Re: Org-mode versus Taskpaper - now for real

[Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl>]

On Apr 3, 2008, at 5:14 PM, Rick Moynihan wrote:
>
> I'm not convinced of it's worth either.  But having more org
> files out in the wild would be nice :-)  It's a shame Taskpaper
> doesn't just use a subset of org-mode's syntax really.
>
> R.

Well, indeed not exactly the same, but very close.  A way to measure
the distance between two formats is using a discrete p-N metric.
The distance between two formats is said to be N if there is
perl program with less than 2^N (2 to the power N) significant
characters that will turn this test taskpaper file

/----------------------------------------------------
| Project 1:
| - Task 1 @home
| - Task 2 @work @boss
| 	- Subtask 2.1 @done
| 	- Subtask 2.2 @Alice
|     More text belonging to subtask 2.2
| - Task 3
| This is not a project, but text belonging to task 3
|
| Project 2:
| - Task 4
| - Task 5 @done
\----------------------------------------------------

into this equivalent Org file:

/----------------------------------------------------
| * Project 1:
| ** TODO Task 1 :@home:
| ** TODO Task 2 :@work:@boss:
| *** DONE Subtask 2.1
| *** TODO Subtask 2.2 :@Alice:
|     More text belonging to subtask 2.2
| ** TODO Task 3
| This is not a project, but text belonging to task 3
|
| * Project 2:
| ** TODO Task 4
| ** DONE Task 5
\----------------------------------------------------

Anyone wants to take up the challenge?  What N can be achieved?

Bonus points if the program also adds

/---------------------------------
| #+TAGS: @Alice @boss @work @home
\---------------------------------

somewhere, but that is not required for a valid entry.

No more than 2^N *significant* characters means that
after stripping the line invoking the perl interpreter

  #+/usr/bin/perl -p

and after stripping newlines and other insignificant whitespace,
the program may have at most 2^N bytes.

In fact, any other language is also allowed - however, usually
perl makes the smallest converters and is therefore the best
measure for distance in p_N space.

- Carsten