Re: [O] About commit named "Allow multi-line properties to be specified in property blocks"

[Bastien]

Dear all,

here is my take on this issue.

First of all, sorry that the #+begin_property caused confusion, 
I'm the one responsible as I suggested this suggestion to Eric.

I can see three issues:

1) Consistent syntax for #+xxx and #+begin_xxx?

   Nicolas point is valid -- #+begin_xxx syntax is about content and
   formatting, not about Org's internal.  #+xxx is mostly about Org's
   internals (#+author, #+date, #+property, etc) and sometimes about
   content, as a convenient way of inserting one-line content block
   (#+html, #+LaTeX, etc)

   #+begin_property does not fit well into this picture.

2) "Cumulative properties"?

   Org's manual describes #+property like this:
 
   `#+PROPERTY: Property_Name Value'
       This line sets a default inheritance value for entries in the
       current buffer, most useful for specifying the allowed values 
       of a property.

   Note that #+property: var foo=1 does *not* fit into the syntax
   described above.  It is more something like

   `#+PROPERTY: var Variable_Name=Value'

   Hence the problem of accumulating the "values" of "var", which 
   is not really a property name, but some syntactic clue to bind
   Variable_Name to its value.

   Here is a suggestion: use a syntaxe like
 
   #+var: foo 1

   The difference between #+property and #+var would be that #+var 
   is for setting general purpoes (elisp) variables, while #+property
   is for Org internals.  Sorry if such a proposal has already been
   made and discussed.  

   My feeling is that `org-accumulated-properties-alist' is complex
   and can be avoided -- but I need to think more about this.

3) Wrapping/folding long #+xxx lines?

   This is an independant request -- see Robert McIntyre's recent
   question on the list.  The problem is that fill-paragraph on
   long #+xxx lines breaks the line into comment lines, which is 
   wrong.  Filling like this:

   #+TBLFM: @address@hidden@2$1::@address@hidden@2$2::...::...
          : @address@hidden@2$2::...
          : @address@hidden@2$2::...

   would feel more natural, at least to me.  But maybe generalizing
   the #+begin_xxx syntax for *all* #+xxx keywords.  This would make the
   current org-internals-oriented/content-oriented difference between
   #+xxx and #+begin_xxx obsolete, but this would spare us the cost of
   new syntax.  Curious about input about this as well.

Cheers,

-- 
 Bastien