On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:25 PM, Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com> wrote:
Steven Haryanto <stevenharyanto@gmail.com> wrote:

> I plan to document some parts of Perl source code (more specifically, description in subroutine
> Sub::Spec specification, http://search.cpan.org/dist/Sub-Spec) using Org format instead of the
> canonical POD, hoping to have better table support, more customizable links, and overall markups
> that are nicer to look at (IMO).
>
> However, one of the nice things of POD (and Wiki, Markdown, etc) for documenting source code is the
> relative simplicity of writing literal examples: an indented paragraph. In Org we either have to use
> the colon+space prefix syntax:
>
>  : this is an example
>  : another line
>  : another line
>
> or the example block:
>
>  #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
>  this is an example
>  another line
>  another line
>  #+END_EXAMPLE
>
> Is there an alternative syntax? If there isn't, would people consider an alternative syntax (e.g.
> say a setting which toggles parsing an indented paragraph as a literal example)?
>

What is the problem with #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE/#+END_EXAMPLE? IOW, why do you need
an alternative syntax? If your answer is "too much typing", check out
section 15.2, "Easy templates", in the Org manual.

The problem is visual clutter (yes, I guess Emacs can be told to hide the markup, but I'm talking about when text is displayed as-is and/or outside Emacs) and copy-pasteability (especially with the colon syntax). I know Org format is not optimized for fixed width section, but perhaps there is a way?

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