Marco Wahl <address@hidden> writes:
> Just I got the idea that for a good part this discussion is about
> personal preferences.
Personal preferences are relevant to this issue in that Org is flexible
and allows users to configure it accordingly. But that is not the only
consideration at stake. Consistency, compatibility, and longevity are
even more important.
> What I really find irritating is that "Org ... allows #+KEYWORD: lines
> to appear anywhere in a file" (This sentence is from you) with the
> meaning that the settings apply to the whole file. I think this
> interpretation of #+KEYWORD: lines is unnecessary and confusing.
Regardless, that is the way Org works, and how it has for many years.
We can't break that.
I'd like to just quickly chime in in support of Adam's caution on this issue. I can absolutely see advantages to document level properties, I have written many code fragments that rely on the use of keywords and expect org filensyntax to be consistent with what actually exists. I use these code fragments to hold together a somewhat fragile workflow that allows me to use org in a work environment that is not especially receptive to simple text documents. I have invested a lot of time in making those systems run and sometimes even I don't entirely remember what I did to make them possible.
It would really, really suck to have those systems break. It would take me a lot of time to track down the causes and change what I needed to. VMs that currently pull in Emacs andnorg and my code would stop working. Old versions of my files would no longer render properly. My efforts to make my courses and other writings effectively reproducible by others would be significantly set back. Etc. I think these are the kinds of difficulties Adam means to describe.