Re: Thoughts on the standardization of Org

[David Rogers <davidandrewrogers@gmail.com>]

Asa Zeren <asaizeren@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Even though I am new to the org-mode community, I would like to 
> share
> some thoughts on the specification of org-mode, especially since 
> I
> have seen some recent discussion of it in relation to 
> registering org
> as a MIME type.
>
> First, I would like to repeat the importance of developing 
> standards
> for org-mode. If we want to expand the influence of org, tooling 
> must
> expand beyond Emacs. While Emacs is an amazing tool, ...

I disagree (in principle, not just because it would be difficult) 
with the idea of “expanding beyond Emacs”. Org-mode benefits 
greatly from current and future Emacs development, and asking to 
standardize “just the parts that are not Emacs” would cause 
Org-mode to lose that huge advantage. Org-mode relies heavily on 
the editor it’s built on, and if it ceased to rely on Emacs, it 
would be forced to rely on “nothing at all” instead. Not only 
that, but for Org-mode users being able to count on all of Emacs 
is a big part of why it works. This means separating Org-mode from 
Emacs is a “lose-lose” idea.

As far as the level of difficulty, any developer thinking “I want 
my application to be able to run Org-mode” really just has one 
item on their to-do list: Duplicate every detail of Emacs, 
including all the obscure capabilities and all the quirks, 
especially that everything user-modifiable is in Emacs Lisp, and 
maintain all future updates in lockstep with whatever the future 
Emacs developers decide. Sounds like fun. :)

If you admire a certain car maker’s engines, you can probably get 
one somehow to install in a unique car you’re building. But this 
situation isn’t really like that. This idea is more like wanting 
to buy just the speed indicator from a fast car and install that, 
expecting it to improve your car’s acceleration.

-- 
David Rogers