any real interest/use to Emacs Org
> users.

It would be wonderful to see new good ideas implemented in other systems, but in the case of proprietary software like beorg or Visual Source Code, their non-free nature makes it risky to re-implement in Org any new ideas they use (if they ever use any). I hope all the new good ideas for Org first exist as free software. That seems likely given the pace at which Org develops and the vitality of the Org community.

Scott

Re: Org without Emacs?

[Tim Cross]

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Just FYI, at least 1 of the org-mode extensions (there are a number) for
Visual Source Code is licensed under the GPL. So while VS code may not be
'free' in the GNU sense, at least some of the extensions that can be used
with it are.

I personally don't see any threat to Emacs Org mode by any of the non-free
clones, such as beorg. I doubt there is anything which could be implemented
in one of these non-free versions which was of use to Emacs org mode tht we
could not re-implement - they would have a tough time try8ing to argue that
it was original work and attempt to stop an elisp version.

Of course, this says nothing about the ethical position associated with
re-implementing functionality from a GPL'd sysem under a non-free license.
We can hope people do the right thing, but have no control to enforce it. I
also doubt it will cause any fracture in the org user community - the
bottom line is most of use came to org because of Emacs. These other
systems don't have Emacs and therefore are really only a pale imitation. .

On Tue, 29 Jan 2019 at 15:06, Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/28/19 4:13 PM, Tim Cross wrote:
> > As org is implemented in elisp, there are only two options for
> > implementing org outside of emacs
> >
> > 1. Implement a full elisp runtime in the alternative envrionment
> > 2. Re-implement org functionality in a different language and runtime.
> >
> > I think 1 is extremely unlikely, with the possible exception of things
> > like https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs, which is a re-implementation of
> > Emacs.
> >
> > Alternative 2 is more likely and to some extent has been done with
> > things like beorg and Visual Source Code, which has an extension with
> > some (minimal) org support.
>
> It is great that people want to implement Org functionality into other
> software, but the issue I have with beorg and Visual Source Code is that
> neither is free software. In the case of beorg, Org is mentioned repeatedly
> on its website as an inspiration, but what is the contribution of the beorg
> developers back to the Org community? The central feature of Org is that it
> is free software. In my view, non-free products like beorg are
> fundamentally broken.
>
> > The problem with re-implementation is that there is a lot of core
> > functionality built into emacs which is not found in most other
> > runtimes. Much of what Org does is really take existing Emacs
> > functionality and wrap it together in a more convenient and consistent
> > bundle. In other systems, much of this functionality would need to be
> > implemented from scratch, which would be a non-trivial task. In
> > addition, keep pace with org development will be difficult for these
> > clones.
>
> I agree with this completely.
>
> > I expect we will see some of Org's functionality implemented in other
> > environments, but are unlikely to see a fully compatible and feature
> > rich version on any other platform. Most likely, we will see some core
> > ideas make their way into other environments, but they won't be Org mode
> > - they will be something different which owes much of the inspiration to
> > Org mode.
> >
> > If we are lucky, we may see some new good ideas in these other systems
> > which could be added to Org itself to make it even greater, otherwise
> > such ports are unlikely to be of any real interest/use to Emacs Org
> > users.
>
> It would be wonderful to see new good ideas implemented in other systems,
> but in the case of proprietary software like beorg or Visual Source Code,
> their non-free nature makes it risky to re-implement in Org any new ideas
> they use (if they ever use any). I hope all the new good ideas for Org
> first exist as free software. That seems likely given the pace at which Org
> develops and the vitality of the Org community.
>
> Scott
>
>

-- 
regards,

Tim

--
Tim Cross

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Re: Org without Emacs?

[Scott Randby]

On 1/28/19 11:42 PM, Tim Cross wrote:
> Of course, this says nothing about the ethical position associated with re-implementing functionality from a GPL'd sysem under a non-free license. We can hope people do the right thing, but have no control to enforce it. I also doubt it will cause any fracture in the org user community - the bottom line is most of use came to org because of Emacs. These other systems don't have Emacs and therefore are really only a pale imitation.

I'm one of those who came to Emacs because of Org. I read an article in some magazine (Linux Journal?) about Org and knew I had to try it out. Once I was into using Org, Emacs took over more and more of my computing life. People who use a non-free semi-implementation of Org may not even realize Emacs is the software that made Org possible and that Emacs is so great, and I think that is sad.

Scott

Re: Org without Emacs?

[Amin Bandali]

Hi Scott,

On 2019-01-28 10:51 PM, Scott Randby wrote:

[...]

> I was under the mistaken impression that Orgzly was proprietary
> software. Since it is free software, I'm going to start using it.
>

You weren’t wrong; it did use to be proprietary before, but the author
GPL’ed it about a year or so ago :) As a consequence, it has been
available on F-Droid as well since then.

>
> Scott
>

Best,
amin

Re: Org without Emacs?

[nly]

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btw, you can run emacs on android, and use org from there.

You can install termux from fdroid
and then, at a termux shell, enter:
$ pkg install emacs

I use emacs for org and matrix because matrix clients on android are not as nice.

Cheers,
Amar <nly@disroot.org>

On January 29, 2019 3:46:43 PM UTC, Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 1/28/19 11:42 PM, Tim Cross wrote:
>> Of course, this says nothing about the ethical position associated
>with re-implementing functionality from a GPL'd sysem under a non-free
>license. We can hope people do the right thing, but have no control to
>enforce it. I also doubt it will cause any fracture in the org user
>community - the bottom line is most of use came to org because of
>Emacs. These other systems don't have Emacs and therefore are really
>only a pale imitation.
>
>I'm one of those who came to Emacs because of Org. I read an article in
>some magazine (Linux Journal?) about Org and knew I had to try it out.
>Once I was into using Org, Emacs took over more and more of my
>computing life. People who use a non-free semi-implementation of Org
>may not even realize Emacs is the software that made Org possible and
>that Emacs is so great, and I think that is sad.
>
>Scott

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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Re: Org without Emacs?

[Jude DaShiell]

Too bad Apple's IOS is so limited the app store only offers not emacs
along with the org clones which have to operate separately.

On Wed, 30 Jan 2019, nly wrote:

> Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 20:33:33
> From: nly <nly@disroot.org>
> To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: [O] Org without Emacs?
>
> btw, you can run emacs on android, and use org from there.
>
> You can install termux from fdroid
> and then, at a termux shell, enter:
> $ pkg install emacs
>
> I use emacs for org and matrix because matrix clients on android are not as nice.
>
> Cheers,
> Amar <nly@disroot.org>
>
> On January 29, 2019 3:46:43 PM UTC, Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On 1/28/19 11:42 PM, Tim Cross wrote:
> >> Of course, this says nothing about the ethical position associated
> >with re-implementing functionality from a GPL'd sysem under a non-free
> >license. We can hope people do the right thing, but have no control to
> >enforce it. I also doubt it will cause any fracture in the org user
> >community - the bottom line is most of use came to org because of
> >Emacs. These other systems don't have Emacs and therefore are really
> >only a pale imitation.
> >
> >I'm one of those who came to Emacs because of Org. I read an article in
> >some magazine (Linux Journal?) about Org and knew I had to try it out.
> >Once I was into using Org, Emacs took over more and more of my
> >computing life. People who use a non-free semi-implementation of Org
> >may not even realize Emacs is the software that made Org possible and
> >that Emacs is so great, and I think that is sad.
> >
> >Scott
>
>

-- 

Re: Org without Emacs?

[Scott Randby]

On 1/29/19 8:33 PM, nly wrote:
> btw, you can run emacs on android, and use org from there.
> 
> You can install termux from fdroid
> and then, at a termux shell, enter:
> $ pkg install emacs
> 

I have Termux and Emacs installed on my Android tablet, but I've had too many issues with yanking from one file to another (it doesn't work most of the time) and other things. I prefer using Emacs on my laptop which has Xubuntu installed.

Scott