Fwd: are super-hidden technical blocks required?

[Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com>]

Sorry I forgot to CC the list.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com>
Date: 30 July 2012 17:42
Subject: Re: are super-hidden technical blocks required?
To: Bastien <bzg@gnu.org>


Hi Bastien,

I just think normal blocks or drawers are used by many org-user for
very different reasons and many store personal data into it.
After all, we love the flexibility in org-mode right :)

However, something which is saved in a org-mode file by another
application might not be intended to be read (nor modified) by users
directly. Hence having a mix of user data and non-user data in the
same drawer or property seems to me kind of annoying for the user and
maybe even dangerous, since you might brake something accidentely.

Thus, I was thinking of a block specially reserved for non-user
interaction. Completely hidden in all kind of views and maybe only
visible for debugging or expert-usage.

Examples would be the ID properties used by MobileOrg or UUID recently
used by org-caldav.el. Basically, all and everything which comes from
a automatic import/export/two-way sync and which is not intend to be
changed by the user directly. Guess there might be useful for stuff
from odf-import/export too. Other programs might have properties (e.g.
title color, notify sound, etc.) which have no equivalent in org-mode
but it would be nice to save them for a two-way sync.
As far as I understood two-way syncs with other programs are still
tricky because there is no standard way how to save information
necessary for the other side of the sync-chain.

My idea was something like

* Test
:DATA-PROPERTIES:
:UUID:
:CALENDAR-NAME:
:SERVER_ADDRESS:
:TIMESTAMP_SERVER:
:HASH-TAG:
:PROGRAM-FOO-PROPERTY:
:END:

which should be simply

* Test

in all normal org-mode views (or use a very minimalistic out of the
way indicator ?!)

not sure how well this would work out and maybe some people do not
like it since it hiding stuff. Others might like it because it removes
certain cluttering of (not as useful) information from the normal
views.

Just an idea


Torsten

On 30 July 2012 16:26, Bastien <bzg@gnu.org> wrote:
> Hi Torsten,
>
> I don't think this is about plain text vs ą la XML (because XML and
> friends are plain text too) but about whether we should allow a new
> type of block to keep non-human-readable stuff out of the way.
>
> One thing I don't get is how these blocks would be more hidden than
> normal blocks or drawers.
>
> Another thing I'm not sure about is what kind of technical stuff
> you have in mind.  I see what you mean for UUID, but note that this
> is not a problem of the :ID: property itself (which can hold a human
> readable value), but of the value of this property when using UUIDs.
>
> Speculating about Org possibilities is one of the fun here, so I
> would not mind reading a more precise example.
>
> But in general, as one can more or less guess, I'm more of a less
> person.  :)
>
> --
>  Bastien